Day 16: Foiling and screen printing

I am now officially mid way through my quilting challenge this month! I'm trying to decide what to do for November. If you have a suggestion, drop me a line.

Several years ago I took a class from a local quilt artist, Colleen Wise, on screen printing using a thermofax machine. In that class, we learned how to create our own screens and print using paint and foil. This morning I dug out my supplies and played. I had forgotten how to use the screens and how to foil so I did some research online. After many mistakes, I finally got some nice results. I used a foil adhesive that you apply lightly and allow to dry. You can also use a fusible such as steam-a-seam-2 to apply the foil. I used screen printing screens, stamps and stencils with varying degrees of success. I liked using the screens the best.

Lessons Learned:

1. Practice on scrap fabric to get the iron temperature correct. If it's not hot enough, the foil won't adhere. If it's too hot, the foil will melt.
2. Old foils sometimes don't work. All of my foil is several years old and some of the pieces just didn't foil.
3. Use a teflon pressing sheet to protect your iron. Or else you will end up applying foil to your iron like I did. BTW, a pumice stone will scrape the foil off but will scratch your iron. Which leads me to rule 4.
4. Use an old iron that you don't mind wrecking.
5. Apply the adhesive judiciously. If you apply too much, you get a muddy effect and it takes longer to dry. If you try to iron on the foil while the adhesive is wet, you just end up applying the adhesive to your foil instead of foiling your fabric.
6. Be sure to use pre-washed fabric. I prewash nearly always, but I used a piece of fabric I had bought to back a quilt that had a top that wasn't prewashed (it was made from jelly roll strips which aren't washed), and since I didn't want the top to shrink and the backing to bunch up, I didn't prewash it. That made it more difficult for the foil to adhere. Any directions you get online tell you to pre-wash but, just like yesterday when I ignored the advice to mirror my image, I thought I could skip that step. Silly me.
7. Apply the paint to the correct (smooth) side of the screen. I didn't on one print and the effect wasn't near as crisp.
8. Screen printing is TONS of fun!

Here are the results of the playtime fun today.

Two compositions. The one on the left is on the non-prewashed. The one on the right using the correct iron temperature and hand dyed fabric. The one on the left used a tree screen and attempts using steam a seam, stamps and stencils. The one on the right is a steaming coffee cup screen using different colored foils.

One of my hand dyed dark shades of emerald green (equal parts black and emerald green) with screen printing of a tree in 4 different colors. I may turn this into a table runner...

A close up of the gold painted tree printed on the dark green. This is my favorite of all of the prints today. If you click on the photo and look closer, it almost looks as if it was machine embroidered with gold thread.