Fun with Thickened Dye

So now I've dyed all this fabric: 72 differently coloured skinny quarters in all. What do I do with them? The colours are yummy, but let's face it: it's a little boring with just flat colour.

In my last blog post I showed you a flour resist technique I tried on some of my hand dyed fabrics. Here is the next thing I tried: stamping, monoprinting and stencilling with thickened Procion MX dye. I even tried monoprinting with a little stamp. Anything I could think of. (And of course you could do all the things I describe below with ordinary fabric paint too.) Here's some of my favourite samples:

Monoprinting. The pattern is made with a sponge dauber. I really like this effect. You'll find an image of the sponge dauber I used when you scroll down.

Stencilling. I used the stencil I so painstakingly cut a while back. The stencil is really quite unwieldy and not an example of a good stencil, as it's nearly impossible to handle as it is. The shapes get tangled and it's a nightmare to work with. This time, however, I put it under a silk screen, which made the application of thickened dye a lot easier.

Monoprinting. The pattern in this monoprint is made with a cheap paint brush and a silicone paint shaper. This technique quickly became a favourite. You'll find an image of the paint shaper I used when you scroll down.

Monoprinting with a stamp. I should have explored this technique a little more than I did as it was great fun. I combined a simple square-shaped stamp with monoprinting. I applied thickened dye to the stamp and made marks on the surface before printing.

My favourite tools: the humble sponge dauber and a silicone paint shaper:

I've written a whole blog entry about the paint shaper before, when I discovered that it could be used for applying masking fluid on paper. Check it out here.

This is a sight that makes my heart sing:

But wait - there's more! I've also tried screen printing and direct dye painting with thickened dye, so stay tuned for that. I just need to wash the fabrics before I can show you the results.

Thanks for visiting my blog and see you again soon! - Annika

Spread the Word

Today I want to tell you about a Clever Tool. Last autumn I came across some pretty funny-looking brushes that stopped me in my tracks. They weren’t really brushes, because instead of bristles they had a shaped tip made from silicone, and they were called clay or paint shapers. Now, I didn’t have a clue about how I would use them, but they looked like Something That Might Come In Handy For Something. They were pretty cheap too, so I bought them – and forgot about them.

Silicone clay or paint shapers

Much later I was watching an episode of Linda and Laura Kemshall’s Design Matters TV (the episode Watercolour Tricks), and there Linda offered this excellent tip: you can use rubber shaping tools for applying masking fluid. That was very interesting news to me. About the same time that I bought my shaping tools, I had also had a go at masking fluid. The question of how to apply the fluid was still open though. I had ruined two brushes, and I didn’t like wooden sticks. So this tip sounded promising. But I didn’t try it at once – and forgot about it.

When this month’s theme for the Sketchbook Challenge (Can’t Resist) was announced, I knew right away that the time was ripe to put Linda’s tip to the test. And I’m more than pleased with the result. The different tips on the tools make it easy to create a variety of marks with the masking fluid, and it was really easy to remove the masking fluid from the tip: wet or dry, it just peeled away with a light wipe. So if you haven’t tried this already, I recommend that you do. It certainly has made the use of masking fluid less problematic for me.

Here’s an example of some of the shapes that I quickly masked out with the help of my shaping tools. You can see the whole page on Flickr.