Colour Play in Ballarat

It was an honour to be invited to teach at the Fibre Art event in Ballarat last month and just a little intimidating. One of the other tutors was the brilliant Ester Bornemisza who’s work I have admired for over 20 years so I knew I needed to do a good job! Thankfully my students made that that job so easy. All 12 had previous experience with Procion dyes and 10 out the 12 had experience screen printing and they absolutely flew! Being honest I think I learnt just as much from them as they learnt from me.

We started by looking at colour and specifically colour when using Procion dyes before moving onto different screen printing techniques. Inevitably the group did a lot of breakdown printing but I was also delighted to see great results from loose paper resists. Along the way the whole group helped print a long strip of fabric that was raffled at the end of the event … it raised $70 for the India Project that the Fibre Arts team run.

On the final evening each of the tutors set up a display of their students work. I asked each of my students to pick their favourite two pieces and I think our ‘exhibition’ looked amazing.

Maybe because it was a residential workshop the students really ‘gelled’. So much so that we set up a public Facebook group called Breakdown Printing Australia so that we could keep in touch and, hopefully, grow the love of breakdown printing (which IMHO is pretty blinking amazing) in the region.

So much fabric was printed …… below is some yummy eye candy! I had a wonderful time.