I knew it wasn't going to work like Beth's did as soon as I opened it, but I tried a mixture of 4 tablespoons of the print paste to a mason jar's worth of urea water and blended that up. No thickening whatsoever occurred - it remained the same texture as it was after I mixed it (with some pleasant foaming action lol) - but I added the dye powder in the recommended amount of 1 tsp powder to one cup print paste mixture and gave it a shot anyway.
The resulting liquid was about the texture of whole milk, so using a resist of any kind would have been futile, but I tried to work a design on the screens and after my first pull (washed, dried and with an iron print for your pleasure [I got distracted by our new dog!) this was the result :
Uninspiring, but I can certainly work the cloth some more (maybe some shibori discharging?). My second pull on the same screen:
Which I liked much better. And then I tried some smaller screens (8 x 10) with similar results:
Really just kind of a mess. After doing 4 screens of 2 or 3 pulls each, I gave it up as a bad job. Like I said above though - these pieces of fabric can be rescued with some other processes. And, not all was lost - I made some lovely painted, scrunched and shibori fabric pieces with the leftover print paste mixture that turned out beautifully!
I would try this again, but would have to order the proper tools for the job from the U.S. in order to get anything close to the results that the rest of you had. I was also thinking about using a base extender as the "print paste" as well - any guesses on how that might work?
No matter - as always, it was fun experimenting though!
I wish I had known. I could have send 2 tablespoon in an envelope... The base extender is an acrylic product meant for pigments not dye so I don't think I'd waste it on dye.
ReplyDeleteI've seen your work. I'm sure you'll do something marvelous to these.
ReplyDeleteG&S dye in Toronto sells Sodium Alginate, which should work similarly to Thick SH.
ReplyDelete