FIBER JUNKIES - AUG. MEETING

The Fiber Junkies love to focus our meetings on doing.....  You might ask...doing what?  Well.....we love to play with dyes, paints, felting, bookmaking, paper making, beading, dye cutting anything we can get our hands on, etc......you get the idea....

So today, we repeated an activity we've done before.....deconstructed screen printing.  It won't be the last time either as we all love the freedom of the process and of course, the results.

 Here's a nice brand spanking new screen just waiting for me.....

 .....under which I've placed a variety of fresh picked leaves and fluted sequins. 

 Thickened dyes are placed at the top of the screen and pulled slowly down toward the bottom using a squeegee.  AND....if one didn't put enough dye down in the first place, she (meaning me) simply drops more blobs on the screen and repeats the process till it's totally covered.

Val is a master at this process and most often uses two or three colors.  It helps to have an understanding of color, otherwise you could end up with a screen the color of mud when they mix!  How do I know to tell you that??

Any textured, flat, thin material can be used as design elements.  Each time we've printed, we find one or two (new to us) items that become our favorites.  Today Kate brought cotton strings from a mop end.  (You can see a blue gloved hand grabbing for some on the right side of this photo.)  Val produced a plastic sink protector mat that looked like pebbles.  Awesome!!!  But as you can see....we had lots and lots of choices to play with.

Once the dye covers the screen....they are placed in the sun to dry.  Note the upper left corner..... see some of those mop strings?  We've found if items stick to the bottom of the screen....we simply leave them in place until the dye is dry and they are easily removed.  Taking them off sooner can cause the imprint of the motif to smear.

More to come in the next post.  Standing on a cement floor for 5+ hours is a lot harder on my ole body than I care to admit....so nite, nite folks!