Screen Printed Textiles Class at Cottenham Summer School 2016

T-shirt using discharge and overprinting

Sarah R - abundant flowers

I love teaching screen printing at Cottenham Summer School.  Actually to say 'teach' might be a bit of an exaggeration because the students really drive the direction of course. So, in many ways I think of it as a studio week.  Those who need to learn the basics can do so and those who know what they want to do, just get on with it.  Many students come back year after year, and each time, they just get better at design and print.

For some people it's an opportunity to experiment and see what happens serendipitously with the print process.  Other people like the accuracy and precise layering and they work hard to achieve that.

Over the week, everyone is encouraged to work in their own style and students are shown techniques that will enable that to happen.

Marian's Circles, using thermofax

Simple but elegant design using paper stencils

Wish the photo was of the whole 3 metres! - David's cloth

Annabel- experimental markmaking

Sue printing through Japanese papers

Sian - folk art tea towels

Betty - using filler to create brushy strokes

And here is Jane wearing an outfit she made from David's fabric

And on the subject of clothing, Jean G made this top from fabric she colour blocked at last year's Summer School

And this year she tried a more expressive version of colour blocking.

Some action shots - Jean J printing beautiful flowers in  tonal colours

And Sarah R going wild with pattern.

And Nicola's bird prints have been selected for a wildlife art show in London- Hooray.  After all that complex registration!

 

Nuno Felted Scarf - 1 Day Workshop

There are still places left on this workshop- and here's the formal intro:

Nuno Felt Scarf

'A fun day doing wet felting to create a special scarf. Combining fibre and fabrics to create a light and elegant nuno scarf with a beautiful drape. We'll be piecing together different fabrics and using the fibres to hold the whole together. This workshop is a good challenge for beginners and for those with some felting experience.'

Saturday 15th October
10.00am - 4.00pm


As always, I think workshop prices at Cottenham are very reasonable compared with ...well, almost everywhere.  But the main reason to come is for the sheer joy of making something nice with a group of enthusiastic, like minded people!

£35 (£26 Concessions)  + whatever material you use. 


Go to  Cottenham V.C. Adult Learning for more details.

Brandon Ferry Tales Screen Print

The thing about making artwork for an event is that you  don't really want to publicise the finished product before the big day. 

So you've seen the studio pictures and now that the Ferry Tales Day has been and gone...

These were all made by Brandon Arts Society in a series of workshops and displayed fluttering along the High St on the day.  

See Market Place  for more about the event

Felt - Catherine O Leary Workshop

It seems like I'm always teaching - and I really do love teaching, so that's good. I think that teaching art and textiles is all about facilitating people's own creativity and I love the excitement and enjoyment that people have when they make something new.

Every once in a while I like to be a student myself and have my own creativity facilitated! And so this summer, I had big treat:  I went to the Atelier Fibre Fusing in the Netherlands to do a 3 day workshop with the wonderful Catherine O Leary.   This class was all about surface design using nuno prefelts and the finished product was a body wrap using these techniques.  

So, first of all a word about Atelier Fibre Fusing 
It's a good studio space - well equipped, full of light, big tables, spacious, in a village on the Amstel, just south of Amsterdam.   We were greeted by the very hospitable Dorie on the first day with coffee and home made apple pie and the food just got better and better as the weekend went on. 
 
What made this workshop so good is that after her introductory talk, Catherine constantly moved around the room giving each person one to one tuition and encouraged us to develop our own designs. So we all made very different things.  You see that here- Workshop photos

I deliberately took colours that I don't usually work with and somehow my piece turned out as something that probably wouldn't look amiss in the Lion King! Definitely looking for someone tall and flamboyant to wear this one and those of you who know me, know that neither of those qualities pertain to me. But I LOVED the process of making it.  The surface design aspect is exactly what I enjoy most about making textiles and I'd forgotten how very nice it is to be completely absorbed by intuitive working.

And of course one of the best part of going on a workshop is meeting a fabulous bunch of new people who are equally obsessed with felt and fibre!

This is my wrap, made from 2 pieces which can be worn in different ways

I screen printed some fabrics before went to Holland to use as part of the Nuno

So as you can see - I loved this workshop and if you ever get the opportunity to do a class with Catherine o Leary, grab the chance! I can't recommend her highly enough.

Brandon Ferry Tales

I've been working with the very talented and extremely hard working members of the Brandon Arts Society to do some screen printing.  These fabulous festoons will be displayed down the High Street on Sunday 18 September as part of a really special event:   

Ferry Tales.

If you are in the area,  come along - this will be an amazing day with theatre, art, story telling, poetry, dance and, of course, an opportunity to screen print your very own Ferry Tales shopping  bag.

 Thanks to Terry Kimpton who took these action shots of the screen printing workshops.

First day, learning to print.

By the second day everyone was printing for themselves.

The Methodist Hall transformed into Print Studio.

Everyone lends a hand!

And of course there was tea and cake! Although we didn't have much time to drink it!

 

 

 

Never too old to screen print

T-shirts printed by residents of Cottenham Court Care Home  to sell at their Open Day marking their 20th anniversary.

Next time I go there, I hope to see everyone wearing these!

Print Projects, Pilgrim Pru

Just before we broke up for vacation last year I spent a week working with a really interesting school - Pilgrim Pru

The Pilgrim PRU is a medical needs Pupil Referral Unit containing four distinct centres. Each centre designed and printed a hanging for their own space. The banners/ strings of bunting represent the group made up of many individuals.

The Phoenix is a school attached to a NHS inpatient eating disorders unit for young people.  They decided to make these lovely lengths of bunting.

The Darwin is based in an acute psychiatric adolescent unit. They made this banner reflecting the various interests of each young person and includes the 'hospital dog

And The Croft is a specialist child and Family unit for children under 13.



Here's a closer view of a very complicated rocket/ robot?... Whatever it is, I like it a lot!






On the final day we did screen printing with Addenbrookes Hospital School. This time the children printed black onto a predyed fabric because the classroom space was very limitted and this is always a good way to get great effects using a minimum of equipment.





We printed these on individual squares so that they could fit on a wheelchair tray if necessary and I sewed them up afterwards. I had to do a lot of unpicking to get them all the right way up!





The Pilgrim Pru has an Artsmark award and you can see more of their amazing artwork on their website at http://www.thepilgrimpru.co.uk/


Well done to all the young people who contributed to these banners and buntings. I really enjoyed working with you all.

Summer School for Teenagers

We had a funderful (ie fun and wonderful) day printing multicoloured T-shirts at Melbourn Village College Summer School with young people transitioning from primary to secondary school.

T-shirt Print Workshop

Did a workshop with Soham Well Being Group, printing T-shirts on a very hot summer's evening.  What was really nice about the group was the friendliness across the age range - from 16 to 40 (you can probably see that in the variety of designs).  It was a small group so we had lots of time to really play with the repeats and make these unique and personal T-shirts.  I hope you're all wearing them!

Quiltlet

I keep returning to these images of my beloved grandparents for my artwork.  This little quiltlet is printed on scraps of cloth which I dyed using various natural dyes and stitched onto a blanket.  You can probably tell from the close-up that I'm more of an embroiderer than a quiltmaker.  I like the tatty, worn look of the textiles although, thinking about it, my grandmother would probably have hated that. She liked things to be neat as a pin! (to use a textile metaphor).