Batik meets screen printing and thickened dyes.

Batik meets screen printing and thickened dyes.

Love it! This is so fun and so fast and so fabulous! I drew the design first with wax and a djaunting tool onto the screen. Then I used dye paste from Prochem with dye and soda ash. Since this was the first time, I had no idea how much I needed, so I prepared to do a lot of runs with the screen. Then I pushed the dye through the screen and repeated. The yellow dye is so bright and cheerful!

I was expecting it to run, especially because my design was a bit on the fine side, but the print paste did it's job very well. The whole process only took an hour. I had a lot of waste (only because the soda ash was mixed in, otherwise, I could have saved the left overs). And the process is messy, but I had so much fun doing it, I didn't even notice. And the best part....there is no wax to get out of the cloth!! The design remained very true and the dyes also stayed bright through the entire process. I will make some fish with this fabric. The last note is cleaning the wax off the screen. I haven't done it yet, so I don't know. To see more complete description of the techniques used, see Jane Dunnewold's book Improvisational Screen Printing.