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Deconstructed Screen Printing Session

Deconstructed Screen Printing Session

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My local group had our annual retreat in early September. We go out to a lovely lodge on Little Bitterroot Lake and spend a couple of days creating and playing with art stuff. This photo is from sometime in the past. Sadly, this year, the air was full of smoke and you could barely see the mountains across the water. This year, our activities included deconstructed screen printing, making a book and creating some “faux” rice paper.

These are a few of the paper prints that I created. Deconstructed screen printing is done with a previously prepared screen in which the thickened dye has been left to dry. Then you use more thickened dye or plain print paste to release the dried dye from the screen. It is a serendipitous process and you are never sure what you will get in the final prints. I teach this process on felt in my online class.

I usually use fairly thick paper so that I can wash out the thickener that is left on the paper. That way I can do other processes on top of the paper without it running. These are similar to some of the papers that I used in my recent collage challenge.

One of the fun things about the paper is that you can end up using either side. The photo on the left shows the front side of the printed paper and the right photo is the back side.

Here are some of the fabric pieces that I printed. If you click on the individual photos, you can see what type of fabric I used. The little scraps on the top left photo are what was left over after I used a piece of printed hemp canvas for the cover of my book.

These prints are all on silk. The left side is silk habotai, the middle is silk organza and the right side photo is the silk organza layered over the habotai. You could print on many types of silk and this would be a great way to create your own fabric for using in nuno felting.

I will be using these for my upcoming classes that I am taking as backgrounds for stitching, in collages and wherever else suits my fancy.

Next time, I will show you the book that I created while at the retreat. It’s not entirely finished but you will be able to see the deconstructed screen printed canvas as the cover and a piece of printed paper as the inside covers.

Deconstructed Screen Printing

Deconstructed Screen Printing

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This is a guest post by Deb Stika, thanks Deb!

Hi, my name is Deb Stika and I’m a member of Ruth Lane’s art group. Our group meets monthly and once annually for a 2 day retreat on Bitteroot Lake in Montana. In preparation for doing deconstructed silk screening at the retreat, Ruth asked me to describe the process. We took a few photos to help you visualize what we are doing.

We set our stuff up on Ruth’s back deck so we would have plenty of room to spread out. We mixed the print paste in Ruth’s old blender.

Here’s Ruth mixing dye powder into the print paste, making sure there are no lumps! Since we have a bunch of screens, we mixed a variety of colors.

I’ve decided to use this Styrofoam packing material for my first patterned screen. (Ignore the purple color, that’s leftover paint from Ruth using it for printing on another project.) Our first deconstructed screen is orange. And a second bigger screen is created using the same packing material. We simply used the leftover print paste on the packing material and pressed it against’ the screen.

Here I am contemplating using misc. stencils on this bigger screen.

Other good textures: rubber bands, toothpicks, string, etc.

Drying screens.

Here are some of our dried screens ready for deconstructed silk
screening.

Our first pull using the string screen. And the reveal!

Another pull using the rubber band screen. And the reveal!

More reveals!

Thanks Deb for showing everyone the deconstructed screen printing process. We use these printed fabrics for backgrounds in our various fiber art. Screen printing is a fun process, give it a try. 

And to announce the winner of the drawing for First Time Felting, drum roll please…

The winner is Anna Ashton! Congratulations Anna, I will contact you to get your address so the publisher can send you your free copy of the book.

 

 

Annual Art Retreat

Annual Art Retreat

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My local art group had our annual art retreat the first weekend of September. We were lucky and had gorgeous weather and no smoke from any forest fires. We get together on Friday afternoon and stay through Sunday mid afternoon. Our two activities were deconstructed screen printing and gelatin plate printing.

Here we are inside doing some gelatin plate printing. The area in the middle is covered with plastic and we lay out all our work to dry. I took the photos from up in the loft. The floor was covered with loads of wonderful color by the end of the day.

Most of the photos that I took at the lodge didn’t come out all that well. The light isn’t good inside the building and it was a bit windy to take photos of papers outside. And I didn’t get any photos of screen printing because I always get so involved in the process that I forget to take photos. The slide shows below show mainly my work because I took photos afterwards but there are a few from other members. Anything on fabric or felt is not mine as I only printed on paper this time.

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These are deconstructed screen printing. Paula brought some paper coasters that we tried printing on too.

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And these are the gelatin plate printed samples. We used a variety of methods including stencils, magazine transfer and alcohol inks.

And here is the pile of printed papers that I can now use for my art and design class. I use them for collages and backgrounds. We had a great time and we’re already looking forward to next year. We have big plans for all our monthly sessions and I will share those as we go along. Do you have a group of people who you create with? We’d love to hear about it over on the free forum. It’s free to join and you can share your work, talk with other felt and fiber makers and ask questions. Come join us!

Art Retreat

Art Retreat

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Our fiber art group had an art retreat the first weekend of September. We stayed at a lodge on Little Bitterroot Lake near Marion, Montana. It was a bit smokey this year due to wild fires but we still had loads of fun.

We started the weekend with deconstructed screen printing. I hadn’t made up any screens in advance since part of the group had never completed this part of the process.

This is a screen that Deb created with blue glue.

Here’s another screen with thickened dye.

Here are just a few of the results from the screen printing. We printed on paper and on fabric. We were using Procion MX Dyes so we didn’t print on any felt during this session.

Deb had agreed to show us her technique for making a cut and taped collage with some of the papers that we have printed, screen printed, gelli printed, eco printed over the last year. It was a neat method where the pieces were taped together and then sliced with a craft knife, re-positioned and taped back together again. The process is repeated many times.

Here’s Sally working on her eco printed papers. I didn’t get a photo of the final result but if you click on the photo on the right, I think you can see how the process works.

Louise created a collage using old photos. Hers was much smaller and was a bit more tricky than starting with larger pieces of paper.

This is Deb’s collage. She used screen printed papers that she made the day before. Normally, she would have squared up the edges and ended with a rectangular shaped piece. I encouraged her to leave the jagged edges and I really liked the end result on the right. She also made a companion “baby” piece with the leftover scraps but sadly I didn’t get a photo.

And here’s my piece. I used some of my dyed papers plus eco prints to create my collage. I have no idea what I’ll do with this. Perhaps I’ll cut it into smaller pieces and make greeting cards out of it.

We also did some gelli printing. Louise and Paula gelli printed feathers. They hadn’t tried that before and it was kind of cool. The larger white feathers seemed to be the most successful. You do the printing in layers, first apply the background colors and then add detail on top. I’m not sure what the plans are for the feathers but they turned out pretty cool.

Don’t forget to sign up for my upcoming online class that begins on October 6th. The class is Printing, Stenciling and Playing with Thickened Dye on Felt. Just go here to sign up and it’s only $45 for a 4 week course with loads of information.

Deconstructed Screen Printing

Deconstructed Screen Printing

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My local group met last week and we did more deconstructed screen printing. We all enjoy this process so we usually end up at least one of our sessions per year doing screen printing. I did write a post to show the screens before they were printed here. We used thickened fiber reactive dyes that print on cotton and silk.

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We were a small group this time so we got lots of prints. I don’t have any photos of Louise’s silk but I will try to get some photos at our next meeting. I printed on cotton and paper. I have a large stash of printed fabric and paper and I just keep adding to it. So before you ask, I don’t know what I will do with these yet.

The photos above (plus the first photo) are all printed on cotton. All of the screens already had dried dye in them and then we added further colors when printing. I tried some different techniques including brushing on the thickened dye with a dry brush and adding two layers of dye and letting them dry in between applications.

These are all printed on paper. I just love the random, serendipitous prints that you get from this process. You are never sure how they will turn out but I generally end up liking them all.

You can screen print on felt. I have an online class that teaches you how to screen print on wool and if you’re interested in taking the class in 2017, just leave me a note (including what class you are interested in) on our contact us form.