Almost everyone from the class sent home their leftover paint with me instead of taking it home with them…so because I hate anything to go to waste, I printed one morning. It’s a good exercise because I get new ideas while I’m printing (oh boy, do I love that grid stuff that I think is for making rugs non-skid). There is still some paint left…stay tuned…I’m going to make screens for breakdown printing next…
Spontaneous Screen Printing Class

This is another of Mark’s designs. It took him a while to paint this design on the screen, consequently some of the dye dried and when he printed it, it had a breakdown printing appearance to it. Of course, I love that.

A pretty cool freezer paper screen made by another Beth in the class. I really like this screen design.
Select Collections
Select Collections is an annual event hosted by the Evansville Museum Shop. It is a unique shopping experience with selected vendors. Here’s a few photos.
The entrance to the gallery. The black and white printed pillows are mine.
My booth….and a short view down the hallway.
Julia’s wonderful dolls. She also had some raku pins and some wrist bags.
Julia arranging things.
Progress!
Working out in the patio yesterday, I dyed 10 of these…Sweet little onesies for sweet little babies.
Between Monday and Tuesday, I finished 8 new silk scarves and have 3 more waiting to finish. I need some time to decide how to finish them. I want to do more wax designs. There is only one in this group using my new “BIG sponge” stamp. I love the BIG sponge.
Life At My House
I’m so bad…I haven’t blogged in forever. I guess I can just take you through what I have been doing the last couple of weeks… in pictures.
I went to Terra Haute to an exhibit that a friend of mine was in. We went to a place she had once gone to school and I saw interesting things to photograph such as this structure.
Interesting glass close to where we parked…
Then made lots of fabric beads and made earrings from them…this pair sold…
I’ve been making liner bags to go in Kay’s basket purses…a little collaborative effort…
I made ciabatta bread for the very first time…it turned out great…I love it…
We went to my family reunion…outdoors at a state park on the hottest day of the year…
That’s my brother…he was not a happy camper…
We left on Friday to go home for the reunion and were having AC problems at the time. Well, it’s Tuesday and we are still waiting for the repair guy. Lucky we are staying cool though.
Back to the “dye studio” and scarves and onesies this week…
Took this while the scarf was drying…
Pole-wrapped and dyed, stamped and a rubbing applied. The rubbing plate design was made on a piece of cardboard with hot glue. Great way to make rubbings.
Printing L A R G E
I was given some old dyes and some cloth that had been soda soaked by a friend who is downsizing. The hot weather has finally broken here, so yesterday morning I was out in the patio. I wanted to try out the new screens and I needed to get started working on silk scarves. But for yesterday, I got out a piece of cloth from her stash. It is a white on white print and is over 2 yards long. I printed on the back of it. The fabric turned out way too light for my taste, but is still very much useable. I’m not sure if it needed to be soda soaked again or what the reason was. She said it had been soaked last fall…which may be too long ago.
I don’t believe I have printed a piece this large before, but I can see myself doing it again. In the lower right corner is printing from one of the new screens we made. I used a paper resist to make the pattern. The other printing is from a design made with blue gel glue.
Just above that printing is the turquoise from the older dyes she gave me. I used double the dye powder and thought that would compensate for the age, but apparently not as I can see a distinct difference from the newer dyes. The new screens work quite well. Today, I printed on silk scarves and prepared screens for breakdown printing that I will print on other scarves.
One more thing: both of my pieces were rejected for the Working Together show this year….that has not happened before! Oh well…there’ll be another place to enter them.
Finished Cloth
Lesson Learned
I made a glue screen a couple of days ago so that I could screen a resist design onto some white cloth. The last glue screen I made has been used over and over again and the glue is taking FOREVER to break down and disappear. With the screen I prepared recently I used a paintbrush to “paint” the design on it. I used it and washed the screenprinting ink off of it…and the glue design also came off, even though I was using cool water. Hmmm? Ok, the first screen I made I used the glue right out of the bottle tip, no brush, just draw right on the screen with the bottle. The glue is much thicker this way and that’s the difference. I’m sad because I wanted a wider line…guess I’ll have to use use soy wax with a brush to get that.
This is white screenprinting ink (with a little bit of leftover turquoise dye from the screen mixed in accidentally). I am going to roll dye paint over it. The white ink design will act as a resist, but won’t wash out. It will show through the dye.