Soy Wax and Screen Printing, using resists

Before beginning to use resists I just wanted to show the result of the screen that I made using the tjanting. The printing is a little patchy (operator error) but it does show clearly how you can get very fine lines by using this tool. If it is a look that you want to achieve than I really would recommend purchasing one. 

And in case you are wondering whether the horizontal line is a design element, it isn't - I dropped the tjanting!

The first resist that I want to take a look at is the adhesive film (the kind that you cover books with). Because it has a paper backing you could make quite an elaborate design if you wanted to. Wouldn't something like this Notan design look great? 

However, time is short so, I have gone for simple squares and a rectangle. Cut out your design from a piece of the adhesive film, large enough to cover the printing area of your screen. Keep the sheet of paper intact except for the cutouts. If you are doing a complicated design use a craft knife to do the cutting so that you get a  clean edge. Don't remove the backing paper at this stage.

And keep your cutouts.

When you are ready, remove the backing paper and stick the adhesive film to the bottom of one of your  screens that has a soy wax design on it. Make sure that you get a good bond at the edges of the areas that you have cut out and that the film covers the whole of the print area. The film acts as a resist so the only thing that will be printed is the area that you cut away. Then just go ahead and print. You could be quite careful in where you place the cutout areas but I like the surprise that you get when you cut them out randomly.

For this I decided to go with an undyed fabric, silk noil, so that I could see the effect more clearly. and I just printed randomly over the fabric

I also did the same thing again but cut circles from the film this time.

Both these pieces need more doing to them but have a lot of potential.

Remember I said to keep the cut out pieces? Don't forget to remove the first piece of film from your screen, if you are going to use the same one. This time, take your cut out pieces, (I used the circles), and place them on the bottom of your screen. I used a piece of dyed cotton for this one.

And this is what it looked like after printing.

You could spend hours playing with this technique. Try it with different screens, with dyed or undyed fabric. Endless permutations.

I do hope that you are enjoying your journey with me so far. More on resists coming up on Friday.

Soy Wax and Screen Printing, more printed designs

Nothing new to learn today so you can sit back and just look at the pictures, and hopefully, spend time on your own creations. I've got befores, afters, and the fabric before it had been washed out. All are still on pre-dyed fabric.

This is a piece of cotton fabric that had been printed with an interfacing screen. I did  the first row of printing before I remembered to take a photo. I quite liked the colours but it lacked interest

This is what it looked like before being washed out.

I'm already liking this much better. Do you remember that I feathered the edges of one of the screens? This is the one and it has ended up making a secondary design where the two feathered edges met.

And washed out. Too much blue in there so I think this may get further treatment

This had also been printed with the same interfacing screen but in a different colourway.

Before washout it looks quite good

Unfortunately I should have used a stronger dye solution. That blue should be black or charcoal!

Have you ever dyed a piece which you are just not sure about, maybe it would work but it isn't speaking to you? That's how I felt about this piece of cotton.

Before washout

Drat, that feeble blue again!

I really like working with silk noil but I had had this one sitting in my box, being unsure, again, what to do with it. This time I only have a photo of the original and the piece washed out after being overprinted. I deliberately left the yellow strip down the middle unprinted as I have an idea what I might want to add to that.

Finally, remember that terrible deconstructed failure from the last post?

Not good enough yet, but at least better.

I hope to see you next time for using resists with the screens.

Soy Wax and Screen printing, printing your designs

Today we start to see the magic happen on your fabric. You can start with a plain undyed fabric or, if you have some pieces in your stash that you were unhappy with, now is the time to do something about it. Don't forget to soda soak and dry the fabric first, get your printing surface ready, find your squeegee, mix up your thickened dye and go for it. 

I have used several pieces that have languished in my 'soda'd fabric' box for a long time. I would occasionally bring them out, look at them, sigh deeply and put them back again. As I needed to go through processes for these blog posts, what better time to get them out and actually do something with them. 

This piece of fabric was a real failure. It was a second run of a deconstructed screen and good for nothing so out it came. It is a piece of heavy habotai silk and by the time it reached this point there was very little of the dye left on the screen. Believe me, if you have something this bad then you are not going to worry about experimenting on it.

Pin your fabric onto your printing surface and lay your screen onto the fabric. You can do the printing in a random way but I have chosen to do a repeat of the pattern so started at the top left. You can see the fabric underneath the screen so it is fairly easy to line up  your screen as you move it along.

Add a bead of thickened dye to the well at the top of your screen

After the first pull you can see what the screen looks like. Because the soy wax does give a slightly raised surface in places on the underside of your screen you may need to experiment to see how many pulls you need before you get a clear overall print.

This is what the fabric looked like before washout. I did change the orientation of the screen in places.

All you need to do now is to wrap your fabric in a sheet of plastic to batch, preferably overnight.

The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed that the fabric batching is not the one that I had been working on. I forgot to take a photo of that one. 

Another deconstructed printed  fabric, this time cotton, that was also part of a second run and rather wishy-washy.

What I like most about using dyes is the transparency that you get. Even before washout you can see the original design showing through and it's even more clear after washout. I did forget to take a photo of this one before I washed it out. I was also experimenting with different colours, basically using up thickened dye that I had left over from other things.

I'll show some more overprinting in the next post but I had the sudden thought that you might want to know how to clean the design from their screen, just in case you don't like it.

If you are intending to keep the design on the screen then just wash it out with cold water. However, if you want to get rid of the soy wax then wash it in very hot water. To save time you can iron off some of the wax before washing it. Place some baking parchment and a sheet of newspaper under the screen, another sheet of newspaper on top and then iron with a hot iron.

You can see from this next photo how much wax has already been absorbed by the newspaper. Less washing to do and I always prefer ironing to washing.

See you next time with some more printing and the washed out results.

Soy Wax and Screen printing, making the screens

This is where the fun starts. You can plan your design carefully or you can begin by simply making marks on the screen and seeing what it looks like when it is printed. Often the screens don't look very promising but once you start to use them you see their real effect.

First thing to do is to melt your wax. While that is happening you can get your screens and mark making tools ready. I like my melting pot to sit on a large tile and have a piece of kitchen towel ready to catch any drips.

Turn your screen upside down as we are going to apply the wax onto the bottom of the screen, the side that will be in contact with the fabric. I usually cover my working table with some plastic, in case I get messy, which is more often than not.

When your wax is ready dip your mark making tool into the wax and print it onto the screen. I'm sorry if the photos appear a bit strange but I was finding it quite difficult to take a photo while I was actually doing the printing. In this one I have used a cardboard tube to add some circles. Don't worry if you get some blobs as these often add to the charm of the design - the hand of the maker?

I then used one of my tjantings to add some additional lines.

Leave your screen until the wax is completely dry. This doesn't take very long at all, even if you are in the middle of winter. Remember to turn off your melting pot once you have finished with it.

These are some screens that I have made, some of them are well over 12 months old and have seen a lot of use.

This screen was made by simply using a brush and dragging it lightly over the screen. If you like the shibori effect but don't want to go to all that trouble then this is the result you get from some very simple marks.

In this screen the small circles are from the cardboard tube, the larger circles made with a brush and the lower part has the brush dragged lightly across the screen, going over some of the circles as well.

For this screen I used a smaller brush as I wanted more well-defined lines. It came about from a series of work I have been doing on Wheels and Windows. I wanted a very abstract design using the straight lines to represent the windows and the curved lines for the wheels. I wasn't entirely happy with this but decided to give it a try anyway. After all, we can always overdye or overprint can't we?

Some simple swirly circles done with a paintbrush. Afterwards I added some light lines with a different brush. In case you are wondering what the dark black and blue areas are, they are simply from staining on my screen. They don't affect the screen itself at all, just look a bit messy.

More circles, this time done with different size tubes, some straight lines done with a brush and some lighter lines dragged lightly across. You may be able to see some feathered lines around the edge of the screen. I added these so that I didn't get a harsh straight line when I printed.

Ready for the actual printing? That will be on Monday so stay tuned.

***Some people have asked if the wax can be removed  later so that the screen can be used for other things. The answer to that is, yes and in the next post I show how to do that.***

Soy Wax and Screenprinting, the tools

Hi, I'm Maggi. Thank you for joining me this month as we take a journey using soy wax to create screens for printing. Before we begin, I will say that I will only be using thickened dye for printing. I have not used acrylic paint or fabric paint so cannot comment if either would work. If you do try acrylic paint, remember to wash your screen out after using it as dried paint on your screen will be there for good. Also use cold water to wash it out, otherwise you will wash away your soy wax and you just might have a design that you want to keep.

I'm going to start with the tools that you need, some of which are essential and others which are optional. Before launching in though you might like a preview of the sort of results that you can get with this technique. 

The most essential equipment is the wax and something to heat it with, and of course some screens! You should only use soy wax that is made specifically for this purpose, don't use candle wax. I think that this has been mentioned previously in posts about using soya wax. Try to use a heating pot that has a temperature control and don't leave your pot switched on and unattended. This is the type that I use but you may have something different. 

The above screen is one that I made a long time ago. It has printed many yards of fabric so far and is still going strong. You might want to start with a clean screen though!

Other essentials are mark making tools. I like to keep things simple and, as a lot of my screens have circles on them, I have tubes in various sizes. The tubes I use are cardboard and so will eventually deteriorate with the hot wax but you can get quite a bit of mileage out of them. I also like to use a brush for making marks, bristle is preferable but I have often used others and, as long as you don't leave them sitting in the hot wax, shouldn't melt.

In the above photo I also have a roll of  self adhesive film (the kind that you use to cover books with). This comes in very handing for creating resists. 

If you decide to use a larger brush then you might want to cut into it to make the edge more uneven as this makes for a better mark, unless you want a heavy solid line that is. Just take your scissors and snip into the bristles from the bottom. If you are not sure whether you've done enough then try it out on a piece of paper with some paint or dye.

You can, of course, use any of you favourite tools to make marks, as long as they will pick up the wax to transfer it to the screen.

Thickened dye is also an essential. I find that once it's made up it lasts for a long time but you might want to make up just enough for your sessions.

Fabric. Although you can use these techniques on paper, I'll be using fabric here, silks and cottons. Do remember to soda soak them first and let them dry, otherwise your beautiful results will disappear down the sink. I have a lot of pre-soda'd fabric that was previously dyed so I've been using some of those, as you will see in a later post. If you find that you have made a screen that you really like you could always print it out onto paper and have a thermofax screen made from it, that way it won't take up one of your screens that you could be using for something else.

One other essential item is some lightweight vilene. We won't be using this until later in the month but I thought that if I included it here it would give you chance to find some. It's called by different names in different countries and, fortunately my piece still has the selvedge on with some of the names. It is also sometimes called interfacing.

Optional items:-

A mark making tool that I have wanted for some time is a tjanting and so I decided to treat myself at last so that I could try it out with this series of posts. It's not an essential tool but it does make a finer line.

Sketchbooks which may provide you with inspiration

Something to listen to, music is actually an essential for me but you may prefer listening to your podcasts or audio books, or even prefer silence.

Once you start to print you will also need a padded print surface and a squeegee. If you have done screen printing before then you will no doubt have these, if this is your first time there is plenty of information out there, including in previous posts on this blog.

Have fun getting your supplies together if you are going to play along. On Friday we'll start making those designs on your screens.