Textile printing

This week I received a little notebook that I bought from a lovely Japanese textile designer - Hitomi Kimura. Her shop can be found here and her blog is kalla Textile Design. I have followed her blog for a while now and love her textile designs and am amazed how Hitomi manages to print all these in her small apartment.

I am really enjoying my screen printing for textiles course that I have been taking and below is my first design based on pomegranates printed in three colours. The pink seems a little bit too bright, however, someone said it looked like a Mary Quant design which is a sort of compliment as we are supposed to be taking our inspiration from the 1950's /1960's!

I might try printing it in different colours and on a more natural colour background.

'Snowdrop' Cards

Yesterday I had a very successful days printing at Birmingham Printmakers . I had already designed a new card called 'Snowdrops' and wanted to screen print this using two colours. I was really excited when I mixed this lovely green colour and even more excited when I saw the first print layer:

I then mixed up the colour for the top layer and was really pleased with the results:

Screenprinting for textiles - Week 2

Week 2 and Steffan started us off with some drawing exercises using vegetables and fruits. What was interesting was that he told us to think in sections by placing coloured squares behind the fruits. I started off using this pomegranate above as inspiration; which had been 'printed' onto the square behind it. I was also fascinated by the table itself which had wonderful marks on it that had been left behind from printmaking!

Screenprinting for Textiles course

This week saw the start of a new adventure for me - a course in Screenprinting for Textiles which is being held at the Regional Print Centre in Wrexham. Fabric printing is something I have been dipping in and out of, having been inspired by the many wonderful individual fabric printers out in the world (more on this in another post). This is a chance for me and others on the course to learn how to research processes and techniques, produce and develop designs and then produce fabric lengths all of which I am really excited about. I will be posting about my progress and other interesting resources over the next few months. The course is run by the Welsh artist and printmaker Steffan Jones-Hughes who runs the Print Centre.

The first evening we were really lucky to have a talk by Alun Evans who collects printed textiles form the 1940's - 1970's. He gave a presentation and also brought along some of his fabulous textile collection. It was exciting to see so many vibrant textiles, sadly from an era when the British textile industry was in full flow.

The above fabric is by one of my favorite designers from this period Lucienne Day and is called Petal. Among the stunning designs that Alun showed us was this one called Treasure Chest:

This next one called Cascade was designed by Evelyn Redgrave for Heals in the 1970's:

Patio by Sonia Dunthorne:

Another one from Alun's stunning fabric collection:

Extra Curricular activities

I enjoy searching for new blogs and ideas and found a new blog before Christmas called Extra Curricular. On the blog I found a magazine/book that Ellie has produced and sent for it from New Zealand. I bought it mainly because it features one of my favourite bloggers, Melissa from Tiny Happy, however, I was really happy to find there were lots of other creative people in the magazine too.

New Year activities

Happy New Year to Everyone!!! I am ashamed to say it is ages since I have posted on this and my other blog. Time has just flown by and mine seems to have been taken up with finishing off my degree and starting a new part time job. Just before Christmas I sent for these lovely cards from Suzanne of Sakura Snow. There are some still available in her shop and there are two versions of the 'Wolf and Bear in a Wood' card - one with glitter and one without - both have a lovely winter feel about them and I think they could still be sent as cards other than Christmas.

It always feels good this time of year to take out some knitting and the Rowan yarns and patterns that are available are very inviting. This scarf was a free gift when I renewed my Rowan International membership a couple of years ago I decided to start knitting it over Christmas. The colour suits my Mum and this will be a gift for her when it is finished. I thought that perhaps she would want it without the frill but she has decided that she wants it included. My daughter has decided she wants one in a different colour and wants it wider without the frill so I guess I'll be busy for a while!

Continuing with the Venetian theme in my reading, June from our Book Club lent me ‘Daughters of the Doges’ by Edward Charles. The book begins in England with Mary Tudor on the throne, at a time when there was a great deal of religious and political intrigue. The characters set off on a journey through Europe, which is undergoing the consequences of the Reformation, and set off for Padua which is located near Venice. I eagerly started off reading this book as I am fascinated with the changes in and around Europe at the time of the Renaissance (which was not just confined to Italy) and the Reformation. However, I felt that it was as if the book was written by two people; the first part was full of intrigue and adventure, however, when the characters arrive in the Veneto the pace changes. Characters act almost as if they belong in the twenty-first century, rather than the sixteenth century. Towards the end I felt that this happened more and more and the character plots conveniently fitted together too neatly. I felt that it lacked the feel of the uncertain times they were living in and it ended up to be more of a romantic novel which it hadn’t really started out to be. I do like romance but not necessarily neatly served up on a plate when I am expecting quite a clever intriguing plot.

However, I did enjoy reading about Venice and Padua and the book also contained quite a lot about the artists, Tintoretto and Titian and their artistic practices. It does make me want to visit Padua and Venice again....