Quilt Camp Week 7 - Printing with Dye & Other Materials

This week we are combining printing with thickened dye along with printing on things other than cotton fabric.  What is thickened dye?  It is dye added to a clear print paste made with sodium alginate and water.  Exactly as the name implies, it thickens the dye to a consistency that works for printing.  Why would you want to print with dye instead of paint?  Dye bonds with the fibers and gives fabric a softer hand than paint.  It can also be discharged as we saw a few weeks ago.  Paint sits on the fabric surface, so adds a little bit of stiffness, depending on the brand of paint.

The ingredients for clear print paste include water, urea, and sodium alginate. Both urea and sodium alginate (thick SH), as well as dyes, are available at Pro Chemical and Dye.   Urea helps with the solubility of dyes.  Clear print paste will last for weeks in a cool environment.  For this example, Sue used 1 c hot water, 2 T urea, and 1 T sodium alginate.  Stir rapidly until as smooth as possible (it will be lumpy at first), then allow it to stand for at least 1 hour.  After standing it will become smoother.  For the actual printing, 2 tsp of dye were added to 1/4 cup of the clear paste.  Another ingredient needed for the dye to bond with the fabric is soda ash.  You can either pre-soak your fabric in a soda ash solution, or add it to the print paste.  For this amount of paste, a 1/4 tsp of soda ash was dissolved in hot water and then added to the print paste. This mixture needs to be used within 4 hours or the soda ash loses its effectiveness and the dye will not fully bond with the fibers.  The dye Sue used for her print paste was teal, though in the photos that follow it almost looks black.

Here are some of the prints she made.  The first 2 were printed over geli plate printed backgrounds.

This is our chain link screen.

This is the Merrymount wildflower.  As with other products we've used, the printing process is the same as with paint.

These 2 prints are on a background made with a process called breakdown printing.  We'll have another post on that process later.

More prints on pieces of cotton that were first painted with diluted textile paint. Now for some other materials.

 

We enjoy printing on Color Catchers.  If you're not familiar with them, Color Catchers are a product you can buy in the laundry section of your local store.   You put them in with laundry to absorb excess dyes; in our case, we use them when washing hand dyed fabric and end up with some pretty colors.  Why print on these?  Well, they are a non-woven product similar to interfacing and do not ravel.  That makes them good for raw edge appliques and use in multi media work, journaling, etc.

Another fabric you can print on is organza; this piece was first painted along with the others above. A plain white piece is shown on the right.  This would be good for layering.

And finally, another product that can be painted and printed on is Lutrador.  This is another non-woven product (polyester) that can be used in art quilts or mixed media work.  You can see the texture in the photo on the right.

Don't forget you can print on paper too, and silk fabric is another choice. It is especially good for silk to keep the soft hand and drape of the fabric (think silk scarves).  What will you print with thickened dyes?  Finally, a bit of advice from Elizabeth: don't let your printed pieces and dye paste sit outside and then leave.  If it rains like it did for her, you may end up with a gooey mess!