Saturday 11 May 2013

Lino printing on a rusted ground

I thought some time ago of printing with my fish lino block onto the fabric I rusted here 

Finally I managed it but as usual a work in progress. It's about a foot wide by about 3 or so feet long. I've got some work to do with the stitching to 'blend in, shall we say, where the block moved when I flipped the piece over so that I could roller over the cloth onto the block but I was too impatient to lay the cloth down over the block in the first place - how do you work out where you are going? can't use a registration sheet here & cloth is a little more floppy than paper ;)


  I've been drooling over some wonderful pics here on Pinterest   & came across the lovely piece I own by underatopazsky!





I wanted to add some mono printed fabric in smokey blues so I got out my favorite Indanthrene blue & mixed it with a little white or a little black. Hmmm, a bit pale on the cloth laid out over my sketchbook above & the pieces below are a little pale too. The dark print left is using the clean up cloth from the water based lino ink



 Worked well on paper tho. The tree like feature is from the cling film that I put at the bottom of the pan before I poured my gelatin - helps you to get the 'plate' out of the pan, lovely but fragile, hence the hole - I'll never make perfect prints!

Even tho I already had delicious texture marks I made a couple of stamps to use with the printing. In Gwen Hedley's book Drawn to Stitch she uses glass in her section on printing but I do love the give of a gelatin plate. She uses string as a resist, makes marks on the plate using fingers & a stick or draws from the back of the paper. Then she gives suggestions for printing line using card adding string or softsculpt shapes or card ends, including corrugated card also carving into a rubber eraser. One day i will make samples of these ;) I made my little blocks, above left, using cut card. The first one is loosely taken fro my drawing of a rock fissure a couple of weeks ago & the 3 circles, (cut from card - could I find any washers?) inspired by the 3 circles in the fish print. the blocks look better than the prints!


 So, above the hanging has some small chopped up pieces of the printed cloth added, well, they're just clinging on but it doesn't really 'speak' to me, looks too contrasty, like I've just 'plonked' them on....which I have, for now, but still...It doesn't seem to tie in. I'll take them off & do a bit more machine stitch & lots more hand stitch, well, whatever I can manage over the next 3 weeks!

 I put this smaller 'hanging' together seeing if that would work & it seems simpler to me, works better - maybe the fish are the problem! I'll add hand stitch here too. I'll have to go back here to Jennifer C Q for some more wonderful inspiration



 OK, a silly question. How do you store your spools of cotton? Clearly the basket above is getting ridiculous, the tray below too small (very kindly donated to me by a neighbor) maybe one has lots of trays? I know, I've come to the 'sorting' lark rather late in the day, too many spools to throw into one basket now.


 I leave you with Willow doing her Yoga on my chair, I think I'll join her.






12 comments:

Cate Rose said...

I love what you're doing, Emma. I have that book!...just pulled it off the shelf to revisit. It IS wonderful, I love how organic everything is. Your work is inspiring! xo

ju-north said...

Love your colour range here! Blends in with the surroundings! Love how you show the development of your work

Anonymous said...

Great rusty fabric with fish. That pinterest board is so amazing too....although I don't think it's gon anything on you......xox

Heloise said...

My threads are stored by type in boxes and by colour. I keep every day colours like navy, cream along with black and white in a basket close to the machine.

Enjoy sorting yours.

Robin Mac said...

I love seeing the progress of your pieces, I am sure the fish piece will look superb after you finish all the stitching.
I keep my threads in large clear boxes specially made and sold in our local sewing store. Then I have a small basket to throw in all the spools I am using on any one project - sometimes takes a while to get back where they should be though!! Cheers

Anonymous said...

I just love the rusty fish hanging and that pale blue is a perfect mix with the rusty tones. What about using organza in bigger pieces so the background will show through the organza but you'll still get that cloudy blue? Glad to know you're still enjoying the rusty piece you won last year! I don't have many spools of thread but my mum keeps hers very successfully in flat Ferrero Rocher boxes, the ones that carry a single layer of choccies and are about 10" by 7" (ish...). They fit traditional shaped reels perfectly. And of course, in order to get some, you'd have to eat Ferrero Rocher...

Maggi said...

I love the fish on the rust. The pale blue and rust go so well together had you thought of doing the fish in blue if you feel that they are not quite right. Must get out Gwen's book.

AnniD said...

I too love the fish and rust, they go well together... the rhythm of the identical versus the haphazard... I love the way you are not afraid to try things!

Linda Vincent said...

Love to see the way you work and think Emma......I really like the blue image (4th pic down)...it all looks so interesting put together like that.
Imagining you doing yoga with Willow...... ommmmmm ;-) xx

LiamRyder said...

I just tried to add prints to my T-shirts and did this cloth printing using plastic embroidery hoop, I would like to add your design and will try to do like that, next time.

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