Kantha course

I took a class with Amarjeet Nandhra in Recycling fabrics using Kantha.

Kantha is popular in South East Asia and features the running stitch. Kantha work has a story or narrative and people develop their personal motifs. It's often worked communally.

Key themes in Kantha

Some of the features are the personal motif, as mentioned, border patterns, puckering, a sense of personal meaning in the fabric, using thread to make connections between one part and another.

I decided to use pieces I'd already made using dyeing, screen and block printing. I didn't like any of my dyed pieces so had no sense of personal connection with them but the printed samples were ones I quite liked.

Here is how it went.

The stitch goes for a swim around my tie dye.

Really don't like this piece but I persevered. 

Amarjeet suggested I take the spiral stitch out onto the rest of the piece to unify it.

Just a small bit of running stitch added to a couple of samples to join them together.

A couple of samples from another class (trying out opaque screen printing and puff medium)

Cut up and reassembled.

The work to join nit up starts.

Using both the shape of the birds and the pattern on the background fabric to inspire where the running stitch should go.

Class work - some great ideas.

Some great inspirations

Suggested by Amarjeet:

Debra Weiss - I'm always drawn to patchwork reuse of textile scraps with overlaid stitch.

Christine Mauersberger - Kantha-esque stitch work as well as lots lots more. More here.

Arlee Barr - lots of natural dyes and reuse of textile scraps.

Dorothy Caldwell - dense stitchwork and reuse of textiles. Dorothy's website here.

Polychromatic and Breakdown Printing

We did Polychromatic and Breakdown Printing in class. Very chemically and very messy work. My classmates made a much better fist of it which always demoralises me.

Polychromatic Printing

Polychromatic printing is where Procion MX dye is painted onto the screen and dried. It is then printed out onto cloth that has been previously soda soaked and dried. This is done by pulling dye paste through the screen.

You more or less know what you're going to get but as you repeat the print it fades which can give some nice effects.

From this screen...

...I got this print - I had sprinkled some hole punch dots on the cloth

For the next try (below) I laid out a tree stencil and pulled a screen with reds and magentas dried on it. I went left to right so the print faded as it went. I then laid out a leaf stencil and with a green screen I pulled from right to left so the leaves get fainter as they go.

Because the cloth was wet from the first pull the leaves have a fuzzy edge. If I wanted a sharp edge I'd need to let the first layer batch and dry and do the leaves another day.

Print Two

The tree stencil after the pulls

The leaf stencil after the pulls

For my final try I painted some olive green on a screen but without going all the way to the edges. It looked purposely painterly. I then put some magenta dots randomly across the screen. After it dried I laid out some bird stencils on the fabric and pulled.

Print Three

Bird stencils

Breakdown Printing

It's worth watching this video of Kerr Grabowski demoing Deconstructed (Breakdown) Screen Printing first.

The difference here is that the dye applied to the screen is thickened dye. As the print paste is pulled over it it releases parts of the dye randomly. The results are unexpected and exciting.

Mine where somewhat underwhelming if I'm honest but at least I tried.

Applying the thickened dye to one of my homemade screens

Speeding up the drying process

Being underwhelmed by the results

Links

http://www.kerrgrabowski.com/dsp.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvHY-LhLsAQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOV1fsetz04

https://katherinesands.wordpress.com/tutorial-breakdown-printing/

http://feltingandfiberstudio.com/2014/04/12/breakdown-screen-printing-party/

Breakdown Printing: New Dimensions for Texture and Colour Paperback by Claire Benn and Leslie Morgan

Gray's School of Art paste recipes (somewhat scientific).

Making my own Screens for Printing (and Thermofax Orders)

I decided to make my own screens for printing having seen how flexible (literally) the Thermofax screens are. There's nothing to say that screens have to be framed and heavy and unwieldy.

I made two types. One from plain mesh which I bought from Hunt The Moon and one from some screens I had made up by Thermofax which I bought unframed to keep the cost down.

Making up the screens

For the plain mesh I went for white 43T which is good for fabric printing. If you want to understand the mesh sizes I found these links useful: Catspit Forum and Catspit site. But you can as easily go and buy some sturdy net curtain.

The Thermofax screens come ready cut to size.

To make a frame I used a card envelope that I'd had some books delivered in as it was a good mix of flexible and stiff. I also made some without the card frame, just duct tape.

You can buy ready-cut plastic frames from Thermofax but I thought they were a bit thick and that the mini sized ones have really narrow edges on the long side. But I have yet to try them out.

Measure out and cut the card frame

Cut the opening of the card frame

Put double-sided sticky take around the edges to hold the mesh screen; if you are using a Thermofax screen then make sure to place it the right way round (they include clear instructions)

Surround the frame with duct tape

Turn over and surround the frame with more duct tape making sure to line it up with the tape on the other side of the screen

Neat corners

If you are making up a Thermofax screen then be sure to mark your screen with which side is up; I've also add a reminder to wash the screen

I also made up a totally frameless screen and this is how I did it.

Tape the mesh screen to a cutting board with masking tape - make sure to get it nice and flat by readjusting one corner at a time (I stretched this one out a bit more than you see in the photo)

Place duct tape all the way around on one side then turn over and place duct tape on the other side taking care to match up exactly over the tape underneath; or you could just fold the tape from underneath over itself - remember that you need to create a 'well' for the ink

Tidy up the edges.

Thermofax screens

I bought some thermofax screens both framed and unframed. You can pick from their ready-made range or send them an image to make up a custom screen. Their turnaround is impressive at just a day or two.

Making my own thermofax screen

I even looked into trying to make my own thermofax or similar type of screen. Here are a couple of links I found useful (spoiler: turns out thermofax machines are impossible to find and expensive):

• http://thermofaxconfidential.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/buying-thermofax-machine.html
• http://www.gericondesigns.com/weblog/?p=307

Enjoy your screen making.

Sketchbook - Early Progress

In a previous post called The Importance of a Sketchbook I kicked off my fledgling effort. The main question for me is how does the sketchbook help in the artistic process.

Here is one example of an answer.

Pictures of birds in flight in formation generating words like 'order', 'tempo', 'beat'.

Initial drawings include quick, impressionistic scribbles with my favourite graphite pencils.

The scribbles got translated to block prints made from foam and printed onto a scrap of fabric using screen-printing inks.

The value of the thinking time the sketchbook work gave me meant that I came up with those pencil scribbles to translate what I was seeing. I think these will work really well in stitch by the way. For this exercise though the end result were some block prints. I had to translate spidery scribbles into an outline for printing blocks to work. I'm really pleased with the result.

I'm also learning to use resources around me for inspiration: the world; the internet...

None of this would have happened left to my own devices!! Thanks to the course I'm doing tutored by Louise Baldwin.

Artists' sketchbooks

Always on the hunt for how others handle their sketchbooks, I found Shelley Rhodes' really interesting to flick through.

I also found Cathy Cullis' Sketchbook Sundays really helpful and will follow them eagerly.

Recommendations

Any recommendations of places to see sketchbook work will be much appreciated.