Print Paste

Alternative studio, aka the top of the dishwasher!

You know I thought the hardest part of doing surface design was going to be getting the table set up.  Actually I didn't think that would be hard.  Hum, I should have thought about that as I blithely set about trying to make my print paste. Okay, maybe I should roll back a step and explain print paste.

I want to print, draw, stamp etc on fabric, using dyes rather than fabric paint.  In order to do this the dye powder must be turned first into liquid, and then thickened up, which is where the print paste comes in.  If you don't thicken the dye, it will of course run all over the place, not hold shapes or marks and just, well dye the fabric with a big splodge (which may be what you are trying to achieve anyway).

I used what appears to be the standard print paste recipe.  First I made the chemical water.  This consists of two optional chemicals, ludigol and metaphos, neither of which I could get hold of, so it was a good job they were optional!  The non optional element is urea.  That's sheep's piss to you and me!  This stops the dyes from drying out too quickly.  This is mixed approximately 1 lire of warm water to 100g Urea.

The print paste is made from rapidly mixing sodium alginate (derived from seaweed and used in food and candy manufacture amongst other things) to the chemical water.  Now if I lived in the UK or the US, I would just go to a dye company and buy either the sodium alginate, or a prepared paste.  However, here in Bangkok, I was on a chemical hunt.  Luckily a very nice customer in a shop I was trying to buy it in, pointed me in the direction of a shop selling chemicals.

Back home, I followed what appeared to be the standard mix to achieve the paste.  35g of sodium alginate slowly added to 1 litre of chemical water, rapidly stirred to avoid lumps and left in a cool place overnight.  Well, it looked nothing like the beige coloured paste I saw on my dvd, You Tube or in my book.  It looked like what a heavy drinker produces after a night out!  I left it next to the air conditioner overnight.  The next morning, it looked exactly the same.  After a few more attempts I realised something was simply not working, no matter how carefully I weighed the ingredients.

Hum, maybe I hadn't stirred it quickly enough to activate some chemical reaction (you can tell I wasn't good at chemistry can't you!).  Lots of people used stick blenders, so I went out and bought one.  The same thing happened again.  Nothing!

Then began the international effort to achieve print paste.  My friend Iris has a super brainy son doing a phd in chemistry in the US, so he got roped in.  Meanwhile Alan talked to a colleague of his, who is also a chemistry phd.  Here is what I learnt.   Chemists love being given a challenge.  Within hours of being told my problem, I was receiving back from the US and from Alan's colleague, enthusiastic explanations as to what may have gone wrong and what I could do to cure it.

Finally, after various combinations of their suggestions, I think I think it came down to the sodium alginate being a very weak chemical.  I ended up having to strengthen the mixture to nearly three times the suggested ratio, to achieve the paste, whist using distilled water.    Above is what all the fuss was about.  I still haven't managed to achieve the lovely light beige colour that everyone else has, but it gelled and that was the main thing.

The next day, I quickly got the paste decanted into some bottles and had a quick try to see whether the colour of the paste had an averse reaction on the dye colour.  This would have been simpler had I not then decided to use up all the dye on my tray, so one piece has lovely colour, but is not a good indicator of colour.  So far I have just these three pieces that you can see here, covered in plastic to stop them drying out to quickly.  I think the paste will be okay.

The paste is now sitting in my fridge in bottles placed in plastic bags, along with some of the mixed dye.  I just hope Alan doesn't get drunk one night and think it is beer!