I’ve been working with doilies lately. I love the way they look and feel. I love the way they get dyed and overdyed when I work with them. I love that they are relics from another time when people made things by hand. You can almost feel the hands of the grandmothers and aunts who made them. Sometimes I feel a little guilty that I am “ruining” them by using them but they look so beautiful after they’ve been through the dyes and I know they would just be forgotten in some drawer if I wasn’t using them.  This way I’m giving them another life. These photos show me using them as a resist while printing a big breakdown screen. In the photo below you can see the outline of the doily under the screen. After the screen was pulled I used the dyed doilies to print  a piece of silk, then I rolled them up in some soda soaked fabric and let them sit overnight. Each gave a different effect, three for the price of one, plus I have the lovely doilies to reuse. A good new life I would say.

the doily used as a resist

dyed doilies batched with fabric

printing with the dyed doilies