Print, Stitch, Go! with Leah Higgins

The last of the workshops I had booked for this year was Print, Stitch, Go! at Leah Higgin's Urban Studio North. 

Leah suggested we choose 2 colours and work with a dark, medium and light version of each.  I chose Rust Brown and Black.  The Kemtex Black is quite blue.  I worked with Rust Brown last time I was at Leah's and didn't want my fabrics to be as dark this time.  Leah had mixed the dye powder with print paste already.  She suggested I then mixed my dark pot of black as 25% colour with 75% print paste, and the dark pot of rust brown as 50% colour with 50% print paste.  The medium is mixed as 1 part dark to 4 parts print paste, and the light is 1 part medium to 4 parts print paste.

We spent most of the first two days screen printing either with thermofax screens (as below) or with various methods of screen printing.

I used paper dots and bits of paper doily on my screens when I overprinted the fabric above.  I don't like the doily print but the fabrics were being made to cut up so not to worry!

It looked very dark when wet but when it was washed the next day it was much paler.

I printed this fabric with one of Leah's thermofax screens.

Then I made a masking tape screen and overprinted.

This was taken whilst it was still wet.

We only had time to make one breakdown screen and as I loved the arches fabric I made last time I decided I would use that technique.  As my theme for my fabrics was Venice (what a surprise!) I thought this would be sufficiently architectural.

I love what happens when you print it.

I used up the screen on another piece of fabric and then overprinted.

I also tried putting a commercial stencil under my screen and printed with that.

Here's a different stencil printed with the dark colours.  I had mostly been using medium and light on the other fabrics.

I also printed with my own thermofax screens.

Lastly on the second day we exchange dyed fat quarters in plastic bags to match our printed fabrics.  I had 8 pieces so I dyed six of them using the half rust and quarter black colours.

I used half strength magenta with a 'smidge' of black and half strength turquoise with a 'smidge' of black to get some accent colours.

On the middle day of the 5 day workshop we washed out all our fabrics and changed the studio over from a wet space to a dry space.  Then we talked about what we were going to do with our fabrics.

But that's another post!

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Z is for determination!

In our Living Your Word of the Year group we are using a fortnightly (bi-weekly) A-Z challenge throughout the year to help us focus on our word and live it out.

Because of the way I have made my journal it's a case of going with the flow of what background the pages have when I turn to them.

I looked up verses on Biblegateway related to Zeal which was my chosen Z word.  However I couldn't find ones that fitted with my word Commitment.  So I looked for synonyms of Zeal which fitted with Commit/Commitment.  I found perseverance and determination.  Searching these words on Biblegateway brought up some verses that I thought fitted well for the last letter post.

As the year has gone on I feel my pages have become more and more minimalist.

I have one double page spread left in my journal where I am going to reflect on 2019.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Advent Words

Mary Brack has written an Advent Study based on John 1:1-18.  It started on Sunday but you still have time to join in.   This blog post explains how it works.

Bobby Britnell

I spent a couple of days at Littleheath Barn doing a workshop 'Imaginative Design using tone & colour' with Bobby Britnell. This post is particularly photo heavy - I should, perhaps, have written two posts!

Day 1
For the first activity we covered the paper with charcoal and then drew into it with pointed scissors, charcoal and an eraser.

The second activity was a group activity where 4 of us on this table drew lines on the paper, moving anti-clockwise around the table.  There was another table with 6 people doing the same activity.

Then we each chose a pastel and started to colour in some of the shapes.

Then Bobby separated out the sheets and we each took one of the 10 sheets.

I took photos at various stages of the colouring in but I'm not going to show you every one.

Some of the lines were too harsh in this

 So I knocked some of it back.  We had to do more to it on day 2.

We went on to do line drawing where you don't take the pen off the paper.  We had to draw the person opposite.  I won't tell you who it is!  Anyway, we had to try 1. not looking at the paper and only at the person, 2. drawing with our non dominant hand, 3. drawing being able to look at the paper and 4. giving the face an expression.   Bearing in mind I was drawing a woman, I have here John Major puppet from Spitting Image,  almost Hermann Munster, Bruce Forsyth and who knows!

These drawings were of me

Then we moved on to some colouring exercises: Complementary, analagous, primaries (only I did secondaries with it) and black and one colour where I got carried away with the black!

Here's how it should have looked!

Lastly on day 1 we drew with a wax candle and then with wax crayons, followed by an ink wash.  I like the technique but didn't particularly like what I did.

 On to Day 2

We continued with the pastel drawing.  I had completed colouring all the spaces but went back to it to add more layers and to knock back some of the sharp edges.  I tried putting frames on various parts of the paper to isolate sections.

Sorry I didn't photograph this quite straight!

I took one last photo of the paper before Bobby gave me the next thing to do.

In preparation for the workshop, Bobby had drawn lines on the back of the paper, which none of us had noticed.   She had drawn 3 strips for us to cut off.

This one in particular looked like it could be made into a landscape hanging.

 Having cut off the strips I was left with a large square.

 I took various photos of small sections of the large square.  And tried the strips on top of the square.

 
The strips had lines drawn on the back for squares and rectangles.  I cut up two of the strips.  This was the best small rectangle.

We started a new exercise which I cannot explain.  I struggled to understand what we were doing.  It started with drawing squares with charcoal.

Adding some circles.

And then I added colour.  This isn't how it was supposed to look but it's my version of what I understood to be the instructions.  

We also did some tonal exercises which I didn't photograph.  I had done a workshop with Bobby before and some of the exercises are described here.

Congratulations if you've made it to the end of this post.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice