Marbling and Printing

On Wednesday I spent a lovely day with friends marbling and printing on fabric.

 The day was organised because I said that I have masses of plain coloured fabric which I never use and how can I use it up?

 Marbling was suggested and printing with thickened procion dyes was proposed as a back up for the day.

In the end, because it was so hot the carrageenan paste on which the colour floats for marbling soon started to melt and the colours became too watery. But we got the general idea and the excercise is to be repeated on a cooler day!

Next we mixed up 8 pots of strong procion mx dyes which we thickened with sodium alginate and some bicarbonate of soda. And then spent the next two hours happily stamping, rolling, painting etc onto cotton, linen and silk fabrics.

It was lovely to work outside on a huge covered terrasse - here is some of our work drying in the sun.

Our workspace for the day

When I got home the fabrics had to be ironed to fix the colour and then rinsed and washed with metapex to remove excess dye. More rinsing and then out to dry in the sun again.

Here are my fabrics after their final iron.

Having never done this before I had no idea how the colours would hold after washing so I kept before and after samples to compare and found that although in some cases there was slight fading, on the whole the colours remained the same.

Here are some of my favourite pieces.

Printing with sponge letters on cotton

 Ridged sponge roller on cotton

and on linen

 more on cotton

A great day out with friends, delicious lunch provided by our hostess and lots of lovely fabrics to play with - what more could a girl want!

Thank you for dropping by.

Lin