"Thermofax 101: Screen Printing Made Easy". A review of Lyric Kinard's new dvd!

Lyric's wonderful dvd...

I was excited when my friend, Lyric Kinard, invited me to review her new instructional dvd about using Thermofax screens because they are one of my favorite design tools when working on cloth (and paper!).  

Below is the intro to her dvd:

Learn how easy it is to create your own screen printed cloth! Thermofax Screen Printing is easy, fun, and well within your reach. Let fun-loving artist, Lyric Kinard, guide you through the basics of what, exactly, a thermofax screen is, and how it’s made. Then she helps you begin your own creative journey as she shows you how to find and design your own imagery and send it off to have a custom screen made for you. Learn all about the basic supplies you will need and then get printing! Lyric will explain the properties of textile paints, how to prepare, care for, and use your screens, and finally how to design and create your own beautiful cloth.

Her workshop is just over an hour and covers the following points, divided into the following chapters:

-Getting Started: what is a thermofax screen

-Finding Images: find and design your own

-How to Print: printing techniques and tools

-Designing: creating cloth with layered imagery

Personally, I appreciate having any instructional dvd divided into chapters like this as it is easier to refer back to specific information.  Thanks, Lyric!

The information is well organized.  I like that Lyric takes the time to explain how the thermofax screens are actually made and what images will make the best screens.  From experience, I know that the less grayscale the image has, the better.  Highly detailed images are possible as long as they are very black and white before the screen is created.

Lyric sent me one of her own screens, an ammonite, and I wanted to create a piece of cloth using her image and my own hand-drawn ammonite, an old favorite image I've been using for years.  Let's see how they look together!

First I selected a piece of fabric and pressed it.

This particular piece had been dyed with a shibori resist.  

I taped the edges of the thermofax screen Lyric sent.

Here is my old crusty one (I guess you can tell which it is..)

I wonder how these shapes will play together.

Here are the first prints of both screens, Lyric's is on the bottom.

Here is my screen, done with both blue and white paint.

and a combo of both screens and colors.

I think this has some possibilities if I create another screen that has a larger scale of one (or both) of these images.  I'll get back to this one at a later time.

Her instruction about using the "scratchy" side of the screen rather than the shiny side, and also the point about how to clean and dry the screens is important to get the most life out of your screens.  

One point I would add to the creation of imagery for screens is to keep a file or a notebook of your designs. You may wish to separate them into basic subjects (animal/vegetable/mineral?  I don't know...).  This will come in handy should you damage a screen, lose one, or if you wish to burn another screen in a different size.  I have been very thankful that I have such a file!

Another point worth mentioning is to be very careful when using any product that discharges the dye from fabric:  I believe it is extremely important to use gloves, and work in an area that is VERY well ventilated.  Consider the idea of setting a box fan in the window to exhaust the area and pull any potential fumes away from your work area.  I encourage you to respect any contact with bleach or its fumes.  I figure if it is stinky I shouldn't be smelling it so I prefer working with these materials in the open air or a well-ventilated area whenever I can.

Lyric provides such good information about layering of imagery, focal point, & varying the scale but using imagery that is related:  such important points!  When I began using thermofax screen I was so excited I threw everything but the kitchen sink onto the cloth surface.  And it looked pretty wacky but I was having fun.  With time and practice I (hopefully) began to work with a subject or idea in mind and let the imagery tell my story.  Lyric's points about this are worth listening to several times.  Respecting the imagery (subtle and bold alike) as part of the story and making it cohesive takes practice (just like everything else, I guess!).  It is so rewarding when you see your vision come to fruition in a piece of cloth.
Here is another set of screens that I combined for a new design.  Note that I am working on another section of the same cloth:

First, I used a screen that I purchased some time ago online.  

With the last set of prints I found that I prefer the opaque white paint over the blue on this piece of cloth so I worked with it again.

Because I think this print could benefit from varying sizes of this shape

I used a thick sharpie and traced around the perimeter of two things:

an Altoid box and Lyric's dvd box (and then rounded the edges of the larger shape).  I cut screen for both shapes, leaving a bit of room around the edges.

Then I ran them through my thermofax machine.

Yay!  I am relieved to find that the machine burned the screen.

I just put a new ink cartridge in, replacing one of those refilled ones.

Apparently the old ink did not have any carbon in the toner.  I worried that something was wrong with the machine, but it was the toner!  Whew.

Once I taped the edges I pulled paint through the first (new) screen.

Note:  My friend Jane Dunnewold discovered that strapping tape does not

require time to cure.  This is great for those of us who are impatient to use our new screens!  Just sayin....

Here is the smaller screen.  My intent is to intersect the larger with the smaller shape.

I covered the surface (still a bit tacky) with my drop cloth, which is an old bed sheet, and used a dry iron to heat set the paint.

I wanted to accentuate some of the shapes by drawing in the openings

with my favorite permanent fabric pen, a Pentel Gel Roller Fabric pen.

I love this thing!

See how the fine line of the pen creates more depth?

Love!

I certainly could do all the openings but I think it is more 

interesting, visually, to only do a few.

I can't encourage you enough to try this wonderful technique.  There is nothing quite a satisfying as taking the journey toward personalized imagery.  Think of the possibilities for telling your own story!

Lyric's new dvd is a great refresher for anyone who has done a bit of printing with thermofax, and it is perfect for someone who is interested in trying it.

Thank you so much for stopping by.  Please leave a comment to be eligible for a drawing to win a copy of this wonderful dvd.  Truly, it is excellent! I'll use my "Randomizer" app to draw a number from the comments after midnight on 5/2/15.  Be sure to leave your comment prior to that time to be eligible. 

To purchase your own copy of this dvd please click this link.

And be sure to stop by the blogs of these contributing artists:

April 24 Cheryl Rezendez  http://www.cherylrezendes.com

April 25  Leslie Tucker Jenison  http://leslietuckerjenison.blogspot.com  

April 28  Sue Bleiweiss  http://www.suebleiweiss.com/blog/

April 30  Judy Gula http://www.artisticartifacts.com/blog/

May 1  Susan Price and Elizabeth Gibson  http://pgfiber2art.blogspot.com/

May 2  Judy Coates Perez  http://www.judycoatesperez.com

May 4  Linda Stokes  www.lindastokes-textileartist.com

May 6  Jane Davila  http://janedavila.blogspot.com

May 6 Melanie Testa http://melanietesta.com/blog/

May 7  Liz Kettle  http://www.textileevolution.com/index.php/our-journey

May 8  Carol Sloan  http://carolbsloan.blogspot.com

May 9  Kathy York  http://aquamoonartquilts.blogspot.com

May 11  Susan Brubaker Knapp  http://wwwbluemoonriver.blogspot.com

May 12  Desiree Habicht  http://myclothesline.blogspot.com

May 13  Jamie Fingal  http://JamieFingalDesigns.blogspot.com/

May 14  Deborah Boschert  http://deborahsjournal.blogspot.com

May 15  Sarah Ann Smith  sarahannsmith.com/weblog

Artist Play Date in SoCal with Jamie Fingal

Greetings!  Last weekend I flew to Orange County CA to attend a family wedding.  I extended my stay in order to get some work done with my friend and partner in crime, Jamie Fingal.  We do a great deal together:  teach, curate, and more, but we rarely afford ourselves the opportunity to simply play.  In fact, I'm not sure we have ever taken an afternoon and created something that was not intended for a workshop or some other project.  So, it felt really luxurious and fun to take the afternoon before I headed to the airport and simply make art.
The Sketchbook Challenge theme this month is "Collage" which is right up my alley.  I do a great deal of collage work in both paper and cloth (and, as in this case, the combination of both).  If you are stopping by after visiting the SBC blog you know I have a post up over there with one of my collaged pages.  Here is the second of three that were partially created while at Jamie's studio.

Here is the ephemera from my trip that will be used for the base layers of my collages.

In addition, I used some newsprint from the day's local paper and some scrap paper from Jamie's studio.

I scratched over the surface with some opaque white paint to "mess" it up a bit.

Using the Fingal Flower & Leaf stencil I pushed some bronze & black paint onto the surface.

In addition I used an old letter stencil from an office supply store to add some texture 

to the collage surface.

Here are the three collages I was working with.

Here is an aerial view of our work table with Jamie working at it.

After the surface dried I worked back into it with a Pentel Gel Roller pen.

I moved across the surface and selected some shapes that I wanted to accentuate.

I wrote a few thoughts over the collage surface...

When I returned home I decided to die-cut some fused silk organza that I had stashed in my 

fabric shelf.  Prior to cutting the dress shape I pre-fused the organza with Mistyfuse.

I accentuated the fused shape within the dress with the Pentel Fabric pen.

After fusing to the collage surface I outlined the dress shape so it became more visible in the collage.

I cut the collage into an 8x8 inch square in order for it to fit into my sketchbook.

This page will face the page I created for my SBC post.  It provides a lovely memory of the wedding weekend in California.  Thanks for stopping by!  

Using Kaffe Fassett Shot Cotton in a Baby Quilt!

I'm sure I'm late to this party, but I recently fell hard for Kaffe Fassett's "shot cotton" collection.  I even splurged and bought the entire palette of colors, and as you can see by this image, it is a very big selection of colors!  I bought this quarter-yard assortment from Glorious Color.com.

My first project using these gorgeous colors involves a baby quilt.  I co-hosted a shower for a young (LA Modern Guild) friend recently, and decided to pre-fuse the fabric with Mistyfuse, then die-cut circles and flower petals in a selection of colors she is using in the nursery.  Each shower guest was asked to write a word describing a characteristic they hope the baby will have.  I used Pentel gel roller fabric pens for this and they worked beautifully.  For ease of use, I temporarily fused the die cuts onto squares of parchment.  

The fabric on the left is stretched over a canvas for nursery decor.  I am basing the baby quilt colors on it.

A close-up image of one of the shot cottons.  Gorgeous!

After fusing the cloth sections are doubled up and die-cut with my Go! cutter

I cut 4.5 inch squares from all these prints.

The flowers & circles will be fused onto the squares after the shower.

Rather than a traditional batting I have decided to use one layer of diaper gauze to keep this lighter in weight.  This is, after all, a California baby.  I also know that the baby has received two other beautiful quilts!  

 Here is the Pentel pen.

A sample....

die-cuts fused temporarily onto parchment squares....

After piecing the quilt top the die-cuts were fused to the surface

Two sections of diaper gauze yardage were zig-zagged together for the "batting".

This stuff is lovely!  (although I found out later that it causes a lot of tension issues when I attempted to free-motion quilt it!)

I pinned the quilt top to the gauze.

I decided to pillowcase the quilt and avoid the additional bulk that a binding would create.  Therefore, I pinned the gauze to the quilt top-only, stitched the quilt back (right sides together) around the perimeter and left an opening.  The quilt was turned right side out and the opening hand-stitched closed.  The edges were steam-pressed and re-pinned.  

I found that I had to use my regular presser foot (#1) and use feed dogs up to stitch this quilt together.