I found these placemats on clearance at a kitchen store before the holidays and snapped them up for their surface design possibilities. They are flexible, durable, and vinyl so can be washed and reused. Normally I don’t like to use premade designs, like commercial stamps for example, but in this case it seems like the patterns would be pretty removed from their original purpose. Plus they were just really cool.

I finally got a chance to play with them in the dye studio. I was very interested to use them for the work I’ve been developing, using them for both positive and negative marks. I started by setting up breakdown screens using both mats as resists. I got some very nice prints with the screens although I wished, in retrospect, that I had used some different dye colors.

placemat and print from breakdown screen

prints from breakdown screen

I had an aha! moment when I was looking at a breakdown screen that still had dye on it after I had taken all the prints I wanted to make. Sometimes the screens break down quickly but, depending on the thickness of the print paste, others can make dozens of prints. It always seems like such a shame to just wash those potential prints down the drain. The brainstorm came when I realized I could lay soda soaked fabric on top of the screen, brayer it down, and get a positive image from the screen to complement the prints from the silk screen. The prints turned out a little fuzzy, most likely because the fabric was wet, but I think there’s some interesting potential there worth more exploration.

breakdown screen with dye left on it

fabric printed with dye left on the screen

I also used the placemats as stencils and applied thickened dye through them. I’ve started printing onto some less than successful fabrics that I pulled out when I organized my storage. I might as well experiment on them because I’m not going to use them as they are. Maybe they’ll turn into something fantastic and maybe they won’t, but I’ve got nothing to lose with them as they are.

green dye printed using placemat as a stencil