Text on Textiles

I've recently been teaching my first on-line course through Joggles, and thanks to Barbara's easy instructions, its been a seamless and enjoyable experiment -- though I would have liked a bit more feedback from the troops. But, I can just send it out there and hope that the info is landing well!

The photos above show a few surface design techniques, and prints on fabric, that put text on textiles. This summer I'll be teaching another 4-week on-line class with additional techniques and ideas for how to incorporate text into textile design.

Printing with Ink and Paint Textured Thermofaxes

In my last post I shared a method that I use to create thermofaxes for my textured backgrounds. Now it’s time to print some fabric with my altered ink and paint texture thermofax! Below is the thermofax image used to create the textures for an ArtCloth piece called Moon Dance.

After masking out areas that I wanted to remain free of color with freezer paper, I used opaque textile paint mixed to match the purple background (tone on tone).

Then after masking the newly printed purple background and figure, I did the second printing in yellow textile paint for the moon.

And finally after some hand painting, stamping and beading below is Moon Dance finished.

Moon Dance, 60x40”.

Materials; MX dyes, discharge, fabric paint, and glass beads on Fuji silk broadcloth.

Hand dyed, discharged, thermofax screened, hand printed, hand painted and beaded.

It is enthralling to watch a piece of cloth transformed from flat plane to a luminous field of dimension with this technique!