Author Archive | Ellen Lindner

Now THIS is fun! Scoop up some thickened dye with a stiff squeegee (think large credit card,) and smear it onto some fabric. It spreads into glorious color and makes a very satisfying swishing noise at the same time.

I started with yellow and then added yellow-orange,(which looks dark orange when it’s this thick.)

But, it DID look mighty orange.  Next, I added orange. Hmm, there was no color change. Then, I realized that my yellow-orange had been contaminated with deep orange.  Oops.  This is going to be very orange!

Finally, I added red and got this, (still wet.)

When dry it looked like this, which was more orange than I really wanted. (No surprise.)

No worries. I over dyed it and got some very useful fabric. (I took a photo, but it doesn’t really show the difference.  You’ll have to trust me on this one.)

So, my overly orange fabric isn’t a very good example of this great technique.  Here’s another one I did the same way.  Can you see how I just swept the color on?  And that became the “pattern” for the piece.

See the finished fabric – one of my favorites.

If you’re a dyer you’ll definitely want to try this technique when creating a background.

Ellen Lindner

You can’t get it right all the time.  And knowing that relieves a certain amount of any perfectionist tendencies.  I fully embrace the unexpected “mistakes.”  Like this one. This was created with a special type of interfacing stencil.  It’s shown wet here, which means it’s darker than it will be after washing.

BUT.  If you have forgotten to soak your fabric in soda ash before adding the stenciled dye nearly ALL of the color will wash out.  Like this. Oh well.  It will be a nice background for something else.

And then there’s this piece, which looks WAY better in this photo than it does in real life.  It’s a jumble of dull and dark greens.  But, that’s not the ugliest part. That part is played by the black triangles I drew on with a syringe.  Oh my! My technique was off and I got horrible blobs and runs everywhere. So, I immediately washed the whole thing, hoping the black wouldn’t have time to cure/set.  No such luck, so the dry version is almost as ugly – now with gray drawn triangles. But, oh well.  I needed another clean up rag, right?

Check out my other posts for some decent results.

Ellen Lindner

After over dyeing fabrics from previous sessions, my ordered fabric arrived and I jumped at the opportunity to make some “new fabric.”  That is, starting with plain white fabric. I had plans and was excited to implement them!

This one was meant to go with a favorite fabric.  Therefore, I repeated the pattern and some of the colors.

It’s VERY easy to get carried away when painting with a syringe, shown below.  It’s just so much fun! The paint just glides on and you get to scribble.  I think the hard part is not going overboard with this sort of thing. (Note the grid and colors which will match the fabric above.)

These two were made with a glue resist drawn directly on the fabric.  Once it was dry, I squeegeed on thickened dye in my usual fashion.  The glue washed out with the usual washing.  I really like the results!

How cool are these little lines?

Of course, most fabrics need more than one layer of color, so some over dyeing is also called for. This nearly solid fuchsia isn’t QUITE as bright as it looks in this photo, but it’s pretty close.  It definitely needed some over painting of some sort, in a darker color.

And here it is, (bottom) with a dark blue grid added.  (This color is much more accurate.) The darker color definitely toned it down a bit, and added some much needed interest.

In the top fabric shown above, I used patterns predominant in my last 2 dye sessions: a grid and a petal.  That way I’ll have versatility with the fabric and can use it with either combo.

Having fun!!!
Ellen Lindner

I’ve had some good results with my fabric dyeing.  I was going to show you the “regular” stuff and save my favorites for last.  But who has such restraint? So here they are: my favorite fabrics from my recent bout of dyeing.

For the large piece on the left below, my goal was to use multiple colors but with some repetition of pattern. I was thinking that different sections could be used together. The two pieces on the right were specifically dyed to go with the first one.  I’m liking the combo A LOT.

The color palette was inspired by this clean up rag. I wanted to play up the yellow-orange, (rather than my typical red-orange.)

Then there’s this fabric.  Again, I wanted multiple colors and had great fun just sweeping them on with a stiff squeegee (like a large credit card.)This is what it looked like wet.

Of course, the colors always look darker when it’s wet.  Here’s what it looked like dry, with some black marks added.

I love it!  The colors came out exactly as I expected and wanted. Don’t you love the black marks?  Can you see how the sweeping ones mirror the motion of my arm as I applied the background color?

The long sweeping lines were made with a credit card.  And an open grid served as a stamp.  I applied it with pressure from my hand and soon found that I had a grid imprint on my glove.  Well, I couldn’t waste that, so it went onto the fabric, too. Can you find it?  (I did about 3 hand prints.)

I can’t wait to use these awesome fabrics!

Ellen Lindner

Now that I’ve started using those new stencils I can show you my results.  I started out by over dyeing some of the duds from my previous dyeing session.  Like this one.  Not horrible, but definitely not exciting either.

I simply over dyed it with the same stencil and roughly the same colors.  As you can see, I went wild with the stencil and layered it over and over in different directions. This was an eye-opening moment for me.  Who says you can just do one print? This quickly became a favorite technique.

Sorta wish I’d covered the edges better.  A flaw I repeated quite often, so something to work on for next time.

Now, what to do with this ugly thing?

This time I just visualized my starting fabric as the background and, again, I over printed with the same stencil in a variety of directions and mostly one color.  This time I realized I didn’t need to keep the density/spacing of the pattern consistent throughout, and I REALLY liked mixing it up.  Bam, another favorite procedure right away!

Next came a variation on the theme.  The original piece was too basic.

And another, with a little more restraint this time.  I actually used blue dye for the circles I added, forgetting that the transparent nature of dye would make them look black.  Oh well.

And one more with teal circles.  I was pleasantly surprised to see how well they showed up in the blue corner I considered useless.  Good to know.

The center stencil, below, is the one I used on the fabric above.  Again, you can see that I moved it all around. The far right stencil was used on the basic yellow-green fabric shown as the 5th image. Fun, right?

Even these modest results were exciting, since I was learning so much, and getting usable fabric.

Ellen Lindner

I have a quilt in mind which will need a variety of black and white, and grey and white fabrics.  So, I spread out some white fabric and started applying thickened dye.

You’ll recognize the patterns of these first two.  They’re done with the same interfacing stencils shown in earlier posts.

The grey one, below left, was done with another interfacing stencil. On the right I used an open grid as a stamp.  Although it was a grid, the lines in one direction printed stronger than those in the other direction.  With GREAT RESTRAINT I took advantage of this and printed almost straight lines in the bottom portion. However, in the top half, I indulged my preference as I overlapped and reoriented the grid while stamping.  Two patterns for one!

At one point, I had so much black dye on my work surface that I used it as a monoprint, (top half below.)  I scratched a few lines in it and then laid the fabric on top.  Voila!

The bottom portion shown above features an overlapping grid stencil when I resisted the TEMPTATION to turn it.

And here’s the full set of fabrics.

These are fast and fun because there’s usually just one application of dye and then you’re done. Nice!

Ellen Lindner

I find that the best fabric prints require about 3 or more processes.  Usually something close to solid for the background, a large scale print, and a small print.  At the end of my previous dyeing session I had several fabrics that still needed one or more additions, so I addressed those early on.

This fabric had only fuchsia petals on a plain white background when I started working on it again. I added turquoise to the background, using one of my homemade stencils. (As you can see, I’m not going for perfection with these. As a matter of fact, I love the imperfection.)

I was happy with the results above, but also wanted to add a very small scale print.  Maybe in black.

I had a little scrap of shelf liner that I thought was the right scale, but I didn’t think I wanted it everywhere. So, I did this.  I scrunched up the fabric so it was small enough to fit under the scrap, added black paint to the shelf liner (with a brayer,) flipped it over and used it to stamp the fabric.

Voila! Once I opened it back up I got this.

Yes!  I like it.  One down.

Now, these two ugly fabrics will also need some attention.

I’ve got ideas for them.  How about you?

Ellen Lindner

In preparation for my next dyeing session, I’ve been making stencils.  Of course, I did some of the typical sort in which you cut through stiff plastic.  Then, I learned about interfacing stencils.  These are used with screen printing, which is something I’m trying to learn more about.

The basic idea is to paint onto interfacing the area you do not want to print.  These were my first two, hand painted with household paint.

Next, I tried painting over freezer paper shapes that had been ironed onto the interfacing.  This worked well.

It takes about 3 layers of acrylic paint, dried between applications.

Next, I tried painting over a glue resist.  I used basic Elmer’s white school glue.

They’re all shown wet above.  After drying and over painting, the glue has to washed out which takes a little while. I’ve now tried the resulting stencils and they’ve all worked well.

There was an issue, though, with the last two.  When I drew on the glue I extended it beyond my drawn line indicating the frame size.  That meant that the stencil print would end sharply and abruptly at the edge of the tape that would hold it in place. Realizing this, I altered the final stencils by filling in the outer design lines, resulting in a more undulating perimeter to these motifs.

Finally, I tried putting shapes onto the interfacing and covering it all with spray paint. You’re supposed to use semi-heavy shapes for this so the interfacing won’t blow away when you hit it with the spray of the paint.  I didn’t have those at hand so I tried other things.  One was these little cardboard shapes, which I lightly glued in place, and later washed out.

Although these spray paint efforts looked successful, I didn’t get good prints from them.

But that wasn’t my biggest issue.  The big problem was that some of my early stencils completely shredded when I tried to remove them from the painted areas. Like this.

I realized pretty quickly that the interfacing was too lightweight.  I did some shopping and switched to Pellon 110, which worked beautifully.  (BTW, when selecting interfacings don’t go by the description.  Feel them, instead.)

I’m now armed with quite a collection of stencils. Here are a few drying out after use.

As I begin to use them in earnest, I’ll be posting my results. Stay tuned!

Ellen Lindner
P.S. Check out the right stencil above.  Can you see how I altered the edge to avoid a straight line?
P.P.S. I generally post isolated photos on Facebook and Instagram more quickly than I write full posts, If you want to follow me there, click on the Facebook icon below, or find me on Instagram by clicking here.
P.P.P.S. I learned about interfacing stencils from an excellent book called “Screen Printing: Layering Textiles with Color,” by Claire Benn and Leslie Morgan.  At $43 this book seems pricey, but it includes and 45 minute DVD and it’s WELL worth it.