Fabric printing course part 1

Recently I went on a great screen printing on fabric course at Cottenham Village College with a friend Annie, who had been to this before. The tutor was Ricki Outis, who was a super teacher, sharing ideas and techniques with great enthusiasm.

 Fellow 'students' were mainly experienced screen printers and it was good to see everyone's work during the week. I'd done a little block printing on fabric but no screen printing, only on paper. Obviously it's very similiar; it was interesting to transfer ideas onto fabric. I hoped to print a curtain for my studio door, using a design I'd tried out on paper. I'd had my plant designs put onto thermofax screens and used paper stencils for the landscape shapes.

Work in progress...I'd spent the evening before working out my 'plan' with masking tape, it was supposed to make it easier!!

It was tricky working with the size; it was a vintage cotton sheet, one of a pair I found in it's original wrapping, a relic from my family childhood home long ago - good recycling!

The finished item; spot the 'deliberate' mistake when I'd changed colours, washed my screen and then forgot to put a new stencil underneath! I thought of various ideas to disguise it but now I'm rather fond of my yellow rectangle and will sign my name on the panel when I find my permanent marker pen which has done a disappearing act since I used it the other day.

My lovely young builder Matt put up the curtain rail this morning. I'd made the curtain up the other day, with interlining and lining (a reminder of the time when I made soft furnishings for clients) and put the heading tape on today when I knew the length. I'm really pleased with the end result; I like the border down the sides and bottom edge..

A complete one-off: quite exciting!