Re-arranging

I have been obsessively making cushions these past few days. So easy and satisfying. Totally in love with this Ink and Spindle fabric my hubby bought me for Xmas, from Bolt of Cloth. I could spend all day and all my money in that place. I let out a very undignified squeal when I started to unwrap the package, and noticed that it was wrapped with this tiny sliver of Frida Kahlo fabric, from Alexander Henry that I saw in the shop last time I was there. I hit the jackpot with that package... this Ink and Spindle fabric, some beautiful Kokka fabric and a Marimekko teapot. So spoilt.

This naturally led to some re-arranging of furniture and digging out of some old prints.

Printmaking class starts in a couple of weeks. Can't wait!

Etchings

I seem to have headed down a sewing rabbit hole the past few months. It's strangely addictive. You'd think that making a few garments badly would put one off, but it has made me all the more determined to make a few successful things to show for all the effort. Actually my persistence is probably more to do with all the sewing blogs I read, and seeing the amazing things that other people create.

Anyway - I've been shy about taking photos of myself and posting them on here, which is why most of what I'm making doesn't make it onto the blog. That's my excuse for such infrequent posts! And I'm sticking to it. For the moment. Actually, although I've been sewing since I was very young, I have really only picked it up regularly in the last couple of years. In the past most of my creative energy has gone into other things... bookbinding, drawing, painting, printmaking, jewellery making, etc. I've been getting the urge to get back into some creative things other than sewing. Mark making of some kind.

So I have been pulling out a few old etchings, hoping to get inspired to do some more. I love etching, the quality of the mark that you can get by drawing into plastic with a needle (as in drypoint) or the irregular marks that are made by acid biting into the plate. And the ink getting pulled into the paper. There's the apprehension when you pull back the paper after it has gone through the press, and seeing what emerges. It frustratingly hit and miss. And addictive.

Intaglio etching

We've all been laid up with bugs in my house this week, so there hasn't been much new creative stuff going on.  Nothing serious, just nasty colds.  I'm dying to have that clear headed feeling again that comes with recovering from a bout of illness, where you're full of ideas and have the energy to get into them.

Anyway, I thought I'd post something I made a while ago, in a printmaking class I took.  The first is an etching, made with the skeleton of a day lily from my garden.  We used a zinc plate, painted with a waxy substance (called asphaltum) with the lily sitting on top, which is then run through a high pressure printing press.  The lily is peeled off, leaving an image on the plate, which is then dipped into a bath of acid and the image is etched into the plate.  Ink is applied to the plate and run through the press again with some paper.

It's such an incredibly fiddly process to get right.  If you run the plate through the press at the wrong pressure you can buckle the plate, if you leave the acid in the bath for too long you can bite too hard into the plate and lose the detail in the image, you can put your inky fingers all over the plate, soak the paper too little or for too long.... the list is endless, and I did all of these things and more.  It was so incredibly frustrating!  However there's a moment after you run the plate through the press, when you're holding your breath as you peel the paper up to have a look.  And when you get it right, it's just magic.  The results are worth all the effort.  It's quite an addictive process.  Each time I printed, I thought, maybe if I just ink it up and run it though again I can get something better.

The second print was a bit more straightforward.  It is a drypoint etching, which is a drawing scratched with a needle into plastic, inked up and run through the printing press.   The image on the bottom left is a printed photo of some refrigerated shipping containers.

I'm quite addicted to printmaking.  Unfortunately it's not the kind of thing you can do on your own at home without considerable setup and lots of dangerous ingredients.  But also, there's so much to learn, I think it's best done in the company of someone very experienced.  Maybe I will go and look at the class timetable for next term...

bookbinding

I've been playing around with making books lately. Here's one I made for a friend's 40th birthday. It's a notebook/sketchbook, with a linocut print bound into it. The handmade paper used for the cover came via a friend from Basler Papiermühle, the Swiss Museum for Paper, Writing and Printing. I visited this amazing place in Basel, Switzerland a couple of years ago and was blown away floors and floors of papermaking, bookbinding and printing equipment and demonstrations. Anyway, more on that another time. Here's the book.