Recently I bought Screen Printing Sampler by Jane Dunnewold and Quilting Arts. In it she mentions using washable Elmers Glue as a resist on a screen. I decided to try it. I had heard of using it as a resist on fabric like you do with soy wax. Decided to have some fun and experiment.
As you can see, this first one isn't a resist. This was a black and white jacket that I picked up at a thrift store to take apart for quilting. I decided to see how it would turn out if I painted it. The fabric is reversible . You can see the back of it in the lower right corner.
This piece, I used the glue as a resist on the fabric and painted it with fabric paint. I did a second layer of resist and paint.
This is another piece with the resist on the fabric. I started with a piece of dyed fabric and painted over it with Dynaflo. To do a lot of resist with the gel, my hand got pretty tired. I don't know if that was because my bottle of glue had been sitting around for a while. I also would like to find out if Elmers washable white glue is any different. If you don't have patience, this technique would not be for you since you have to wait for the glue to dry before you can paint. If you want to to do layers of resist and paint, it can take a long time. Soy wax is faster since the was dries very quickly but it's not as easily available for me as the glue. Not when you want to try it right now! The glue washed out of the fabric pretty easily. I even put it between paper and ironed it before I washed it, to set the paint.
This next one is the first piece I tried screen printing. I made a pattern on the screen and let it dry. Once again you have to wait for it to dry before you can print. I used fabric paint again. I don't really like the hard edges you get with this. I don't know if I'd use this a lot for screen printing. I think I'd rather have a circle thermofax made so I was printing the circles instead of the background. I also didn't realize the red paint was opaque (need to read the bottle before using!) and it gave the fabric a heavy plastic feel.
This is another one I tried with the screen. Once again, the blue was and opaque color and felt a lot heavier.
After I washed it out and was looking at it, I realized that I had screen printed the blue on the wrong side of the fabric. The green and yellow had been printed on this side. Once again, I don't like the hard edges. Waste of time and fabric? No, I learned I don't like it and gained some experience.
This was a different screen I made. I like the way the paint acted a little better in this one. The top one I used a transparent blue on the red and the bottom was a transparent black on red. I also tried to overlap the screen when I printed.
I have some other pictures to show you but I will wait till another day.
