Five more sets of screen-printed napkins

Last week I printed up five more sets of napkins.  

I continue to be happy with how the napkins have turned out.  But now that I've made all the decisions on screen designs and colors, I found that the process of just making more of the same was not as engaging to me--a lot of physical labor, without the sense of discovery.  Yes, it's still a bit of a thrill to pull up the screen and see the design on the fabric, but I've done each of these designs enough times that there's no surprise involved. A production line is not anything like as much interesting/fun/satisfying as the design process!

I'm thinking that over the course of the summer/fall I'll dye yardage of the 7 different base colors that are my favorites, and do a run of 8 screens on each of the colors, for a total of 56 napkins. That will give me a sizable supply of napkins from which I can pull sets when I want them (usually for a hosting/thank you gift).

Photo-emulsion screen prints

I posted this first by mistake on my In the Kitchen blog. Now I'm putting it here where it belongs, and have added a brief comparison to thermofax screen printing in the first paragraph.

Last week I made a couple of silk screens using a photo-emulsion process for getting the image onto the screen. Here's an explanation of photo-emulsion screen printing. Happy as I am with the napkins I've printed with paper laminated screens, I was interested to try out the photo emulsion process, as certain other things are possible with this method.  (The same things are also possible with a thermofax screen, but the maximum width of a thermofax screen is 8.5." I could make these photo emulsion screens 18" square, and one could go larger.)

• I can print a sharp-edged image, including a fine-line drawing (detail above, and image of whole screen below). I wrote out in caps the same quote from Martin Buber that I've used before, but I did it on a much smaller scale, writing onto a Wacom tablet so that the image went directly into a Photoshop file. I wrote on the diagonal, and then, in another layer on Photoshop, superimposed the diagonal going in the opposite direction. I like very much how this came out, though I would have preferred a somewhat larger scale.  

• I can print a line drawing, as above, and have the line be what prints (here dark blue). When doing a line drawing on a paper-laminated screen, what prints is the background, leaving the line itself white.

• I can play around with a photograph, using filters in Photoshop to abstract it, looking for an interesting design.  Here's a photo I took of a sheet of baklava I had baked, and then the printed result of a filtered image that I put into a repeat:

Many thanks to Andrea Ferrigno, who teaches printmaking at the college where I worked for many years, for taking the time to teach me how to use the photo-emulsion equipment recently purchased by the college, and to student assistants Kristina Mengis and Kristen Marvin who helped me step by step through the process.  For my ability to use Photoshop, a shout-out to the Pixeladies, Deb Cashatt and Kris Sazaki, with whom I've taken three online classes--their classes are great!

Choosing favorites

Here are my 13 favorites from the 40 or so napkins I've printed in my latest print runs. I like the colors as well as the printed designs. I have more playing around to do with color combinations, but I find I like both the high contrast of black/lighter color as well as the lower contrast of two shades of the same color (turquoise in upper right, rust in center of the bottom row).

I mentioned in the last post that I was going to try making a second screen from a screen, in order to get more of a line drawing effect. I did this with the screen on which I'd written text, and I'm happy with how it turned out.  The original screen was used for the navy napkin on the right, below. The lettering drawn on the screen with matte medium served as a resist, so the text appears in the light blue of the original fabric; the added dye becomes the background.  I printed this twice, first with dark blue, then turned the screen 90 degrees and printed with medium blue, which is why you see three shades of blue on the napkin.  Then I used that screen as a "stencil," pulling matte medium through it onto another screen.  That makes a new screen where the background is coated with the resist, and the letters are clear for the dye to be pulled through.  For the napkin on the left, I started with magenta fabric, and did two pulls with black dye.  I like that it looks kind of like an ancient inscription, somewhat worn away.

Out of the 40 napkins, there are 34 I like well enough to either use myself or give them away.  Here they all are. You'll see that I also tried out a red-white combination that didn't make it into my "favorites" group. I really like the idea of red/white, but there was back-staining of the red dye onto the white fabric, so the results are more like red and pale-pink.  I think I'll probably overdye them a light rust color, to get rid of the pink.  If I had thought ahead, I might have avoided the backstaining, but the process to do that involves soaking twice with lots of ice cubes, which I don't want to have to build into my routine.

In the top row on the left are two napkins where the bowl design was pulled once; on the right it was pulled twice.  In the end, I prefer it pulled once--which conveniently is less work for me.

I will be taking a break from this for a while, to finish my online Photoshop course, where I hope to come up with some additional screen designs.  I like all of these, but found I got a little bored repeating just these half-dozen screen.

Seven of 32 printed

I pulled screens on 7 napkins last Wednesday.  I can layout fabric for eight napkins on my large print table. I have six screens that I'm happy enough with to use.

I can re-use a screen in one session if I'm printing with the same color, which worked for the 7th (turquoise) napkin. It took about 2 hours to do the printing. So, it will take me a while to print all the fabric that I've readied for printing (32 napkins total). I may also try making a couple more screens.

Here's a review of the prints, and notes about how to proceed with the next prints. The two below were done with two different screens, but each of the screens was made in the same way. This may be difficult to understand without seeing it, but here goes:  I used 2" square piece of plexiglass to stamp rows of squares onto the screen. The stamping medium was matte medium, brushed on with a paint brush cut into so that uneven lines are painted on the stamp, rather than a fully covered surface. Where the matte medium, stamped, sticks to the screen, no dye can go through. I made the screen on the right first, one of the first screens I made.  Here I've used it to print black onto boysenberry fabric overprinted. There are many places on the screen where no matte medium stuck.  I made a second screen trying to improve on the first, used on the green fabric below (printed with dark blue dye). On this screen, so much matte medium stuck that only the unstamped margins between the squares let through the dye. I like both of these, but I may try making a third screen to get a look somewhere in between these.  By the way, the boysenberry/black piece is the only one in this batch where I just pulled the screen once.  For all others, I pulled once with the pattern vertical, and then a second time turning the screen 90 degrees.

The next two show the pieces where I did the first pull with a dark value thickened dye, but then diluted the dye by 3 for the second pull. I think these came out well. In both these cases, the color of the dye was simply a darker value of the base fabric.

A friend asked, "Can you do a thinner line for the patterning, so that the color of the fabric is more of the star?" I would definitely like to do this as well.  The most direct way to do this is to make the screen using a photo-emulsion process, where the drawn line will print (rather than these screens, line is a resist, and the background prints); I hope to have a chance to do that in December.  The other thing I could do is take one of these screens that are drawn lines (like the words on the left above, and the floral design on the right), and use that screen to "print" matte medium onto another piece of polyester screen. On that secondary screen, the background will have the resist on it, and the lines will print.  I may try that soon. . .

The next pair are both on boysenberry base fabric, printed with black on the left, and a burgundy color on the right (boysenberry dye with a little black added in).  I like both combinations.

The pair below both use lavender base fabric.  On the left, I used the burgundy color for printing, on the right a darker shade of lavender.  I think both work, but from personal preference, I don't think I'd use the burgundy again on lavender.

I've had other obligations keeping me busy since last Wednesday, but I look forward to trying out some other color combinations and maybe making some new screens too.

Back to screenprinting for cloth napkins

About a year ago, I did a surface design workshop with Claire Benn on "Lines and Rows"; I concentrated my efforts on figuring out designs that would work for cloth napkins, 18" square.  I came up with a couple of designs that I liked--squares and bowls, described here.  When I got home, I set to work on developing further designs, as I'd like to have at least four or six designs available for sets of napkins. I printed up six more designs, but wasn't satisfied with them.  I thought if I printed each one again, turning the screen 90 degrees, it was possible they would be more successful.  So I pinned the fabric back on the print table, but then left them for a while to go back to sewing.  And there they lay through the winter, spring, and summer.  A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that I had a container of thickened dye sitting on the back of my work table, and I decided to just go ahead and use it to pull the screens a second time.  Given that the dye had been unrefrigerated for nine months, I had no idea whether it would work at all, but it was so easy to use what was there, I thought I'd take a chance and experiment.  The results are above, with details below. The dark indigo-colored marks are from the first screening last October; the lighter marks are from the recent second pull of the screens, turned 90 degrees. (The detail images below are just a section of the print, not the whole 18.")  The cross-hatching image didn't work, but the other designs are not bad.  I'll probably leave them as is, though I could overdye with a very pale indigo, to take out the creamy white color of the muslin I'm using.

Torn bits of masking tape used as a resist on the screen.	Hand-drawn floral design, using matte medium as a resist.
Small plexi-glass square stamped on the screen with matte medium.	Text here is from Martin Buber: "One eats in holiness and the table becomes an altar."

I then did another batch of six napkins, some screens the same, some different.  I used a dark brown dye on this batch. The swipes of paler colors in the middle of the top and bottom rows are trials for what to use for dyeing the background; I think I'll go with one of the two palest values (top row).

Of these, here are details of my favorite four:

-->

bowls (done from stamping the screen)	cross--hatch
squares (same stamp as above, but a second screen, with quite a different result)	the Martin Buber quote, written out with matte medium.

After I finish the brown napkins, I'm going take time to develop more images.  Instead of using a resist on the screen, I'm pursuing development of images using Photoshop.  I'm finishing up the last lessons of a third Photoshop Elements class with Kris Sazaki and Deb Cashatt.  (Their online classes are excellent.)  This 3rd class includes instructions on making repeat designs, so I've been playing around with making images that might be suitable for napkins.  Here are a few that I've come up with so far.  I plan to keep experimenting on the computer, to generate a set of possibilities.  In December I'll have a chance to use a new photo emulsion printing set up that's recently been purchased by the college where I worked for many years.  Making a screen through a photo emulsion process allows you to transfer a black and white image with high accuracy, and to get a screen where the drawn line will be what prints.  So, for example, on the image below, if I use this with a photo emulsion process, the lines will print black (or whatever color I want to use).  If I were to draw the same image on a silk screen with matte medium (the process I used for the floral and text images above), it's the background that would print, not the lines.

Here's what the same screen might look like if I printed with purple onto a light blue cloth.

Here's how I came up with the scribble that was used for the repeat.  I started with a photo of a yucca plant, taken on a visit to my sister in Arizona last spring.  In preparation for a class with Paula Kovarik, we had been instructed to look for lines, and I loved the curly tendrils on this plant:

Using Photoshop, I traced the tendrils, and then copied the tracing into its own image file:

I used the tracing on the right as the basis for one of the stitching exercises in Paula's class:

For an image for screen printing, I went in two directions.  First I made a scribble based loosely on the yucca tracing; this scribble then served as the basis for the repeat design above:

Next, wanting to get back closer to the original tracing, I scribbled various elements, spreading them across an 18" space:

Explorations in Photoshop will continue. . .