I apologise for taking so long to get to this, I just needed a bit of time and space to take photos! A couple of weekends ago I took a great screen printing class with the girls at Bespoke Atelier. I’d taken their beginner’s class through an itison voucher a couple of months ago, and when they mentioned that they had an intermediate class coming up I leapt at the chance. The intermediate class was much smaller, with only 5 of us in the group, and it was a two day rather than a one day course. On our first day we worked on our art work, which was then exposed onto a screen coated with photo emulsion. The great part of this is that unlike our previous attempt where we were cutting stencils out of sugar paper, and having to be careful not to have loose bits detached from the main piece of paper, with the photo emulsion anything that you draw on your tracing paper in black is then treated like a negative, so you can get far more precise with lines and the like.
As usual, I was trying to do rather too many projects at once, however I did manage to pull off 2 2/3 designs (and the remaining 1/3 was actually my own stupid fault at the exposure stage when I stuck it on upside down). My first task was a t-shirt for the ASS Gurus for Sewing Summit:
I can’t see us wearing these all the time, but they’ll be good for a quick photo op or two ;o)
Next I wanted a t-shirt for Laura and I for our grand adventure. Somehow VW camper vans are rather cuter to wear than the boxy RV that we’ll be driving around in, so let’s just pretend we’re all cool and retro, okay? ;o) I also printed a few of these onto some white klona cotton (apologies for the crap photo)
Finally the British project. I’ll confess now that the bit I screwed up is really the bit I’m most upset about, because the idea was to take all the iconic images of the UK and have them as little pictures on the main cross bar of the Union Jack. Because the images are on tracing paper, I didn’t notice that the image had flipped over when I had to do a bit of rearrangement on the exposure table to fit everything on the screen, which mean that several things were backwards, and, in fact, the whole idea was backwards. I just couldn’t print it in the end, and while I might try with fabric markers, I’m a bit loathe to try that over the screen printing ink, I may just have to make do with some bright little Union Jacks on my bags, and a couple of panels I’ve printed on white klona as well.
Going forward, I could hire the venue for the day to do some work, but I think I’ll need to save up a few plans of action before I attempt that!
Oh so very, very cool! You could sell those t-shirts for big money!
What Susan said!
Great designs. I did several courses in collagraph printing but never kept it up because it would have meant joining a print co-operative and trying to source the right inks (which my tutor used to go to France just to buy!). It's a bummer when some crafts are not easy home accessible ones!
Gosh they are so cool.
Sounds like really good fun too.
superawesome 🙂
You'll not be missed at the Sewing Summit that is for sure!
Fun fun fun xxx
curious about how the exposure process works … is the sugar paper method something that could be done at home? it's a long time since I screen printed paper method back at school and I can't remember how big the setup was … was the exposure method a lot different? … I got quite interested in printing methods when I bought an antique lithograph print block – basically a negative of a photo but kind-of embossed so then you use inks to make prints from that block … mine was of Chopin from the year he died! … it all had to do with water being repelled from some parts of the image and the ink being repelled where the water hadn't been (i.e. the lines forming Mr. Chopin)
Really do think you could sell *a lot* of those camper van t-shirts!
What a fun t-shirt I'm sure people will know exactly who you guys are wearing those!
The camper van is so cute! I so totally want one now! =D
Your t-shirts look brilliant! And the other one…… Live and learn eh? 🙂
Loving each and every one but that first one is the best.
They all look so great. I can see that it will be good to incorporate into patchwork as well.
hugs
These are great! Sorry the last one didn't turn out as you planned.
You are a multi-talented woman. My hero.
Love these! Bet the Americans will love them too! Jxo
Bahahahahaha great!!! i think danny may disown us tho!!!