Petroglyph Dress

The Big Island of Hawaii has several areas where you can find petroglyphs.  They're very cool...and many of the island logos reflect the cool graphic nature of the designs.  I thought it would be fun to silkscreen a border using one of the designs...the Honu (turtle). I bought a rayon dress clothing blank from Dharma Trading Company (a very cool place to buy everything related to textile arts) and dyed it with Rit Dye

following the package direction...I got the dress wet first, 

added salt and let sit in the dye bath overnight.

The dye didn't take as well as it usually does,

kinda splotchy...but kinda tie-dye ish so I like it

Next...for the design.  I sketched out a pattern 

of turtles and transferred to clear 

contact paper (for the silkscreen stencil)

I carefully cut out the images with an Xacto knife

saving the inside cutout pieces to add to the silkscreen

to complete the images

screen with stencil adhered, ready to print

with squeegee and fabric ink I'm ready to print

I used the ironing board so as I moved around the hem line 

the wet images wouldn't stick to one another

and transfer ink where I didn't want it to go

After heat setting the printed images...the dress

was ready to go!