Big Commission Day Two

Day Two.
Rise and shine early, Miss Girl, 'cause you've got a lot to do and it's all gotta be timed just right.

First thing:  rinse (again, and again, and then yet again), the silk yardage that had spent the night in the dyepot.  

Then blot each one dry with towels, one at a time, and iron each one, one at a time.  This had to be done in one, shall we say, sweep.  As mentioned in Day One, you have to iron silk while it's still damp for best results.

At 9am, Marietta Van Buhler, a photographer and one of our participating artists at Art on the Farm,  came over to help me with some Facebook chores that I couldn't get my brain around.  Wow, was she helpful! So not only a very gifted artist, she's kind of a techie, too.  Now you can see postings from The Painted Trout FB page on our website, and also postings from Art on the Farm's FB page on THAT website.   Immediately following that I had an appointment in Ann Arbor with a dear friend who was visiting.  She is owner of Chocolate in Chelsea, the best chocolate on the planet, no kidding.  We talked business like a couple of rabid animals, it's been so long since we had good chin wag.  Lots of ideas shooting around.  The other people at the table didn't stand a chance!

Then back to the house where I jumped into my "studio clothes" which really comprise the bulk of my wardrobe anyway.  They were still a little wet from the morning's rinsing and ironing. I tend to wipe my hands on my butt, since it's always the nearest thing at hand. 

The "real" pieces of silk were indeed lighter than the test piece, which by the way didn't end up being too dark after all.  Nevertheless, I am very happy with the hue of the real silk.  Here they are:

Real silk, test scarf, test piece and scarf above.

The colors don't really translate very well on my monitor, but you get the idea.  The "real" silk is the piece on the lower left, a test scarf is in the middle and the test silk is on the right.

Next up was the discharge print layer.  If you look closely at the grouse scarf above and also by mousing over the image on our website, you'll see under the darker print, there are pale yellow leaves.  That's achieved by taking away some of the dye with a silkscreen print using discharge paste.  It's a major step, but it's always worth it since it yields a much more interesting and complex pattern on the cloth. 

To achieve this, first I have to mix up a batch of the stuff, which requires a certain amount of print paste (which I had made up ahead of time), and two chemicals that when combined make the "go juice" of the operation.  They have a life, however, and it's short. Unless you use it in 3 days, it loses its "go" and you are not going to get the results you want; in other words, little if any dye will be lifted from the cloth.

I estimated the amount I would need for the test piece as well as the real pieces, and mixed it all up.  It's never a bad idea to let such things sit for a little while so that all the ingredients fully dissolve, so while that was happening, I taped the test piece to my printing table.  It's not too different than stretching a canvas in that you want it taut and without any big moving areas of cloth. You want to be able to print and not have the silk lift up when you lift the silkscreen off the fabric, but you also don't want to use up stupid amounts of tape for what is, after all, just test piece.  Plus, this is my nice new table cover and I don't want a whole lot of tape residue to have to contend with. 

I had prepared the silkscreen the day before and in short order I was at work printing the pattern across the fabric, closely imitating the rhythm of the prints on the underlying layer of the original grouse scarf.  As soon as the print was semi-dry, I removed the tape.

Because the basement is, well, the basement, it's cool and semi-humid.  I do use a dehumidifier but turn it off when I am working so I can hear Diane Rehm and other NPR stuff.  The print was not drying fast enough for my impatient little soul, so I brought it upstairs to my office which, as mentioned in Day One, is not unlike a sauna, but a dry one.

While that was drying, I cleaned off the print table (a must between EVERY use of the table, otherwise disaster will surely befall the project), then hand-dried the table with a towel, and just to be safe, gave it a blast with a hair dryer.  Then I got to work taping down the first piece of real silk.    For this cloth, I elected to use a sister print to the one used in the test piece and the grouse scarf. Same type of leaf, but the print itself is slightly larger and more interesting, with more directionality and variety in the shapes and sizes of the leaves.  The work went quickly.

 

By now the text piece had dried sufficiently and that meant I needed to fire up the iron again, as the only thing that activates the "go" is heat and steam.  One has to be careful not to scorch the fabric while at the same time allowing the steam to do its thing.  Interestingly, the color turned to a pale mauve, which I hadn't expected, but since I did switch reds when I dyed the real silk, I knew the results would be different. 

Then I rinsed (and rinsed and rinsed) this test piece to get the paste out of the cloth, which would also yield a little brighter underlying color.  This part is tricky, too, since you have to keep the fabric moving at all times and increase the water temperature in steps in order to prevent ghost printing of the discharge paste. Then roll in a towel again and iron dry.

By now the first real piece of silk was dry enough to take off the print table, which I did, followed by another scrubbing down of the table surface (also to prevent ghost printing and other terrible outcomes).    Then I taped the second piece down, printed it, and went up the stairs to fire up the iron to discharge the first piece.  I was happy to find that the color under the activated paste was a creamy pale yellow.  

Well, that was it for the day.  I had to pack the truck for a show I would be setting up for the next day and this was a good place to stop anyway.  I would do the rinsing of the two pieces (and ironing, of course) tomorrow. 

I realize some of this may be confusing when not boring, so if anyone has any questions, please feel free to send me an email at lauren@paintedtrout.com or post below this blog entry.