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Multicolor Screen Prints

January 30, 2013 ShellyStokes

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When my sister was visiting a few weeks ago, she wanted to experiment with a technique she learned from Jane Dunnewold. The best name I can give this is Multicolor Screen Printing with Interfacing Stencils.

I’m not going to give you the blow-by-blow on how to do this. I know this information is included in Jane’s Improvisational Screen Printing book, and it may be referenced in her Art Cloth book. (I’m not sure about that — it’s the only one of Jane’s books that I don’t have in the studio!)

Shelly’s Short Course

1_mcscreen_stencil

You start this process by making a stencil from non-fusible interfacing. The first step is to add a design of some kind with acrylic paint. This will act as a resist when you make your prints.

The second step is to make some simple cutouts in the stencil.

2_mcscreen_attach_to_screen

When your stencil is ready, tape it to the back of a blank silk screen that has been prepped and taped.

With your screen ready to go, you’ll need to mix up a series of thickened dyes. We used Jane’s recipe for making print paste, but you can also purchase print paste kits from Dharma. We chose a natural color wheel rather than brights. We used Golden Yellow, Strong Red and Indigo as our primary colors.

3_mcscreen_add_overlapping_images

Before you start printing, you put your screen on a piece of scrap fabric and push yellow dye through the screen until the interfacing stencil is saturated. Then you move the screen over to your good fabric.

To make the first print, you add orange dye to the screen and make a print. You can see my first print below my elbow in this photo. Even though I was printing with orange print paste, the bulk of the print came out yellow, and the cutouts printed orange. After 2 prints with orange, we switched to red print paste. Those prints came out with orange backgrounds and red cutouts.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

As you cycle through the color wheel, you continue getting these really cool multicolor prints!

5_mcscreen_all_done

Jane’s instructions call for overlapping your images, and printing several times around the color wheel. I got carried away and made 3 passes through each color on my yard of fabric. My piece looked like mud, but I have enough experience with fabric dyes to know that a lot of this dye was simply going to wash out.

We covered our fabric in plastic and let it sit (batch) for 24 hours, and then we rinsed away the excess dye and tossed our pieces in the washer.

6_mcscreen_finished_fabric

As you can see, my finished fabric looks a whole lot better once it was washed out. These colors are a little muted for my tastes (I prefer brighter colors), but I consider our experiment to be a grand success.

7_mcscreen_sharons_screen_print

Here’s a photo of the image that Sharon was using for her fabric.

8_mcscreen_sharons_finished_fabic

And here she is showing off her finished fabric.

Filed Under: Blog, Exploring Color, Tutorials & How-To-Info Tagged With: fiber art, Printmaking, Remove Post, Screen Printing, Stencils

Comments

  1. Sharon Richardson says

    January 30, 2013 at 2:10 pm

    Love the way this process was presented and the ending photo with me showing off my own work! — Sharon

  2. Linda Stokes says

    January 31, 2013 at 10:12 am

    Great fabrics – you obviously had fun with this!

    • Shelly says

      February 1, 2013 at 10:09 am

      Thanks, Linda. We really had a great day with this experiment. I had almost no time to think about a design for my interfacing stencil. I was also trying to keep up with work during Sharon’s visit. I was more interested in learning the process than creating a great design.

  3. Tesuque says

    January 31, 2013 at 10:18 am

    Hmm, something to try. I’ve done this with cutouts, but not in combination with the paint resist.

  4. Jacqueline says

    January 31, 2013 at 4:19 pm

    I really enjoyed all about this News Letter!!
    the multi colors screen printing,

    the discovery of Jane Dunnewold and Lisa Kerpoe!!
    I am deeply interested on all possible resists.
    Flour paste they use it quite a lot in Mali,wax too but don’t know the composition.
    At home I have 400kg wax from Java but it’s a problem to get the right temperature,that’s why I am looking for other resists a bit more cool.
    I am really grateful to all of you for all I learn .

  5. Elaine says

    February 2, 2013 at 11:08 pm

    You do a terrific job of introducing people to techniques they can do at home with small quantities of dyes and fabrics. Your imaginative use of repeats and overlapping colors is excellent.

    • Shelly says

      February 3, 2013 at 2:02 pm

      Thanks, Elaine. I appreciate your kind words. Sharon and I had a fabulous time with the screen prints. It’s certainly something I want to explore further.

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