Mix dye, paint and iron - Day 3

Today I’m going to show samples of more experiments with painting disperse dye onto paper and transferring it to fabric. In the first sample I painted paper with fuchsia disperse dye which was placed on a piece of shiny fabric. Paper circles were used as a resist.

Above is layer one with fuchsia and then I moved some circles and ironed over a purple painted paper giving the right hand image

In the next layer I turned the circles over knowing that they had picked up colour from the previous use and ironed a piece of paper painted with scarlet. The image on the left.

 Finally I removed all the circles and ironed over a circle that was painted blue. I placed some strands of cotton under the circle that gave the feint pink lines that you can see.

Another fabric that I use is Lutradur and I like to colour this using disperse dyes. The one advantage of colouring these manmade fabrics in this way means that the handle of the fabric is not compromised at all.

 Again I’ve built up the layers of colour to achieve the results.

Firstly I coloured the fabric with yellow. I then ironed on a stencil that I had cut from freezer paper.

Placing a paper coloured with scarlet I ironed over the stencil

For the next layers I removed the freezer paper and ironed it down again in a different place and used a different coloured paper. Then I repeated the process.

I noticed that the rose had been transferred onto a piece of paper that I used in the samples. I ironed it onto a piece of fabric that you can see below. All papers can be used more than once and sometimes you get happy accidents.

One thing I really like about these methods is that you are never absolutely sure what the result might be and you get some lovely textures

One way that you can achieve texture is to iron onto a piece of tin foil. Take the foil and crumple it lightly then smooth it out again.

Lay the fabric on top, then the painted paper and then a piece of baking parchment. Iron the papers.

Keep checking the colour is transferring until you are happy with the colour.

Before I leave today I will leave you with a link to you tube video of Mary Gamester who works

with polyester fabrics. The link is here