Bonding at Morley………

Not just with my fellow students, but trying  out a technique completely new to me of bonding synthetic cloth to paper with this result.

Kim at Flextiles has blogged about this technique, and I've tried to show part of the process below.  I forgot to take photos of the initial paper collage, but it was made up of torn and cut paper images of flowers. Luckily enough someone had brought multiple copies of an Evening  Standard in to the studio this week, so I could get repeats of images.

Principal steps are:

• compose a paper collage, slightly larger than the screen area
• place the synthetic cloth over the collage, and pin it securely to the print table
• screenprint over the cloth and through to the paper with Matte Medium, taking great care to wash the screen very quickly when finished printing
• Leave to dry completely
• Iron the whole caboodle under greaseproof paper for 10 mins
• Soak in a bucket of water until the paper is very soft
• Rub on the back of the cloth until most of the paper has been removed, leaving only the very top layer of inked paper, where the medium has been printed on to it
• Dry and iron smooth
• Seal the edges with a soldering iron
• Stand back and say "wow", or "interesting", or " that's unusual"  or " hmmm, not sure about that" as is your wont.

I used my Voices screen, overlaid on itself three times.

Hanging up to dry after screen printing with the Matte Medium

Ironing the first time - ignore the state of the soleplate of the iron in the background, if you can

Scraping off the paper pulp after soaking

First glimpse of the final effect

After the second ironing

Sealing the edges

The demonstration pieces gave great food for thought, as the cloth can now  be over dyed, overprinted, stitched in to , burnt- out………….so many  possibilities.  Looking forward to next week.