Printmaking

Using scraps

| Chrisse Seager

I was clearing out some cut offs for a friend who wanted some bright fabric for project she is doing. I found some bright colours with circles on them. She didn’t get these!! They have been made up into a small sample that has potential to be scaled up.

Pieced Circles

As I was only experimenting, the pieces are just ironed onto a iron-on Vilene. Not a technique to be repeated as it was quite difficult to make the pieces meet cleanly. The patches need to be properly pieced for future pieces.

Zoom has become the latest social media tool for everyone worldwide. It is no longer the preserve of business communities. My husband is even using it for his virtual pub evenings. All attendees sit with a drink and nibbles and the conversation isn’t much different (better) to it was in the pub.

Interestingly enough, it has changed the way my quilting group, CQ West, is communicating. We have had to be more disciplined about talking at our meetings. Side chats are impossible – a good thing!! Overtalking each other has been minimised by the Mute button. Will Zoom be one of the tools we use when life normalises? Time will tell.

Hope you are finding time to experiment. Also that you are keeping well and safe

For Claire

| Chrisse Seager

I did plan to print on fabric – in trouble with Claire as she wanted know what happened to the printing on fabric. So now I have done it. I spent Sunday morning printing – uninterrupted, an usual occurrence. I printed on cartridge paper, rice paper, two fancy Japanese papers that Liz kindly gave me and on FABRIC, cotton. All the same design – well nearly. But much consistent than normal. Howver, my report would say could try harder. 

Here is one of the fabric ones that I have quilted.

 

More to come.

Printmaking to textile

| Chrisse Seager

Why is nothing easy?? The next step with my printmaking was to replicate the design in fabric that it could be quilted. So on the left is the design I choose from yesterday’s printmaking:

Next to it, it is the fabric version – well sort of. The cutter won’t cut the fabric stencils the right way up so I turned the bonded fabric over on the cutter and it mostly worked. A bit of scissor work required. The pale grey is the failed cut which required lots of scissor work. The dark is the turned over fabric – which means it was reversed!! So I know I am dyslexic but even I should have worked that out!. So then I randomised with the fabric shapes to see if the concept worked. The resident art critic says it doesn’t have enough texture! So the jury is out.

Hopefully when I do my next post, i will have managed to replicate a print in fabric.

In answer to Maria’s colour question

| Chrisse Seager

Last time, I posted my prints on Instagram and Facebook, Maria asked about the colours in my printingmaking. We talked about it on Saturday. She felt I haven’t established a colour palette – she is right I haven’t. My quilts are made with colours I like working with and can easily dye to order. Printing inks have proved more difficult for me to work with. I want mucky colours, not clear colours and I am having trouble mixing them right. I need to find a week where I do nothing else but print!!! Yea, right!! But I know it won’t work till I find that time.

In the meantime, I have been cutting up designs I don’t think have merit as a whole. Cut up I can often find bits I really like. A bit like using “L” corners to isolate good bits of a design. I started stitching into them. The first ones are quite crafty.


And now I have one which has the potential to be made into a quilt.

Printing and Text

| Chrisse Seager

Last week, Dot asked me if I had been on workshop to learn to print. Here was my answer:

It is slightly complicated as there is more than one thing going on and I am not sure which process will win, if either! So:

The prints I took to a  CQ West meeting are the result of a dreadful course at Trowbridge College (13 weeks – I wimped out at the end as the instructor was most unhelpful). But I did during the course do lots of research and found that I wanted to do monotypes. I found an artist online whose work I really like – Sandra Kelch. So I went to a printmaker in Trowbridge, Maxine Foster, for two days on my own – her brief was to teach me how to get the effects of Sandra’s work. She was good and taught me a lot of the techniques I should have learnt on the college course.  At home, I have a frame makers press which seems to work fine for the type of printing I am doing. I am using Caligio inks as they are washable. I make card templates and coat them with pva to preserve them. I need to source a slightly thicker card – it works better. The templates are inked up and then I print them one at a time, layering them. This is how I am getting the prints below:

The last Facebook images are the result of a course with Simon Sonsino, http://www.simonsonsino.com/. Stephanie showed me his book last year and two weeks ago I did a course with him. He is a calligrapher gone native!  This was my final piece on paper.

simon-scribble-on-paper

Simon has enabled me to add text to my cloth and just scribble and stamp using balsa wood sticks. I am using FW Acrylics and gesso (for the white). Also adding text using Sharpies and POSCA pens. Below is a detail picture of the fun I am having.

simon-scribble-2

It is a much more liberated way of working. Now to start stitching.

Printmaking

| Chrisse Seager

My blog has been very badly looked after – too many things happening and not much of it creative!  I went to our local college to learn how to print – 10 weeks starting in April. It was a disaster – a tutor who taught us very little and was missing both a sense of humour and skill transfer abilities. A dreadful waste of money and exceedingly frustrating – shame the college has all the equipment.

So last week, I spent two days with Maxine – http://www.maxinefoster.com/www.maxinefoster.com/Home.html. She has a studio in her home. She listened to want I wanted to do and worked with me so that I understood the processes I need and bingo, I have had a great day getting it right today.

Used my own hand made templates – card and pva glue. And just played.

I now have lots to think about to get better compositions and have more control over the layering procesß to get both the colours and effects I want – no small task.

I hope you are stitching!