One more technique from Making Your Mark

Definitely one of my favorite techniques and one I am working with at this time on cotton is applying thickened dye with a credit card. You saw a snatch of it on the YouTube video from yesterday (may have to go back and see it again).

This past Saturday I had a private workshop with a woman who wants to make things with her students using Thermofax screens. She is a scientific illustrator and has many line drawings of sea life. They would make marvelous Thermofax screens. We used both thickened dye and fabric paints. When she left and I was cleaning up a had various colors of thickened dye left in the dishes. These were very small amounts - like a tablespoon or 2. I hated to throw them away but I had added soda ash to the print paste because I wanted the limit the amount of soda ash and the time it was on the fabric because we were using silks, so the dye was exhausting.

The thickened dye was almost exhausted (about 3 hours) so I grabbed a Haboti silk scarf and went to town with a credit card - waited on hour without even covering or wrapping the scarf - then rinsed and rubbed under ice cold water, then a drop of soap, then a warm wash, hung and ironed it. Voila!!

Lovely, no?