Week Ten. 26th November.

Continuing with direct printing this week, working onto the four different fabrics I tested on. I Started to think about fabric manipulation and how this could affect my designs. To experiment, I pleated one of my earlier designs.



This worked very well on the first designs I had done, completely transforming them, so I pleated some more of the recent prints I had done.



The effect depended on the size and regularity of the pleats, and created some very interesting effects.

I carried out natural dyes samples of Bilberry, these created some interesting colours which I would not have expected from natural dyes.

As I had carried out so many natural dye samples, with intentions of using them, I was not keen to completely discount them. I wondered wheter I could use the direct printing style with natural dyes. I made a mordant printing paste to replace the indalca mix, unfortunatley Tin and Alum mordants were not available to me so I used Iron and Copper.
The mix was:
1:2 Iron/Copper with cream of tartar.

30g Iron/Copper to 60g Cream of Tartar
50g Indalca.

The prints worked well, and I left them for as long as possible to let the mordant work, but I was unsure how to fix them.
I carried out a few samples of: unsteamed & unwashed, washed & unsteamed, unwashed & steamed, and washed & steamed. unfortunatley the samples had to be fixed in some way, and when steamed and washed they lost their colour, turning slightly brown.