Iron On Vinyl for Silkscreens

While in Houston, I saw a demonstration by Enid Weichselbaum on making a simple silkscreen using Iron On Vinyl. I was quite interested and thought I would try it.

My supplies were a sketch for the design, a cutting blade, sharpie pen and the iron on vinyl.

 The vinyl has paper with grid markings on one side of it. This is my design after I cut it out.

 A blue sharpie was scribbled on the vinyl side to make the design more visible.

I peeled away the paper from the vinyl and ironed it onto a sheer fabric.

Then I used paint to print the design on paper. Not the best of results. So I did some experimenting. I ironed the vinyl again to the sheer. There wasn't much difference.

 So then I thought it was a problem with the sheer fabric not retaining a good hold. So I cut another design from the vinyl and ironed it onto a different sheer fabric.

Not a big difference in photo above.

What did make a difference was making sure that I printed the screen over my padded surface! So easy to forget some basics.
I am not sure I am a big fan of this type of silkscreen. Each time I rinsed off the paint, the vinyl came away from the sheer fabric. As it dried, it re-adhered itself.  Might need to do a little more experimenting.

Thermofax Screen Prints

Judy does a lot of printing on fabric and has a thermofax machine to make screens for printing. She offered the Fiber Junkies an opportunity to make a screen. Needless to say, we were delighted.

 This is the machine. We needed to bring a drawing or design that was copied on a laser printer. A piece of the film, larger than the design, was fed through the machine with  the laser copy.

 This is my design after it was "burned" onto the film.

 Judy is very organized. Above on the left is my thermofax screen. I applied her yellow duct tape to the edges and even marked which side is the top when printing. On the right is my paper design.

 Don't know if you can tell, but this is my design printed on a file folder. Such a wonderful way to organize and store each of the somewhat fragile screens.

 Then, we also printed onto a piece of plastic, like they sell on the roll at Wal-Mart. I have the white tissue paper behind the plastic to photograph. Judy does this so that you can preview the design over the fabric for placement. Such a wonderful idea. I would like to be so organized.

Gen had brought a pretty blue and pink duct tape for her screen.

 This is hers printed on a file folder. She has 2 different prints on one screen.

These are Mary's 4 designs. I really like all of them and am looking forward to using my screen.

Shibori Style Painting

On the retreat with my friends, we also wanted to try painting some fabric in a shibori style.

See our stack of pvc? Lots of sizes.

 This is what Judy painted. It is fabric that had already been dyed with tea and rust.  She wrapped the 3" diameter pvc pole loosely with string. Getting the right tension of the string takes some practice.

 One end was taped and the string was taped to the fabric.  Then the wrapped fabric was carefully pushed to one end of the pole.  If you want to see the finished piece after Judy painted it, visit her blog "Windy Hill Happenings".  The link is on the right-hand side of my blog.

 This is a piece of wool that Mary had ice dyed the day before.  She was very happy with the result and wanted to paint it.

Mary taped the edges of the wool together and did not use string.  She just pushed the fabric to one end of the pole.  To see Mary's piece after painting, visit her blog, "The Inside Stori".  The link is also on the left side under blog lists.

Here are Mary and Judy painting their fabric.  We used fabric paints and inexpensive sponge brushes.  We painted on the ridges. Notice the one in front.  Mary used rubber bands to wrap her fabric instead of string.  Of the 3 methods of wrapping we tried, we thought that was the easiest.

This is a piece I had marbled and decided to marble again. It still needed more complexity, so I decided to paint it in this shibori stlye. I wrapped it with string. Here it is after I painted it and it is drying.

I am happy with it after the painting.

 This is another fabric I had painted about 10 years ago.

 It is wrapped in rubber bands.

 Then I painted it with the paint that was left on people's pallettes. It was a nice green shade.

This is the result.  I was pleased.

New Year Collage with Fiber Junkies

Yesterday, my Fiber Junkie group got together to create a collage for 2014. This is something Denny had done many years in another group when she lived elsewhere. The idea is to go with what you like or think you may want to do in 2014.

 Judy has a huge studio with large tables. We spread out the materials and looked through the magazines and catalogs for pictures we liked.

 This is the pile I amassed.

 This is Judy's collage. She has a real vintage look here with items from old magazines, like "Look". Judy and I applied the pictures on cloth, similar to the cloth paper we made last fall.

 Gen glued her pictures on a black poster board. She has a travel theme going.

 Mary chose items she thought would appeal to her grandson as a large Valentine card.

 Denny had 2 parts to her collage. One side of the poster portrays inner life and the other side is outer life. I will let you figure out which side is which. Her collage is above and below here.

 

This is my collage, in the style of paper cloth. I went for color and shape and added a lot of colored tissue paper.

Paper Cloth Greeting Cards

A few months ago, my Fiber Junkie Group made paper cloth. I had a lot of fun cutting some of that cloth in shapes to make greeting cards.

 This is my favorite piece of paper cloth.  It has maps, napkins and tissue paper adhered to cloth.

 Here are the first cards I made from that cloth. I cut the cloth with a scalloped edged rotary cutter and sewed it onto cardstock.

 Well, that was so much fun, that I recently made some more.

This is from a different paper cloth.

Here are 2 more from the same paper cloth.

 

I thought I would make a cake shape. I started by cutting a paper into the shape. Then cut the cloth.

 Adding a little netting ruffled around the shape added a little more fun.

 This is another piece.