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March 2, 2012 by Tien Chiu

Where to start?

My goodness, what was I doing moping last week when there is so much to do???

On my to-do list for this weekend:

  • Print lots of T-shirts.  I have eight full-screen designs meant to go onto T-shirts – mostly straight copies of the royalty-free designs in the Dover books, with a few adaptations here and there.  (The intent is to get wearable clothing and practice screen printing, not create the next Work of Art!)
  • Dye some clothing in mottled colors.  I had intended to work with dyeing, discharge, and redyeing, but I found out today that not all colors of Cibacron F (my preferred fiber-reactive dye) will discharge gracefully, and there is a good chance of getting muddy greens if I attempt discharging it.  So instead I will screen print, paint with thickened dyes, and then either leave the shirt off-white or apply wax to the colored sections, then overdye (the wax protects the already-dyed areas).
  • Dye some clothing in solid colors.  In particular, I want to dye the sweatpants black and then screen print on them.  (I reserve the right to paint one pair with orange stripes to make tiger sweats!)
  • Practice four-color printing with my dragon design.
  • Create some quilting fabrics by dyeing and printing on fabrics.  I am torn about this one.  Dyeing enough fabric for the entire quilting class is a Big Project.  But it would also be great fun, and would teach me a lot about fabric design.  I wish I had enough to spend a day playing with dyeing yardage!  But I only have one yard of suitable cotton fabric on hand right now, which is Not Enough.  Sadness.  I am half-tempted to run up to Dharma Trading Company tomorrow, to get more.
  • Make the first set of quilt blocks for my foundation piecing class.  (This may get put off to next week.)
  • Drape a second muslin on my dress form, for practice.

I haven’t put together a schedule for this stuff yet because I haven’t really solidified plans in my mind.  Maybe that’s not a bad thing – this is supposed to be unstructured play, not a planned project!  I guess my inner project manager is trying to organize things again.  🙂

No pretty pictures today, but LOTS of them tomorrow, I promise!

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Filed Under: All blog posts, surface design, textiles

Previous post: Thermofax triumph!
Next post: Dyers’ dreams

Comments

  1. Julie L. says

    March 3, 2012 at 10:15 pm

    If you’re not deeply committed to printing out quilting-class quantities of fabric on your own, Spoonflower does custom-printed yardage. I don’t know what their turnaround time is like, though.

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