Hilary Kimber: open screen over a string resist

I ran my first two day screen printing workshop this last weekend and loved every minute of it. With only two days it was difficult to know what to include. I started with a focus on using temporary resists that are readily available and relatively cheap; masking tape, freezer paper and sticky back plastic. You could probably spend two days just on masking tape resists but I wanted the students to go away with a sense of the range of options open to them. Their work was wonderfully varied.

Judy Tomlinson: masking tape resist pulled through with three values of turquoise and yellow giving some lovely greens

Jean Martin and Judy Tomlinson: masking tape resist pieces

We moved on to breakdown printing - where the thickened dye / print paste that is dried on the screen acts as a temporary resist. The weather wasn’t kind but the screens just about dried over night. I loved hearing the students ohhs and ahhs and can’t wait until next May when I teach my 5 day Breakdown Your Palette class.

We looked at different ways of using an open screen - on pinned out fabric, on scrumpled fabric and, with wonderful results, onto fabric with string on the surface. Love Hilary’s piece! And somehow we found time to play with thermofax screens.

It gave me a warm fuzzy feeling seeing the groups confidence grow in the two days! I am so glad that I took that big step into teaching. The next two day class in February is already full but there are still places on the workshop in 27th and 28th April 2019. Can’t wait.

Anita Bennett: using thermofax screens to create texture

Maggie Pearson: repeated layering of a thermofax screen

Not too long ago I had a full time job that involved long days and frequent trips away from home. My art had to fit around the job and, of course around my family. I averaged 18 - 19 hours per week in my studio but in order to achieve what I wanted to achieve in that time I had to be very, very focused. I worked hard to eliminate 'distractions' and very rarely allowed myself to play with techniques or materials that didn't fit in with the different series of quilts I was working on at the time.  

That level of focus allowed me to achieve so much and helped me to develop a way of working that was uniquely me. But now that I am a full time artist and teacher things are very different - I can spend 40-45 hours a week in the studio and still have time to sit in the garden reading or watch a movie in the evenings! Needless to say, my family has had to 'adjust' to seeing so much of me. And although I have been super busy these last few months preparing classes and getting the studio ready for students I can now allow myself time to play. 

This week I have been playing with Indigo dyeing. Whilst I really like the way Indigo is used by Mags Ramsay and by Elisabeth Barton it is not a technique I have ever incorporated in my work. But I have included it in my Colour Your Palette 5 day retreat as an alternative to Procion dyeing so thought I better spend some time exploring it further. I spent a couple of quiet evenings preparing samples then, on Thursday, went to visit my good friend Ruth Brown where we prepared the Indigo vat and dyed the samples. Ruth is a great teacher and was very relaxed when I splattered her beautiful new studio - Indigo dyeing is rather messy! The results I got were mixed. Some pieces worked well, others didn't. I found that Indigo doesn't penetrate as well as Procion when using clamp resist or when winding cloth tightly around a pole, probably because you can't agitate your dye bath to help the dye penetrate. I'll adjust for that next time. I also found that a piece of Procion dyed Magenta cloth partially discharged in the vat as well as dyeing. This definitely needs further experimentation. More play time!

Not everybody loves breakdown printing or wants to use screen printing to create their cloth. And so I have developed a second five day retreat, Colour Your Palette, that is focused on the addition of colour through dyeing, resist dyeing and the removal of colour using different discharge processes. Although most of the fabrics I have used in my work in recent years are breakdown printed I do include complimentary fabrics that have gone through dyeing and discharge processes. For me it is important to have a broad range of techniques at my finger tips so that I can select the technique that will give me the affect that I am looking for. 

The aim of this five day course is to create a palette of coordinated plain and patterned fabrics based on your own source of inspiration.  Students will be encouraged to create beautiful complex cloth by putting pieces through multiple processes. Where appropriate we may use other surface design techniques such as thermofax printing to add detail to our cloth.

And, because I love colour, this course will be driven by colour - understanding how to mix simple and complex colours from primaries and working with a restricted set of colours or a colour family to create pieces of fabric that work together. We will exploit the transparency of Procion dyes by blending colour directly on the cloth as we put fabric through multiple processes. 

There are other ways to add colour to cloth that give lovely effects. We will look at two alternatives during the five days - indigo dyeing and rust-like dyeing using Ferrous Sulphate - and how they can be combined with Procion dyeing. It will be a full-on, fun packed week. The studio will be a riot of colour and I can't wait!

My new five day retreat Breakdown Your Palette is the course that I have been so wanting to teach! Those who read my blog or follow me on Facebook and Instagram will know that I love, love, love breakdown printing. It has formed the basis of my art for the last three or four years and will continue to do so. I love the serendipity of the printing process - I get marks that I could not get through any other method. I love the fact that every print I make is different. And I love the fact that, having spent 100's of hours making and printing screens, I have learnt new ways of creating breakdown screens; I have learnt to manipulate colour value and scale to influence the results I get and I have learnt to adjust my process to print whatever the weather conditions. Have a look at my earlier blog post here if you don't know what breakdown printing is. It is a simple process that can create complex, beautiful whole cloth that can used for clothing or as a background to stitch or it can be used to create a palette of cloth that can be cut and pieced. 

When I decided to start teaching I was cautious and only developed workshops for weekends, leaving week days for a 'proper' job. Which is a problem for teaching breakdown printing as the process involves letting your screens dry. Not an issue on a sunny day when screens will dry in a few hours outdoors. But very limiting on days when it isn't sunny. However having made the BIG decision to become a full time artist and teacher I have been able to develop a 5 day Breakdown Printing extravaganza! 

I have combined a deep dive into breakdown with my second love - colour. Understanding colour and using colour selectively is the key to creating a set of printed fabrics that work together. The course also covers using discharge paste to breakdown print which is such a useful process - it can be used to create complex layers of colour and texture and is a great tool for turning ugly ducklings into beautiful swans. And yes, I do still produce ugly ducklings occasionally!

I started promoting the course at Festival of Quilts and had an amazing response. And I got to talk about breakdown for hours!! The two courses I have scheduled are now live and can be booked via my website along with my other workshops. There is only 1 place left on the 20th to 24th May 2019 course but I have more spaces on the 17th to 21st June course. I can't wait to teach this one - it is going to be so much fun.!

When I decide to do something I really go for it, I give it my all and I aim to succeed. Determined, ambitious, tenacious - that's me. So I have taken a stand at this summers Festival of Quilts in order to promote Urban Studio North and my workshops to as wide an audience as possible. I will be on stand H35 which is in one of the alleys near the Nancy Crow exhibition. Please, please, please come find me if you are at the show!

My stand is only small (2 metres x 2 metres) but I want it to showcase as many aspects of surface design as possible. After all that is what I teach. As well as showing a couple of my favourite small quilts I will be showing a couple of new pieces. These are 'process' driven - they do not have a specific inspiration but they each show how printed and dyed fabrics can be used. The first one is almost finished. I'm calling it 'Off the Grid', detail below. The cloth went through 3 wet processes - I breakdown printed the first layer, then scraped through colour in the second layer and finally breakdown printed using formosol discharge paste. I will be supporting and encouraging students on my Introduction to Surface Design courses to take their cloth through multiple processes - you get such wonderful, totally unique, depth of colour and texture.

I'm rather nervous about this new venture - it cost quite a bit of money and what if nobody signs up for a workshop! or even worse, what if nobody even stops to talk to me!! But I am also absolutely fizzing with excitement. I love talking about my work and my processes, and I especially love talking about colour. I am looking forward to seeing friends and making new friends. So if you are at Festival (9th to 12th August at the NEC, Birmingham), please stop by!

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I love colour! And whilst I've always kept records of the colours I've mixed for my art I have never taken the time to systematically create colour blankets. Until now. Colour is fundamental to the classes I am teaching so creating resources to help my students understand colour seems like an obvious thing to do. And it has been so much fun, I wish I'd taken the time to do this years ago!

My favourite piece so far is the colour wheel above created by blending two primary reds - magenta and scarlet - and two primary blues - turquoise and royal blue. It's my favourite for two reasons. Firstly I didn't make any mistakes when making it but mostly because of the surprising colours you get when you mix scarlet with either of the blues. Instead of the 'purples' you might think you're going to get you get some beautiful browns.

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When you mix the two primary blues with two primary yellows - acid lemon and golden yellow - all of the blended colours are colours that you would label 'green'. No surprises but using the colour wheel I can see instantly how to mix an olive green or a lime green. 

The third colour wheel mixes the primary yellow with the primary reds to create an abundance of oranges. What is interesting in this colour wheel is just how overwhelmed yellow is by red. Even a small addition of red creates oranges that are close to their red component.

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And finally (for now!) I have stolen an idea from the excellent DVD 'Exploring Fiber Reactive Dyes with Claire Benn' to create what Claire calls colour tartans. I have created exactly the same 'tartan' on two different cottons - the cotton poplin that I use in my art and a more open weave plain cotton. The colours are extremely close although they are very, very slightly richer on the poplin which has a slight surface sheen. Doesn't really show up in a photo so you'll have to trust me on this. Or make you own!

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With the Stockport exhibition opening on 26th May it has been full on production at Studio Leah this last couple of weeks. I have been finishing a collection of 10 panels, each 40cm x 100cm, and each referencing a specific coal pit from the Lancashire and Manchester coalfields. These are part of my Traces series inspired by industries and industrial structures that no longer exist; that have been wiped clean from our landscape. Each piece is finished by stretching over a deep canvas. To help achieve crisp corners I did not use any wadding. Instead I fused two layers of cotton together which gave me a good firm surface to stitch on and a fabric that did not skew and distort as I stretched it over canvas. A few people have asked how I do the stretching so here we go.

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I use stretched canvases rather than stretcher bars as the canvas manufacturer has done all the hard work by stretching the canvas onto the frame. All I'm doing is wrapping my piece around it - I am not really 'stretching' the work. Looking at the above photos from top left to bottom right:

• I prepare the canvas by adding double sided sticky tape to all four sides of the canvas and to all four edges on the back of the canvas. If I were stretching over a standard (narrow) canvas I wouldn't bother with tape on the sides.
• I position the canvas on the back of my piece and mark around it with a pencil. I then trim my piece such that there is enough left to wrap around the edge of the canvas - in this case my canvases were 1.5 inches deep so I trimmed to give 2.5 inches all around. I also trim away part of the corner section to reduce the amount of 'bulk' at the corners. I leave about 3/8th inch of the corner - look at the photo to see. This leaves me with a 'flap' on each side.
• I spray the front of the canvas with a little 505 basting spray and re-position on the back of my piece. The spray is just there to prevent the canvas slipping. With one long edge facing me I remove the paper strip from the double sided tape on the side of the canvas and start lifting my flap up onto it. I start from the centre and work to towards the corners. You don't need to pull hard, just enough that the piece is a snug fit to the side of the canvas. 
• I then remove the paper strip on the back of the canvas and flip my flap over and down working from the centre out towards the corners. Again you don't need a lot of force. Once in place I finish by adding some staples. You don't need many as the tape does most of the work. I repeat this process on the other long edge.
• This is the most important part and probably the hardest to describe! I tend to get on my knees so that the short end of the canvas is at my eye height. I remove paper strips from both the side and the back of the canvas. I turn the excess fabric (that 3/8th inch) from the side wall of the long side of the canvas around onto the side wall of the short side and stick it to the tape. As you turn this edge it naturally turns the edge of the short edge flap under. I then lift the short edge flap up and over the edge of the canvas tucking in the excess from the top of the side flap as I go. I pull the flap tight and fix in place with a couple of staples. I repeat at the other corner. I then go along the short edge lifting and sticking down the rest of the flap. I do the same for the other short edge.
• Because fabric can fray, and because I am a neat freak I finish my canvas by adding a linen effect self adhesive tape over the fabric edges on the back of the canvas. I then sign the back of the canvas and add a business card.

I love the finished effect, particularly how the stitched lines fold around the edges. And using deep canvases meant that I could stitch the name of each piece onto the side edge. I can't wait to see all 10 hung together!

In my last post I shared the breakdown printing technique I use to put colour and texture onto my cloth. This series of work is inspired by industrial structures that once littered our landscape but now rarely exist outside of memories and museums. Their impact on the landscape has faded; has been built over. So for my cloth, having put down a layer of colour, I now strip most of that colour back off. Here is how.

Using a steam iron I crumple and crease my fabric. I am trying to create an uneven surface that acts as a resist to the discharge solution. I use Formosol dissolved in warm water and apply with a 'dry' brush. I don't want to flood the cloth. I leave the cloth to dry overnight then use a steam iron to activate the Formosol and remove colour. This bit is rather noxious. Ideally you should use a gas mask but I find ironing near an open door with a stiff breeze is effective. I use the iron as a tool, selectively applying heat so that I get different levels of discharge. The 'black' dye I used to print the cloth is actually a blend of a blue-black dye and a dark brown dye. When I discharge the colour strips away to leave a yellowish brown that rather looks like a nicotine stain. 

Once I'm happy with the level of discharge I wash my fabrics at 60C and they are ready to use. Or not. Sometimes I over-do the discharge process and end up with a piece of fabric that is too pale. Sometimes the colour discharges to more of a red brown. In both cases I resist the temptation to throw them in the bin. Instead I add another layer of breakdown printing and another layer of discharge. 

Some people get nervous about sharing their process / techniques. I don't. Mostly because I use methods that do not give exact, reproducible results. Every screen I pull is different. Although years of experience do direct my work it is the serendipitous nature of breakdown printing that makes each piece of fabric unique. 

Over the last few weeks I have been printing fabrics for a series of work inspired by those industrial structures that no longer really exist - brick kilns, pit winding wheels for example. I have been printing in one colour - grey - but some of the fabrics have picked up traces of rust from some of the metal objects I use to make my screens. I start by adding a small amount of thickened dye to the back of a screen. I spread the dye using brushes, foam brushes or rollers but leave the coverage rather uneven. 

I then use my wonderful collection of 'things' to embed into the dye. I keep some screens specifically for use with metal brackets, buttons etc as over the years they have got rather rusty. 

I use different size screens but in the winter, when the screens have to dry indoors, I make sure to only use a thin layer of thickened dye and to use small screens. I would rather clean and make up more screens than pull a screen where the dye has flowed into blobs before drying. Fellow breakdown printers will know what I mean!

Once the screens are completely dry I take off the embedded objects. And yes, I wash them every time. Sometimes I print the screen as is. Other times I use torn masking tape to create wells around the screen. Using torn masking tape breaks up the edge of each print. Having pinned my white, soda soaked fabric to my print bench I print the screen using thickened paste. As I want pale, delicate marks I tend to dump out unused paste if it picks up dye from the screen and replace with fresh paste.

I aim to apply different patterns / textures across the cloth so don't have to worry about composition. Using multiple screens means that I don't get too much pattern repeat. I let the fabric become touch dry before rolling up in plastic and leaving overnight to fix the dye. The fabrics are then washed and dried ready for the next process.