Playtime!

You may be aware if you are a friend on Facebook that we've been away again!  This time to beautiful Scotland but I'll come back to that in a future post.

I think it's time I included something creative on here so I'll share with you what we did on our once-a-month play day yesterday.  Four of us have just started getting together to share techniques, ideas and inspirations and so far have explored discharge printing and printing with Inktense bars and pencils.

Using a home made screen (from a picture frame and voile) I laid the screen down onto a sheet of freezer paper (not the waxy side) and sketched with the oilbars keeping the idea of the sea in mind.

When I picked the screen up, as expected, loose colour from the bars had dropped through.  I sprayed these with water to dissolve the pigment and took a direct monoprint.

This is the print on cotton, it is a little stronger in real life.  What I particularly liked was the subtle specks of colour from the waterspray on the edges.

Turning to the silkscreen I pulled the first print onto Evolon with a layer of organza on the top and with a stencil between the screen and the organza.  Initially we used printpaste to pull the print but by the time we had washed that out it left a very pale print.  Evidently the paste puts the pigment into suspension instead of releasing it into the fabric fully.  I decided not to rinse my prints out as these early prints will probably go into my sketchbook for future reference.

This above is the organza print and below is the print on evolon

 If I had taken more time and care I could have masked out the hard outlines but the prints in themselves are exciting.  We were thinking of other ways of getting this effect of colour gradations with printing and couldn't think how else it could be achieved.

Just a belated word of warning, Inktense bars will stain your screen so don't use your best one! 

I made this print over earlier prints that I had made with Dionne Swift. I used a stencil based on the London streetplan by ArtistCellar Stencils.

And of course, I also had the positive print from the map stencil.

As I said earlier I havn't washed my prints out as I would expect to lose too much colour.  Apparently you can use Aloe Gel or even sanitising gel to pull the prints so I will have another try with one of these and see how the colours hold up.  It will be interesting to experiment with other watersoluble media too.

As well as having a play day I have been busy making a baby quilt for a friend who is expecting later this year.

I am really pleased with this quilt and as it is made from a panel it went together relatively quickly.  I added a border to square it up (not that it is very even) and patched together a backing.

The panel is by Hoffman fabrics but I can't remember where I got it from or what it's called.

I've also done a workshop recently and made a sewing roll, although the method could be adapted to a roll for any number of purposes,

Well, that's enough for one post. See you soon!