"Monoprinting" session

Monoprinting has many possibilities, and youtube has many how-to videoa. In fact I've done a two-day course, years ago, and used the process in the "drawing painting printmaking" course last summer, and another couple of courses in 2014 ... but still I'm averse to making monoprints.

I had in mind to use map-grids (as here, which arose from another 2014 course*) but none of those I'd already made (some time ago) could be found, so it was a matter of improvisation.

(*In 2014 I overdid it on summer school courses at City Lit - three courses of at least three days each in the space of four, or maybe only three, weeks. There was overlap, like the use of monoprint in each course, but really any one of the courses would have given me plenty of ideas and impetus. Having them so close together was overload and it felt like a burden. Since then I've been more careful about spacing things out, and about focussing and following up.)

Fabric printing ink was rolled onto perspex, and the fabric laid on top ... think "grid" 'cos it's easy ... use the end of a paintbrush and just make lines across the fabric -

 What are those interesting little bumps? The fabric has stretched and the line has skipped....

 Delightful. The plate gets denser as each new piece of fabric is used -

 but because the ink was rolled out thinly to start with, printing direct from the plate wasn't successful. It might have worked if it could have been put through a press.

Trying out different fabrics (hint: iron the fabric first!) -

 Masking - consider width of masked area in relation to density of grid -

The samples soon mounts up -

 ... and I even did some silly things on paper ...

But it didn't feel like there was a "real purpose" to it - no proper "intent". Monoprinting continues to be a struggle - pushing aside brambles in a pathless wood.

Never mind, the (short) session yielded enough fabric for some more wee quilty pieces. Dipping into the scrapbag has started moving the next journal quilt towards its birth -

My thoughts go between deciding on the big pieces for the bottom layer and thinking about what sort of stitching might be used. Choosing and adding "bits" is the part that seems to just happen.