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Thursday 17 May 2012

The sails are printed

From here to a printed length this week. Five separate paper stencils, 5 different mixes of Procion P dye, carried on to the cloth with Manutex paste, ( I can't find an internet link about this method) lots of measuring, and it does approach the initial design.

Detail

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Detail, showing scale of image

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Full length of cloth, showing dye testing on the bottom selvedge

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The advantages of this method are: it doesn't need huge amounts of water; the dyes are very true to their final colours during the printing process; mixing the colours is very straightforward and subtle variations are easily achieved; the overlay of colours is subtle; the hand of the fabric isn't changed.

The disadvantage is that the dyes have to be fixed with steam, which is fine in the studio which has a bullet steamer, but is a bit more unwieldy at home.

Lots of learning in this exercise about working with paper stencils, overlaying colour, measuring up a repeat, managing a long length of fabric. More to come hopefully as I have now cut a set of these shapes at 200% of the original size.



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