In my studio: fabric printing and painting

screen print onto hand dyed fabric

After a summer out of the studio, having fun as well as seeing lots of fantastic artwork, I’m struggling to settle back into making.  There are so many things I want to make, but I just don’t seem to be getting started right away.  I thought I knew exactly what I was going to do, but I’ve discovered out I didn’t!  What had seemed the key things during the holidays have turned out to be less fully fleshed out ideas than I had thought.

Hanging out to dry

Rather than panic – I have some exciting deadlines which I’ll tell you about later – I have decided to take things easy and just paint and print and see where that leads to.  So here are some of the things I’ve been ‘playing’ at this week. I don't know where any of them will lead, but maybe the panic will start subsiding in a week or two...

Reverse of the breakdown printing

Painting with thickened dyes

Mono-print from bubblewrap

Printing with bubble wrap

Painting with Inktense pencils

Print plate ready to make mono-print

Lightly dyed fabric, with circles stamped on top

Out & About: Carradale and the quilt show

Although it is still August, it feels like the end of summer.  And it has been a fabulous one!  A dearth of blog posts from me will be for one of two reasons: either I feel down and inadequate and so have nothing I think is worth sharing, or things are going very well and I’m really busy with family and enjoying life.  Luckily this has been the latter and rather than worrying about not creating work over the summer holidays, I decided just to enjoy them this year.  So after our trip to Yorkshire in the last post, I’ve also been to Holland, the Commonwealth Games, London, the Festival of Quilts, had two lots of friends and family to stay and at the weekend there, we went to Carradale on the Mull of Kintyre to see Marjory MacKinven and Marion Robertson’s exhibition.

I hadn’t visited that area of Scotland for the best part of 20 years but we had such a lovely time I hope it won’t be 20 years until the next time.  We camped at Carradale Campsite, which led straight onto the beach  - a fantastic location.  

The views were stunning, as you can see from the harbour view (which R took).

Marjory with Liz Ferguson and some of their beautiful sketchbooks

Then, of course, there was the exhibition.  It was fabulous seeing so many of Marjory and Marion’s quilts in one room.  The theme of the work was ‘From the River to the Sea’ and both of them are heavily influenced by water in their work.  

I love Marion’s pebbles which I first saw at the Festival of Quilts last year.  

Also in a grey colourway was Marjory’s new piece based on Skipness Castle.  I think it was my favourite piece in the show.  We visited the castle on the way home.

The kids loved the baby quilts on show and were very proud of their efforts at mono-printing on fabric.  Thanks Marion for being so patient and showing them how to do it.  They were thrilled. 

I’m now back in work mode and really pleased to be so – having the summer off was fun but so is being the studio.  This week I’m dyeing and printing lots of fabric.