Paint'n'Print

I've spent the last couple of days working with dyes. I had forgotten how much I enjoy that...particularly the painting and printing aspects. I used to sell my cloth, and teach dye workshops, still do, now and again, but never the painted stuff. Nobody seemed interested in it. Now, with books like 'Breakdown Printing', and doubtless the popularity of City & Guilds courses, there seems to be more of an interest in 'interesting' cloth. Or perhaps it's just that I've moved from Scotland, which is resoundingly traditional in orientation towards fabric selection. (Go on then, the Scots among us, prove me wrong...I'd love it!).

I had done some low water immersion dyeing which I wasn't particularly happy with. Scotland has wonderful soft water, and I'm finding that I don't get quite the colours I used to, here in hard water hell. Mind you, that's the only complaint I have about Norfolk, and I can deal with it via Calgon, so I have little to complain about! So, some of the cloth was reimmersed, in a magenta dyebath, and the rest of it was printed over. I also did some screenprinting on plain fabric, but that's another story for another day, I think.

The results were varied, and, I hope, interesting. Well, put it this way, I expect to use it all! See what you think. The pictures below are dye painted cloth; the one above, LWI.