blood red

There's been some printing going on around here! This time I've made up a rich blood red ink and printed my banksia pod design with it. I quite like the way it came up against the warmth of the linen.

I use 2 types of Russian linen - a warmer colour called 'flax' and a slightly cooler one called 'oatmeal'.

pic 1: flax
pic 2: oatmeal
pic 3: oatmeal
pic 4: flax

The thing I LOVE about printing on 100% linen is the way these towels wear over time to a gorgeous softness with use in the kitchen. And linen is such a beautiful natural product. Remember this video I posted last year about how it's made?

Oh, and they're in the shop. Of course. Xmas pressies perhaps???

ice blue

Sometimes you've got to go with the idea of 'less is more'. Even though the over-printing on the snow gum print was working out I decided that I wanted to have a single print of this design on linen as well. So I mixed up a nice ice blue this morning as an experiment. Then a printmaker on twitter, @meganjmcpherson, suggested that the coolness of the blue against the warmth of the linen worked because it does in nature. This was the image she used to make her case:

which kind of makes sense to me. So it's listed here in case it takes your fancy.

creating 'snow gum'

Guess what? More screen printing!

These are a few pics of a new design, 'snow gum', in progress. I was inspired by the beautiful shapes of eucalyptus snow gum tree leaves. They're so soft and round and very different to other eucalyptus leaf shapes which are often much longer and more pointed. I also wanted the print to have the appearance of floating on the linen.

I ended up making it a 2 colour print on the flax coloured linen even though I like the single colour (turquoise) on the linen also. I was keen to experiment with some overprinting which is how the 2 colour print (in turquoise and white) came about.

The last pic is of the design in progress with a layer of drafter's film over the top. This is what I've been using to create stencils because it's reusable even though it's harder to cut than paper. I really like it as a material for creating stencils.

Snow Gum in the 2 colour format is now available in the shop. Happy dish drying!

banksia pod red

My banksia pod tea towel is now available in a deep, dirty red after a morning spent screen printing. These are 100% linen and I've printed on both the warmer 'flax' type (pictured) and a slightly cooler 'oat'. So you can take your pick. I'll be listing the oat one in the shop later today. If you haven't tried these towels before then you're in for a treat. The quality in Russian linen is exquisite and will soften over time as it's used and washed and loved.

blue

And then there was blue.....
But screen printed this time. Once again on 100% flax coloured linen tea towels. I cut a stencil by hand and modified the design just a little so it could be screen printed. I've decided to call this design banksia pod because it was inspired by some ink paintings of pods I did last year. M just told me these work really well with our kitchen colours. But I am letting them go: if you fancy them they're in the shop now.

hand work

Finally, a product from my 3 colour screen printing effort with Harvest Textiles. Now if I could only find the perfect cushion insert and get rid of the crappy one I currently have inside it. Any suggestions?

I can't stop thinking about sashiko embroidery lately. I've never tried it but am keen to. I'm thinking something simple to start with like this pattern of mine in red on black calico. But maybe even that's too ambitious??? Only one way to find out.

wet

Things to do when you've got rainy weather on your hands:

1. Make a cushion cover. This one is screen printed and sewn by me. You can't tell in my hopeless photograph but it has a black cotton back to it which gives it a nicer balance than just the all-over natural cotton look.

2. Make a pear tart. With pastry from scratch (I think it's a first for me). We used a combo of the pastry recipe from here and the pear and fragipane tart filling from here. This would be one of my last meals/things to eat on earth if I had to choose. Tons of butter but as we all know that's why it tastes so good.

repeat

The resulting print: 3 colour repeat screen print on calico of my slightly deco influenced flower motif. Do I have table envy of what after using that lovely long one again at I&S? Try as I might I can't replicate this amazing set up at home.

Thanks again to the lovely women of Harvest Textiles - the workshop was fab. There was such a lovely buzz around the studio yesterday. Very inspiring!

a little bit deco

My design prep for a 3-colour repeat screen printing workshop with Harvest Textiles at I&S studios tomorrow. I think I'm going to use this motif I designed and put together using luscious black sumi ink. The repeat you can see in the background is what it looked like once I scanned it into Photoshop and played with the colour. I wanted to get an idea of how it might look in repeat before I committed to it big time on fabric. I'll be adding one more colour to the mix. Should be so much fun!

layers - day 2

Day 2 of workshop - more layering of the prints we started on day 1. It was really freeing and playful to work like this. No plans, no expectations, just experimentation with a range of stencils we'd cut.Day 2 repeat print - when I signed up for the workshop I decided that I needed to loosen up my usual design style a bit and that this would be a good chance to work quite differently. Get out of my comfort zone if you will. I usually work quite tightly and on a fairly small scale. So working with the banksia ink drawings I'd done on day 1 I decided to design a fairly loose abstract repeat pattern print with some of those ideas. I used a cotton base cloth that was 'stone' in colour. Choosing and mixing the right coloured ink to print with was challenging though. I think the colour I made was too light in the end - a pale pistachio. It think this design might look quite different if printed in black.

I can't recommend this 2 day workshop enough. It's run by Harvest Textiles and they're just so lovely. Lara, our teacher for the weekend was as patient and knowledgeable about printmaking as they come. And we got such a buzz from being a small group of people doing this together. If you want to learn some basics about textile printing then this is the place to do it.

layers

Layers of screen printing on fabric. Screens made from hand cut stencils while at day 1 of the wonderful Harvest Textiles 2 day printing workshop. The deep red coloured design was inspired by banksia pods. It was so lovely to be in the beautiful Ink & Spindle studio all day today printing these. More printing tomorrow too :)

dan mccarthy: screenprints

Dan McCarthy: The Woods

If this print wasn't already sold out I'd be lining up to purchase it. American printmaker Dan McCarthy's screenprint The Woods. Someone who loves printing and drawing trees as much as I do! And look at those sweet little owl faces in the trees! Little eyes peeping out at us. Click on the image to get a better look. Oh and he has some cool screen printed t-shirts for sale too. Thanks to printinteresting for leading me to his site.

hanabi shirt in chocolate brown

I know it must seem like all I ever do lately is print hanabi in different ways on different fabrics. One of my work colleagues even suggested I could keep going and make a whole range of clothes with hanabi. But that would be kind of wacky. In my defense I will say that I printed this one a while ago when it was called particles but today I sewed it into this shirt.
I'm calling this one hanabi shirt in chocolate brown. Now for all you super nifty sewers out there I have to let you know something - I made this without a pattern! Yep, that's right, I free-wheeled it and just cut the fabric out around a shirt I've had for years and really like. It was definitely scary to do this. I kept thinking, oh man you are going to mess this up. And I will say it's not perfect. BUT it does have lining inside it! I've never put lining in anything before so that was kind of interesting. I bought this super soft light-weight natural coloured cotton lining because I wanted the shirt to feel really soft against my skin. It took ages for me to work out how to do it so that it looked as nice on the inside (well almost) as it does on the outside (I'm talking stitching here) but I got there eventually. And I made friends with my iron. I had no idea how useful an iron can be with sewing.
This pic is just to prove my story about the lining. Just in case you thought I was fibbing or something.

hanabi print in grey

This time I printed hanabi in grey on a new black light-weight denim skirt I made yesterday. I decided to print the motif down the centre of the skirt and I think it works. I had a few issues with printing yesterday but I'm pretty sure I've sorted it out now. These things are all trial and error :)

I made the skirt a bit loose to allow for the 4% shrinkage when it's heat set. Fingers crossed it will fit more snuggly once that's done.

all stitched up

This post is a bit of a show and tell because I've made my first skirt ever! And what's more surprising is I even like it :) It's made from very dark light-weight denim with a very simple pattern that falls just below the knee. But it does have a zip! This is a big deal as it took 5 goes on crappy fabric for me to get it right. I patiently unpicked the mistakes very time to re-use the zip until I finally understood how to do it properly. I listened to about 4 podcasts from craft sanity while I was sewing so I had good company. The skirt's not finished yet as I plan to screen print either hanabi or dragonflies on the front of it when I get around to repairing my silk screen after it spontaneously burst 2 nights ago. I think this top from Queen (swoon) looks perfect with it.

Edit a few hours later: I printed hanabi on the skirt (see 2nd pic). It took 3 layers of red to get it to stand out like that on the denim because it's so dark. I was saved by Jezze's innovative credit card method of screen printing.

hanabi print tea towel

Screen printed by hand on cotton/linen blend fabric in bone. I even made the tea towel! Now that was a lot of fun. It didn't take long for my teenage memory of sewing to kick in again once I put my hands on a sewing machine. The tea cup in the first pic is one of my favourite pieces from a pottery village called Shigaraki near Kyoto.

Hanabi means fireworks in Japanese. Thanks to hiki-san for the name suggestion.

blossoms and dragonflies

There was a good frost on the ground this morning but despite the cold wattle trees everywhere are still managing to push out their lovely yellow blossoms. At this time of winter there is nothing more cheerful than seeing this piercing yellow colour all over trees in the streets. I think they're getting ready for spring. Or maybe they're just a little early?
Like these dragonflies. They're definitely early. All sketched up on drafting film and waiting to be cut out for screen printing on fabric. Which will happen this weekend with a bit of planning and luck.

chocolate and teal

While I was printing particles in chocolate brown on fabric last weekend I decided to also print some cards for the shop. I printed some in single colours and others with two colours: chocolate and teal.
My beloved favours the single coloured teal ones whereas I prefer the cards with two colours. What do you think?

I plan to print on fabric again this weekend but this time with a different design. I picked up some small fabric samples during the week which should be perfect to use. And I'm so so so tempted to buy a second hand sewing machine.

particles in chocolate brown

For a long time now I've been wanting to put part of a screen print design I did a months ago on fabric. And yesterday I did! Introducing: particles in chocolate brown ink on natural Indian cotton. I don't have a professional set up at home so this was quite a challenge. Since my previous print on paper had been made with a hand cut paper stencil that had the lifespan of just that one printing session I had to hand cut the stencil for particles again. Mixing the ink for the exact shade of chocolate brown took longer than I expected. These pics make the ink look black but it's a delicious, dare I say very edible shade of chocolate brown.
And because the Indian cotton I printed on is in a lovely natural shade I'm quite excited about how well the chocolate brown sits on it. I printed about 2 metres of fabric using the placement method of screen printing which took a while as I had to take care not to smudge wet ink I'd just printed. I'd like to use the fabric to make a shirt for summer based on the design of one I already have. Or even some simple serviettes. Now if I only had a sewing machine and could sew!

red

As weird as this may sound, I'm convinced that I enjoy the cutting of paper stencils as much as printing itself with screen printing. It's labour intensive for sure, but somehow so meditative. This one took me a while to cut but it wasn't overly painful.

And thanks to J & J I have Lena's new book Printing by Hand to keep me inspired. I scored it for my birthday last week :)