Corset Progress: printing

I set up a sort of one woman production line downstairs in our dining room, I had the collagraphs I'd made a while back to hand and all the paints and fabrics that I wanted to use.

 

Mum found me an ancient jar of textile medium that you mix with acrylic paint to turn it into fabric paint and I also have lots of fabric paint left over from when I was painting the silk panels.

Though I only ended up mixing it with the white acrylic paint since I already had all the other colours I wanted to use. Due to the textile medium being practically prehistoric it created a really disgusting partially separated substance with the consistency of a tin of baked beans. Including the beans. It worked totally fine though so long as you didn't scoop up one of the lumps when you were applying it to the collagraphs.

I applied paint to the areas of the collagraph that I wanted to print with then laid the material on top and pressed it down making sure to get all the bits where I remembered there to be paint. After using this method to print onto every piece of fabric and some not turning out so great I realised there was a better way of doing things. In retrospect I should have laid the material face up and pushed the card down onto it instead of the other way around.

I printed once more on that piece of fabric then moved onto some other colours. I continued in this way varying my fabrics and colours until I had what I deemed a large enough stack that when sewn together would create a big enough piece of material for me to get all the bits of corset I needed cut from it.

 

Some surfaces held up better than others. The cellophane and foil did not.

 

I can't resist uploading close up pictures of the collagraphs after I'd printed with them, there's something really beautiful about the faded metallic colours.

 

For printing on the gorgeous burgundy satin stuff I bought I wanted to create a new collagraph. There's a sack that my dad made for my mum when he was still in college, burgundy linen with golden stars printed on it and rough gold lining, I used to use it as a Christmas stocking before my sisters were born and I've always adored it. And I most certainly have never stopped loving the colour combination of burgundy and gold and stars as a pattern, so in tribute to that sack of my childhood I copied the design and used it in my corset. It's my favorite patch on the entire thing!