Try It Out Thursday : Hot Stuff

You will remember this pattern from Tuesday's blog, a transfer dyed monoprint on Evolon.  As you can see, I took three full prints, and two partial prints, with the prints gradually getting lighter. You probably think that I've arranged them in the wrong order, as the third one is stronger than the second, but not quite as dark as the first.  Interestingly enough, that isn't the case; I have arranged them in the order they were made.  So what happened?

 The first one, on the left, was made with a very hot iron.  So hot, that it made some of the paper stick to the fabric, and changed the texture of the Evolon somewhat, making it smoother, more like paper, than it is in its natural state.  So...I turned the iron down a bit.  The second print was made with a cooler iron, and whilst the texture of the Evolon didn't change much at all, the print is noticeably lighter.  So...I turned the iron back up again, and got another strong, dark print. 

The moral of this tale?  Not sure that it really has one... but why not try this exercise, starting with a medium hot iron, and see what happens.  If you want to share your results, send them to me and I'll put them up in a separate post. 

Try It Out Tuesday : Fussy Printing.

I really enjoy making monoprints with transfer paints, or thickened dyes.  The image above is an example of a monoprint, random black shapes on a yellow background.  The colours are muted because this is the paper version; transfer paints look very nondescript on paper, but brighten up considerably when ironed onto cloth.  I've taken off a couple of prints from this image already, at full size (A4).  But that's not the only way of using a monoprint, or any other transfer dyed paper.  You can 'fussy print' at a smaller scale, by finding an area of the print that you think is interesting, and transferring only that section to a piece of cloth.  In this case, I'm printing on small pieces of Evolon that were kicking about in the studio, offcuts from a larger project.

This time, I liked the upper part of the print, so I took a postcard sized scrap, and looked to see how much of it I could fit onto the paper.  I worked straight from the paper to the fabric, but if you find it hard to imagine what something might look like transferred, try making yourself a paper or card 'frame', or use a mount cut to the size of your cloth.  That way, you can move the mount around the cloth until you find the configuration you like best.  If you don't want to use the paper complete again, then cut or tear the selected area, so that it's easy to transfer to the cloth.  I ended up with this selection; see if you can work out where it came from!

It's interesting...but it doesn't feel quite complete.  There's a big gap roughly centre right, and it doesn't feel completed, somehow.  So I repeated the process, choosing another area of the paper, and produced this result;

To me, this feels a lot more balanced.  I'll now add some stitch.  Why don't you give this a try?  Paint a pattern of some sort, print one off at full size, and then, working at a smaller scale, build up a smaller piece using selected parts of the original print.  It's fun!

Photo Friday : Circles I

Today's image comes from the amazing Dale Rollerson.  You can find her blog, and more of her work,
  here.  She works a lot with spun bonded fabrics; this piece is Evolon.  She says of this particular piece;' I have monoprinted with the Gelli plate using acrylic paint and stencils – Evolon takes colour so well. I plan to stitch on it before too long'  I'm hoping she'll send me a follow up image when she has stitched this incredibly richly coloured piece, and keep us appraised of the progress of the series. 

So there I was thinking, what's a Gelli plate?  I'd never heard of them, so had a look at their website .  They make a gel printing plate that looks like gelatine, but is reusable.  It sounds fab...want one...but until one of us has a paying job, I'll settle for gelatine printing, as I have several packets of gelatine in the kitchen cupboard.   I found a video on U Tube showing how it's done; please note that the video is the copyright of the original artist, and has nothing to do with Spunbond Sensations!.

Many thanks to Dale for sharing this with us; if you have work at any stage of development that you want to share with us, please contact me here