From the archive - April 2011 - journey line books

If the photos don't appear, please go to the source - https://margaret-cooter.blogspot.com/2011/04/journey-line-books.html

Oh what fun it was to print, and print, and print, on the long textile-printing table in the first year of my MA at Camberwell. The next  year the room was "repurposed".

I still have many of those papers, and also the textiles - perhaps their day will come.

19 April 2011

Journey line books

This morning I gathered all the sheets of paper printed during the past six weeks or so - they amount to 25 sheets of A2 size, 43 sheets of A3, and 28 sheets of A4. All are printed on both sides, the smaller sizes with up to six colours, but mostly two or three colours.

Now come the great questions of how to make them into books, and what kind of books - big floppy books? small springy books? interwoven books? concertinas, codexes, or crazily complicated? Should I leave the sheets intact, or should I cut them up into ever-smaller pieces?

The first step was looking critically at my rather random results, and documenting (preserving!) the ones I found particularly pleasing - inevitably they were the simple combinations (click to enlarge) -

The two sides of a sheet have no relation to each other. Many combinations are possible. It's all a bit confusing at the moment - not least because they are double-sided.

"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.

Submitting work online - the second scroll

Last month I came up with a little project to help keep me going creatively - namely, submitting old work to new shows. The point is to be creative with the old work, and the first submission involved reformulating what the work was about.

This month I'm using much the same statement to support the submission of "the second scroll".
It was started while the first was being exhibited somewhere, I forget where ... I loved that way of working, and how it slowly but surely grew. At the time I was using this stitching as a way to start my studio-time, trying to focus on what I was planning to work on that day.

No.2 is shorter, 206cm rather than 370cm (they are 26cm wide). I photographed the siblings together -

The box in which No.2 is kept also contained the colour-catchers onto which the strips of newspaper are stitched - but they haven't been inked. It's a beautiful day and I'm determined to get away from the computer and do some sewing while in the garden. So some colour-catchers have been inked up and are drying. They are very absorbent, and I experimented with how to extend the ink - how far could it be diluted? Haven't finally answered that question; my experiment involved spraying the fabric and loading the brush with neat (chinese) ink

 On the left, the right side was sprayed before ink was applied; on the right is the back of the piece, with the left side sprayed after ink was applied. So, the ink spread nicely but didn't soak right through, the water got there first. Whereas, once the back had been sprayed with water, the ink came through and spread.

While getting the sheets nice and dark, I messed about with a little mark-making - nice dark, soft marks scribbled with the end of a paintbrush -

Next experiment, dilute the ink and apply liberally.

 Top, 50%; middle, 25%, bottom, sheet folded and 25% added liberally. Applied with sponge brush.

These are the "monoprints" (footprints?) of the three -

 And then I piled up the sheets on top of a fresh one, to see how much ink might be forced onto it -

The marks aren't as black as "spilt ink" would be, but it's certainly an easy way of filling a dauntingly white page!

The proof will be in the pudding - how dark will the diluted sheets be? Did it actually save ink to do that - a teaspoon of ink stretched to three sheets. It was certainly quick to do ... if you don't get sidetracked into markmaking.

Getting started on JQs

CQ's journal quilt size this year is 6" x 12". I've chosen a theme of "grids and structures", based on the cage-like towers by Susan Hefuna that were shown in a gallery on Eastcastle St in December.

And I saw on her blog that Linda had done a monoprint of a circle each day for a month, and is now combining those fabrics in quilts, which made me think that if a person were to get rid of all her printed fabrics ... if ... then she could do something like this to build up a stock of fabrics-with-potential ... 

and then came thoughts in quick succession: How long would it take to do a monoprint, Could I do it every day, These would be good for my JQs ... and, What ink to use...

quick bit of internet research on fabric printing ink ...

followed by ACTION - into the studio, have a rummage, and what do I find but some Textile Screen Printing Ink - black - unopened! (At least 5 years old; you forget what you've bought...)

My intention was to do a monoprint using one of the cut-out road plans arising from the "monoprint and handstitch" course last summer, but I was too impatient to go looking for them so decided to use the edge of a credit card to make lines directly on fabric. And the first bit of plain fabric that came my way was the right size (and shape) for a JQ ... so my intention swerved into printing it as a base and a few fabric scraps for adding to it.  

Strange printing setup!

Lines from the edge 

The ink will dry while I'm in Edinburgh next week, and I'm looking forward to putting the bits together asap on return.

Another wonderful thing about JQs is that you can use those small scraps - some of the bits that came out of the scrap box during the rummage are thumb-sized but too precious to throw away, and those are what I like best to use to enliven the piece. 

"Contemporary crafts" course, day 2

Day 2 - textiles.

The makings of a monoprint session - all on paper so far

A "drawn" print - and its ghost print
(couldn't resist using neon)

Trying to focus on a set of marks

Demo of stencils plus drawing

The results

A series of fabric prints (I have patchwork plans for these...)

This doesn't look at all promising...

... but it found a place in my group of "made objects"
(more staples than stitches were used in construction)

Elsewhere, at the end of the day...

... and these too

This one gets the "yes it's definitely a textile" prize!

Monoprint and handstitch

It's been an exciting three days in room 305 at City Lit, as we printed and bonded and stitched. Where to start? With Amarjeet's samples -

and the aims of the course -

The first day was all about printing, using binder and pigment, mixed and spread on acrylic plates ... and making marks additively, subtractively, or with drawing on the back of the paper/fabric ... not to forget stencils and ghost prints - 

My theme started out as Labyrinths ... and was modified by whim and "found marks"

Monoprints on paper

... and on fabric

A collection - I was trying to be adventurous, starting with the light yellow, and found
 it needed a lot of "layering" to knock it back

Layered favourites

At home that evening I tried out my idea of glueing paper to linen to make a concertina book, and did some digital prints of "feet" from the V&A series to make a small maze-book. I also found some local maps to be cut and used as stencils. So by lunchtime on day two a lot of yesterday's results were overprinted, with greys and some black (I was getting back into my comfort zone) -

The drawn marks are a loose adaptation of the maps

They worked really well on some deconstructed linen trousers

Technical stuff -

After the stencils have been laid on the rolled-out ink and printed on paper, they are lifted off and the fabric printed

The brayer helps transfer all the remaining ink to the fabric

On other prints, using my hand to smooth the fabric onto the ink resulted in some
mysterious dark marks - which turned out to be caused by my ring

Following on from a maps-grids-hatching sub-theme,  the "lazy Sunday afternoon" drawing was scanned, front and back, and printed out at various scales -

Nice heavy paper will make this useful for endpages of the floppy books

Other favourite prints -

A roomful of people getting on with some stitching -

On the final day, a group session looking at works in progress - some  of my favourites -

Wolfgang started a scroll

Michelle combined forest-inspired prints into a book

Lisa printed onto sleeves ...

... and bravely grappled with insertion stitches

Jeannie's delicate piece is based on poppy stems with their tiny, glowing bristles
- it brought to mind a print by Gego in the RA's "Geometries" show

Planning two books to use every scrap of the grey-on-yellow print -

The papers are bondawebbed onto fabric

At the end of the course, this collection of books - some are ready for a bit more stitching -

The sequel

Next day I got out all the papers and planned more little books for "the feet suite" -

Lots of pages ready to add to fabric, or to both sides of "mazes"

The newest book includes mazy stitching on the supporting fabric, and awaits more stitch -

The "adventurous" yellow, so disastrous at first, is working out ok!