Above is the fabric I posted about last time; this is how it now looks with a fourth layer of dye, which I sponged on yesterday afternoon. Now it has even more depth.
I screen printed some new fabric today. I made stencils of 2 shapes–a man and a girl, I did a test run a few months ago–and cut them out of solid white contact paper and stuck them to some white cotton sateen:
Here’s a general idea of the yardage. This is one of two bath-towel-lined boards with cotton sateen pinned to the top; the fabric wasn’t entirely flat and secure the whole time, which is technically sloppy but makes for some interesting shapes:
And here is what the first layer of screen-printed dye looked like:
I waited for the first layer to dry, then carefully unpeeled the stencils and reapplied them to the stiff (the dye mix has sodium alginate, a thickening agent, which dries stiff) fabric. They aren’t quite as sticky as they are the first time, but with care they can be used twice. Which is good, because cutting those shapes over and over again gets a bit tiring!
This is what the fabric looks like after a second application of dye:
This is the same fabric, after being washed:
The second bit of yardage started yellow, too; this one had turquoise as a second layer and this is how it looks now:
From the detail below, which is looking pretty good I think, you can see a few examples of less-than-technically-perfect screen-printing technique; there are some blotches and variations in color.
I will screen-print both of these again with 2 different colors. But not until later this week. So far I think it’s looking pretty good.
