Here’s something fun I’ve been working on recently. It’s a lino block of one repeat of a brocade pattern for printing on fabric.
I needed some white on white, or nearly white, brocade fabric for a quilt series I’m working on (for an exhibition in September, more on that later). It’s not the exact pattern but it meant to represent the white brocade wallpaper in my maternal grandmother’s living room. This particular pattern is taken from a certain style of gold brocade drapes from the 1970s that must have been everywhere, based on the sheer volume of them my partner and I used to find in thrift stores in the 90s. Those were our Society of Creative Anachronism years, and I still have my glorious Russian shuba (full length overcoat with “fur” trim) made from this, as well as a beautiful but unfinished court sarafan hanging in my closet. My ulterior motive for using this pattern for my quilt project is that I will be able to print other fabrics with the block later on, in particular a set of old fashioned pinch-pleated drapes for our bedroom.
For now, though, I’m printing it in white on a variety of not-white fabrics, mostly thrifted cotton bedsheets, that I’ve made not-white by boiling in coffee (the absolute easiest and best smelling way to make white just a little less white) and a more grayish not-white by adding tea and a bit of ferrous sulfate to the coffee.
This was my first attempt, with janky registration and a hole in the fabric that I printed right over, and yes, this piece will probably end up in a quilt, hole and all. I’m not at all worried about the registration for this project, although I’m quickly getting the hang of getting the block lined up. There are things I could have done in the planning stages to make registration easier, but oh well. I’m kind of a messy printer at the best of times.
I didn’t do anything to clear out the chatter on the block, and I’m pretty happy with how it fills up the space between motifs in the fabric. Accidental marks are so often the best kind of marks, in printmaking.
Here it is printed on the pale gray where the contrast is actually enough to be able to make it out on screen. The paler fabric is visible on the right, a level down in the drying rack.
