Oh Happy Day or Playing with the Beast
Hi all,
Tuesday afternoon my Thermofax machine arrived! I have just gotten down to really playing with it. For those of you unfamiliar with this, a thermofax machine allows you to make screens, which operate like silk screens, of any image you can reduce to black and white. It creates a permeable screen of the image that you can then run paint, thickened dye, or discharge paste through and get a finely detailed image on your fabric! It’s like magic 
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The machines themselves are pretty archaic. They are actually the old “ditto” machines from the 1960′s. They aren’t made anymore and fiber artists are competing with tattoo artists for them. Consequently, they cost a bazillion dollars. That is why I waited so long to get one. On top of the high price for purchase, the are HUGE; I almost had a coronary when I saw the shipping costs. This thing weighs as much as a first grader, so I have dubbed it “The Beast”:
Dollar store tape for scale to show ginormity of "The Beast"
I’ve included some pictures of screened fabric so you can get an idea of the fine detail you can get with these screens:
Branch screen used on hand dyed cotton
I used numerous colors of thickened dye on this and the following piece of hand dyed silk organza:
Same screen used on silk organza
I am happily making tons of tree screens-because that is what I’m working on right now- and plan to use them to do a ton of discharging once the @$#%^&*% weather gets out of the 20′s. I had done some discharging in the basement, but it’s pretty evil stuff and even with a gas mask on, it hangs in the air and gives me a headache later. God knows what it’s doing to my dogs who are sans gas mask.
Do I look like I have spare brain cells??????????
Discharging is definitely outdoor work. Tons of pictures to come, I’m sure
