Saturday 31 March 2018

Art Cloth Day 2 part 2

Earlier in the week I showed you what I had been doing on the Art Cloth workshop.  We had a really busy day.  So far I have shown you the breakdown printing and the masking tape printing.

We moved on to using soya wax.  I didn't get on with it at all.  I suspect it's a technique you really need to practise.

Then we moved on to making stencils and masks from newspaper.   I made a spiral.  I used brown thickened dye to print through the paper stencil.  I used blue which turned green because I didn't wait for the brown spirals to dry when using the mask.

At home I decided I would tray dye this fabric to get rid of the white.

I mixed Old Gold in one pot and Merlot (dye powder not the wine) in the other.


And poured it on.  At this point I was not particularly hopeful because I hadn't really followed the instructions for dyeing.

I left it soaking for several hours before rinsing and drying.  Here's both sides of the fabric.


I don't like it much but then I often don't.  Next time I'll print on it with acrylic or fabric paint and the time after we're trying out Formosul so maybe I'll be able to calm the colour down a bit.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Tuesday 27 March 2018

Art Cloth Day 2

Last week was day 2 of the Art Cloth workshop at Littleheath Barn.  I blogged about Day 1 here.   In between these days I did some monoprinting and added the papers to my sketchbook.





When we arrived for day 2 our screens were waiting for us to do the breakdown printing.  My screen looked like this with the bubblewrap still on it.

I peeled off the bubblewrap ready for action.

 I used manutex print paste through the screen onto the fabric.

By the time I had done several prints on fabric and on pages of my sketchbook the screen looked like this.

 We moved on to using masking tape as a mask on the screen.

I used Robin's Egg Blue thickened dye through the screen, printing over the same piece of fabric, sometimes turning the screen the other way round.


My sketchbook pages from the screen printing.




This has become a rather long post with lots of photos, so I am going to stop here and continue in another post on Saturday.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice


Saturday 24 March 2018

Traverse at the NEC

For four days in March, the ladies of Traverse exhibited their work on the theme of Destinations.  Cath has written a brilliant blog post about it.

Here, I'm going to share photos of my work.  This is Pathways.

Venice Hanging

Venice Tiles

The various Venice inspired books

A rare photo of me.  Here I'm demonstrating how to make mixed media books.

And the little zigzag book I made over three days.

On Sunday I began to make a fabric scroll book.

Since the show I have put together this video using photos from different members of the group.  Enjoy!


We have set up our own YouTube channel and hope to put new videos up every now and again.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice


Tuesday 20 March 2018

Snapshot Girls Photos

I belong to a Ladies Photography group called Snapshot Girls.  Each month we submit 5 photos on a theme.   

January's theme was Christmas



 



 and February's theme was Winter.





If you like the idea of taking 5 photos on a theme you could try joining Sandie in her 5 in 5 challenge on her blog.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice



Saturday 17 March 2018

Developing sketchbooks as a rich resource

I recently attended a workshop, Developing sketchbooks as a rich resource organised by Becca from Textile Explorations.  We had an amazing two days with Amanda Hislop.  Lots of photos to follow.
Photo by Becca Birtles

On the first day Amanda talked about her sketchbooks and the techniques she uses.  Her books are gorgeous and I sat and stroked them at various points over the weekend.

Our first activity was to glue pieces of tissue onto large sheets of paper and then to make marks using black ink, brown ink and wax candle.  We used 'cola' pens and other mark making tools.





We used large sheets of teabag paper to mop up the excess ink and water.  When this was dry it was a useful addition to our later mini collages.

Amanda suggest we cut one of these sheets up to make a small zigzag book.  I have done this with her before so knew what was coming.  I kept very quiet (I know - unusual!) and there were lots of oos and ahhs when folks saw the finished little book.

Now some of you who haven't done any of this before may have looked at the photos above and thought 'what a mess!'  That's ok because mostly it was but then the magic happens.  And through the rest of the first day and into the second I identified small parts of these papers worth cutting out and stuck them into my sketchbook ready to work on them later.

Teabag paper






And here are some of the pages with added marks.










 I had a lovely time.  If you want to read more about the weekend  you can do on Becca's blog.

Thank you for joining me today.
Bernice