Complements to the Rescure

 As I left it 7/1

When I left yesterday I was hoping that I would hate the blue and red border less when I returned today to wash it out. Alas over night batching did nothing to make me like this better. So I had to resort to my risky but handy technique of calling in COMPLEMENTS TO THE RESCUE!

I decided to roll a blue green along the boarder and while I was at it I added diagonals to visually connect from one side to the other. All a little scary as I had liked what was there.

 deciding to just save a small strip of the blue and red. The new dyes are sill very wet. 

It is helpful that I have worked enough with the dyes to realize how much lighter they will dry. But that still remains a bit of a guess.

dyes much closer to dry here. Also it will be good to see it without the soda ash. 

leaving it to batch

I am much happier now, and think I can leave this alone to batch in peace. I will post after it is washed out. The white that you see in the dark blue violet loops is soda ash. I always wonder how much my light blue drop cloth influences my color choices? A question for another day.

Connecting the Dots

l have been working a lot with the idea of layers and am really enjoying making simple screens using screen filler and sometimes screen filler and drawing fluid. The screen you see on the bottom of the image is straight screen filler and it allowed me to print the red through the negative space.

hand painted with screen filler

printed in repeat

adding hand painted border with the same red

New screen done with drawing fluid and then screen filler. I printed it with a deep blue violet and left the space at the end of each screen empty. 

I have printed this screen the length of the fabric and left the space between the image and the frame blank, as the image does not make an aligned repeat. Instead I am just filling in the missing pieces by hand and creating my own "faux repeat". The image on the left shows the blank space the large central loop on the bottom was hand painted.  You can see on the left that I have just added more shapes. This solves the problem or repeat for me and allows me to just make it up as I go along. If you look to the image on the right you'll notice that I have added additional loops in the empty space.
It is a one of a kind piece so why not improvise as you go along?

batching before washing out. 

 I am heading to Ireland for a workshop in a week and the center looping screen makes me think of Celtic Art meets up with The Jetsons. You get the sense of a repeat without it actually being one. Can't wait to see how this raw silk washes out.  It is 45"x 72" I love working in layers.