Into lino printing! At SEATA (Scunthorpe Embroidery and Textile Association) today, we enjoyed a half day workshop from Hannah Turlington looking at lino printing on fabric. I was pretty sure I had a set of lino cutting tools somewhere and the evening before the workshop I actually managed to lay my hands on them and a bonus in the form of some oddments of traditional hessian-backed lino.
I've only ever done lino prints once before and that was in 3rd year (Y9 in new money) Art at High School, so I was curious to see what I could do with the tools before I got as far as the workshop. I had some small offcuts so I decided to do a bit of doodling on one of them, just playing with curving lines. I dimly remembered it being quite hard to do, but either the tools were very sharp or I've got a lot more strength in my hands than I had at 13, as I was surprised and pleased to find that it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I also found it strangely calming, almost mindful - I love the way the blade feels in my hand as it glides through the lino and the bits curl away from the line I'm carving. I was quite sorry when I had to stop because there was literally nothing more I could cut away! I do like the little wavy abstract block I created.
I have a bit of a thing for medieval tiles, particularly the ones that have a partial design that you can tesselate to make larger patterns, so I was keen to do something along those lines in the workshop. I used a medieval design from a book as the basis of my design and made sure I measured carefully and used straight lines and templates as much as I could to try and make sure everything would line up. Nothing like going in at the deep end! Hannah provided us with some modern soft cut lino for our blocks, which was very much easier to carve than the traditional stuff.
I was quite concerned that I might not have left enough of the fine lines on my design and so it was with trepidation that I did a test print on an oddment of fabric that Hannah had provided. The line widths were fine, but I was disappointed that my circle was well out of true.
Since I already had the printing stuff out, I decided to make a trial print of the block I'd carved the previous night and was delighted to find that it printed beautifully.
This cheered me up enough to return to the medieval tile pattern and try and print a set of four more accurately to see if I could get the circle to line up any better, which I did to an extent as the circle is not even on both sides. This is printed on a piece of silk taffeta, which is crisp and gives a lovely finish to the print.
Then I wondered what would happen if I rotated the block and put the quatrefoils centre stage. I much prefer this one because as I was able to measure the straight lines, they all match much better than the quarter circles which were done a bit best guess as I didn't have a compass.
Lastly we were given canvas tote bags to decorate. I wasn't confident to print with the medieval tile block by eye, and I didn't have time to measure up the bag to make sure they would be straight, so I decided to go back to my wavy abstract block and print it as a top and bottom border. I had to cheat the pattern in a few places to make sure it fitted, but I really like it.
Definitely something I would like to do more of. Not just as a basis for stitching, but because I really enjoyed the process. However, first I really do need to work out how to get those extra eight hours squeezed into a day...
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