Mono Printing With Plastic Sheeting

Pat and I spent Thursday afternoon using plastic sheeting to print on fabric, an idea I got from the book and dvd by Claire Benn and Leslie Morgan, called Making Your Mark

First let me warn you, if you decide to have a go and are using red dye, make sure your test that the mixing container is watertight BEFORE putting the lid on and shaking it. My kitchen looked like a sniper had gone mad!  Thankfully as there wasn't any soda ash in the mix, the clean up was relatively painless.

I marked the fabric dimensions on the plastic with tape so that we knew where to paint.  We painted some dye paste onto the plastic (above).  When the dye hits the plastic, it splits leaving a pattern.  We tried not to make it look too even looking.

The difficult part was floating the fabric down onto the plastic.  One can do it, but it was so much easier with two people.  Once the fabric was down, we gently patted the fabric into the dye.  Some of the dye pops through the fabric, so that gave us an idea as to where did or did not need more patting.

The fabric was lifted off the plastic and laid on some plastic on the floor to dry off slightly while we repainted the plastic.  We repeated the process with the same colour and them moved on to the next colour.  I was unsure how many times we could do this before the soda ash was exhausted or the dye paste too built up to penetrate the fabric, so we just carried on.  The problem was, it was just so addictive watching the different patterns on the fabric it was hard to call a halt.

The first piece we worked on I had a clear vision for, a black background in straight lines down and then covered with a rich red.  There were three (only!)  problems with this piece and though I like the result, it wasn't what I saw in my mind's eye.  

First I think we overdid the amount of black paint we put on the plastic and so didn't leave enough clear room on the fabric for the red to show.  Secondly, I totally forgot that I was using a much weakened red dye (due to the earlier mishap) when I mixed it with the print paste, so instead of a lovely rich red, I got a much watered down one.  Thirdly, I don't think I allowed the media enough time to dry off a bit between layers, causing a change in the red colour from red to an almost purple red.  I am still debating whether to immerse this piece in a strong red dye bath to see what happens.

For the second piece I wanted to see what scrape marks would look like using this process.  The first layer of paint was added to the plastic (red I think) and then using credit cards we swiped up some of the paint.  When we floated the fabric onto the plastic, it picked up those marks, which are the whiter elements you see on the fabric.  Layers of black and yellow were also added, but without using scrape marks.  We also tried to vary the amount of media we used in certain areas and as you can see, some of the fabric looks redder than other bits.

Now here is something quite interesting (ha ha, I heard that!).  Black dye is not black.  Different companies use different recipes for their dyes and depending on the dye company, the black has a different colour lean.  I used a Procion MX dye called 150 Jet Black, which I bought from Fred Aldous in the UK.  It has a distinctly blue cast to it, which was evident when washing out utensils etc.  You need to know how your black will cast when used with other colours.  If you look at the close-up of this piece, you will see that though we used black, golden yellow and red, we ended up with green on the fabric where the black and Golden Yellow met.  In the areas where they didn't touch, the black still looks black.  

Part way through printing the fabric and cleaning off the plastic for a new colour it finally struck me, we should have a spare piece of fabric to collect all the unused media off the plastic and THEN clean it down.  Okay, sometimes you a hit around the head with a lump of wood to get the idea.  Wow, that Pat sure hit my head hard!  So after each colour we just repeated the process picking up the stray colour and then had far less media to clean up, which made that part go much quicker.

The influence of the Golden Yellow on the Jet Black is really clear here.

Finally, just to finish up tried out some stamping with the dye paste.  Pat had a good time with this flower stamp.  I had a lino cutting, but it didn't show up.  I didn't use a lot of paint and the lino hasn't been cut very deep (my first attempt) so I will have to look at that again. 

The printing is a lot of fun, but good luck to you if you do it on the kitchen table or in a carpeted room, I don't care how careful you are. I still managed to end the afternoon in the shower with a scrubbing brush almost removing the skin from the soles of my feet as I tried to get black and red dye from between my toes after stepping in spilt dye.  With the best will in the world, the dye does tend to get where it shouldn't.  See Alan, I DO need a dedicated wet studio as well as a dry one!!!