Cas Holmes

I recently attended a workshop with Cas Holmes, another of my favorite artists (cas holmes). I had the chance to listen to a talk by her on the Friday evening and then go to the workshop on the Saturday. We were looking at creating and then printing with collograph blocks made from found materials.

We were on tables of four and started by drawing an object in front of us. We then had to pass this around the table and redraw our object. The sketch on the left is after all four of us have drawn our object. We then had to isolate part of the design.

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 This then formed the design for the block. Cardboard was used and scraps of fabric, scrim, paper etc were glued on. Paint was added and we used this to print from. Normally you would glue the bits down with stronger glue and you would seal the block with varnish before using it but we only had a few hours which left no drying time.

The block was printed several times onto two pieces of white fabric

Further embellishments were added. All that is needed now is some stitching.

Dyeing, printing and quilting - what fun!

Following on from the last blog I thought I would show you some of my experiments with the fabrics I had printed.

First I tried quilting in circles by hand ...

... then I tried a mixture of machine and hand quilting

Here is a detail ...

I then thought I would use some of the fabrics I had dyed earlier in the year (here's a reminder)

Using a mixture of techniques from the workshop and some stencils that I had cut from acetate I created a range of fabrics

I then experimented with free machine quilting on a small piece of fabric

The following piece of fabric is the one I used to clean the rollers and printing plates with before printing. Again I have tried free machine quilting

This is pieced using a variety of dyed and printed fabrics. I just have to decide how to quilt it now.

It's All in the Print

This was a workshop being run yesterday by Art Van Go. As they are in Knebworth and I am working at Duxford (about 30 minutes away) I thought I would go along for a play.

The first thing we did was to grid up the white fabric with masking tape

One colour was added using a roller directly onto the fabric or by using a variety of mono-print techniques. We rolled out the fabric paint onto a sheet of plastic, made marks in the paint and then printed this onto the fabric. The paint was sandwiched between two plates which were then printed onto the fabric. Stencils were also used.

When the paint was dry we removed the masking tape

The masking tape was saved to be reused

This masking tape was then repositioned on the fabric

A second colour was added

The masking tape now needs removing again but as I want to keep and perhaps use the tape I will wait until I get home before doing this.

In between printing on fabric we practiced on paper and also made sure that all paint was used up so that none was washed away.

Printed Birds

I thought I would share some of the work I was doing in the summer. I am working through some printing methods that I can use with my students.

I am always looking for good quality fabrics at a price my students can afford. A couple of years ago Empress Mills  introduced their Egyptian cotton bundles - they are lovely.

Here are some of the colours that I dyed the fabrics using procion dyes.

After drawing a variety of birds I prepared to transfer them to a screen for printing. I also drew some very simplified birds and created some lino blocks.

Here is a fabric printed using the lino. I printed and applied squares of fabric onto the background and then used the lino over the top ...

... and here is this year's (academic) diary with its cover.

As well as printing the birds I also made a screen containing sayings and quotes about birds. Here both screens have been printed on some green fabric.

Here are some of the items made from the fabrics ...
Small pillows - some filled with lavender

Covered journals

... and bags.