March print of the month

 For this month's print I decided  wanted to print on silk.  More to the point I wanted to make something that could actually be used rather than just looked at.  To that end I decided I'd make bandannas, or scarves, or hankies...I also wanted the prints to be dyed into that fabric, not just on it.  I didn't want to be able to feel the print how you can on a  printed T-shirt.  Not hard to do, once you know all of the steps, just quite involved.
I won't go into all of the details, suffice to say that in learning about this process I gained new respect for some of the beautiful fabrics one can purchase.

The screen for this months image

 Long (boring) story short, after one whole day of printing and another of steaming and rinsing, I wound up with an edition of 18 images on silk(11) and rayon(7).

One blue silk hanky with an assortment of rayon hankies on top

 Using dyes is quite a bit different than just mixing some extender with some ink and just getting after it on some paper.  There are many different variables and many different schools of thought on how to address each one.

As a result of this, and of my inexperience, there is quite a bit of variation in the color saturation of all of my prints.   Then after all of the fun of the printing experience all of these still need trimmed and hemmed.  I can say I'd much rather run a TIG torch than a sewing machine but it is still fun.

But overall I am pleased with the results.  I also printed a number of these on paper since I had the screen done anyway.