Things to do with Gelli Plate Prints - 3 Make Quilts

Having spent the other weekend at the SECC showing people how to use Gelli Plates and making lots more prints in the process, I thought it was time for another in the series of what to do with the prints once you have them.  This time I'm suggesting you make a quilt.

Bamboo Beauty by Gillian Cooper

This was one of my new quilts which was on show for the first time at the SECC as part of the Turning Point display and the background was made entirely from Gelli Plate Prints on fabric.

 I showed you how to Gelli Plate print in this blog post here, using the bamboo as an example.

 I deliberately printed onto dyed fabric as I seem to have something against white at the moment!  I had a big pile of prints on a variety of different fabrics.  

To make things easier for the piecing, I decided to piece them into columns.  Each column was a different width, but it stayed the same width all the way down.  I put the prints on my design wall to decide upon the layout, then pieced them all together.  I had intended to use a variety of fabrics, but in the end, I liked the simplicity of the prints on cotton.

Rather than add the different fabric prints, I added several pieces of sheer with bamboo leaf shapes cut out from it.

This is becoming like a game of spot the difference between the photos!  As the quilt was going in a group show, it had to be a specific size, so I trimmed it to fit.  I felt it needed something else on top.  I had always envisioned black bamboo on the top, but then I discovered my roll of purple and blue silk sari strips and fancied trying those.  I didn't think the colour contrast would be sufficient, but I really liked the strips, so wanted to give it a go.

I was right  - it didn't work!  Also, the shape of the leaves were not quite right, so I redrew it and cut it out of black fabric.  I will eventually Gelli Plate 
print a background for the purple/blue leaf.

I liked it a lot better and spent quite a time considering whether anything else was needed.  I decided to leave it (either less is more or I was worried about spoiling a quilt when I didn't have time to make another!).  All that needed to be added was the black binding.  Originally I was going to bind the edges using the same fabric as the prints, but it needed the black to pull in the leaf.

I now have several prints left over to play with further and lots of bamboo shoots cut out from sheers!

Gelli-plate printing during Open Studios

Printing materials - strawberry and bubblewrap

Open Studios finished last night and today my studio is getting back to normal.  During the week I had some tables set up so visitors could try mono-printing using gelli-plates.  Rachel enjoyed it so much she came twice and got greatly in the spirit of it trying to mark make with strawberries.  It did work, but they tasted so nice, I ate them rather than print with them!

Mark making with the strawberry on the gelli-plate

When I cleared up yesterday evening, there was a lovely pile of prints that I had made as demonstration pieces.  Although they are only on cheap copier paper, I really like some of them and they will make great backgrounds for some artwork or perhaps to be turned into artists books.  I do like the prints on better quality paper, but it is good to see that you can achieve satisfactory results with the basics. 

Rachel with the strawberry print

All three of my children eventually had a go and it was great to see the effects the boys achieved by just drawing very quickly into the paint on the gelli-plate before printing.  Watching the immediacy of the kids printing is very inspiring – sometimes I spend too much time thinking, whereas they just go for it, without caring too much.

Some of my gelli-prints mixed in with the children's

So now, I’m trying to get back to normal and am working on a new big piece which I started last week.  I also have the first C&GCertificate class starting on Thursday, which is very exciting.  I have virtually everything ready for it, just got to get the house tidied now before the students arrive.  I’m sure most times the C&G comes up I’m going to regret running it in my home studio as I need to tidy the house, but secretly that was one of my goals with running it from home to try and force me to be tidier!  I just hope it rubs off on the rest of the family...

Working on the new piece

Launching Gillian Cooper Studio - classes in Balfron

Dyeing silk in the studio - one of the Friday activities

I realise that I keep hinting at, but haven't properly explained, what I am doing with my teaching practice. Well, this is mega exciting.  After years of waiting for people to contact me to come and deliver talks and workshops to their groups (which I am still offering by the way), I decided it was time to be in control and take some action.  When I had my current studio built four years ago I always intended to teach from it.  However, the intervening four years have been incredibly busy, first with my work at the Festival of Quilts, then with the PomPom Festival, then teaching C&G for the Loch Lomond Studio. Unfortunately the Loch Lomond people are no longer able to continue with their teaching studio and Ruth gave me a bit of a kick and said you need to set up on your own and keep teaching C&G.

Prints drying in the studio - one of the Friday classes

There is never going to be the perfect time to do something like this, and the last three months certainly were not perfect, but Ruth and Isabel from the Loch Lomond Studio had kindly offered me the stand they had at last weekend's Stitching Show at the SECC. This gave me a goal to aim for, which was useful as I love working under pressure!

Sketchbook exploration

So at the Show I launched Gillian Cooper Studio. From April, I will be offering beginners patchwork and quilting classes on a Thursday morning and Fridays will be fun days concentrating on one technique each Friday, generally messy!  C&G Patchwork and Quilting starts in June, over seven weekends and one summer school each year for two years.  I am able to offer both the certificate and the diploma levels.  As the classes will be in my studio, the groups will be small - limited to seven people.  I've been really pleased with the uptake already, particularly in the C&G classes.  I'm so looking forward to teaching adults from home as having learned as an adult myself, I understand where the students are coming from.  It's also a great way for me to keep up-to-date with my own skills and what is current in the textile world as I need to stay informed for the students (what a great excuse!).

Machine stitching

If you're interested, there's more on my website here and I'm sure I will be sharing photos from the classes soon!

Hand stitching English paper piecing

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

In my studio: on-going textile art work

work in progress. Gillian Cooper

So what I have been up to in the studio over the last week?

Work in progress. Gillian Cooper

It’s been a good week – fingers crossed, my adjusted migraine medication seems to be helping at the moment, so I could just bash on.  I’ve been concentrating on making, which is fun; giving myself permission not to do all the admin-y things I should be doing.  They’re still on my list, just delayed by a week.

Hand dyed and printed fabric detail

Of course, this doesn’t mean huge amounts of progress as the type of work I do is slow.  Very slow, but as the last post shows, when I try and do quick work, I don’t like the results, so it is back to slow and, hopefully, metaphorically if not in money terms, much more profitable.

Hand stitched panel with leaves in progress

I’ve also been getting advice, which is... interesting.  When I put the piece at the top up on the wall, one of the kids suggested to improve it to add a row of pre programmed stitched elephants.  The second said add more colour (it is meant to be muted).  I haven’t dared ask the third.  On the other hand, I felt that their choice of colours of threads for this hand stitched piece were more useful and I have gone with them.

Collaged background

Asking advice of the kids is probably quite useful, as it will never be what I expect and I am free to ignore it, even if they are a bit hurt that there are no elephants being added to the piece...  Who do you get your most useful advice from?

Birthday specials

Today was my birthday and it was a surprisingly good birthday, complete with 'I am 38' banners made by our eldest son. I was taken out for lunch unexpectedly and am currently having mussels cooked for my dinner. I also received two lovely books. The Quilts of Gee Bend was on my Amazon wish list, though it was still a surprise. I'm looking forward to reading it as well as enjoying the images.

The other book was completely unexpected, but was bought because it reminded the buyer of patchwork with the blocks of colour and textures of the bricks etc. It is interesting and I'm going to enjoy perusing it. It is also funny as I was going to give the buyer one of the Banksy books of graffiti for Christmas as I like the humour in his work.

With my own work, not much was done today for obvious birthday reasons. However, I did receive a lovely new Pfaff sewing machine to try out from the kind people at VSM. It looks amazing and fun, with lots of different stitches to try out for novelty value, but also with lots of useful extras like the automatic feed through and needle down positions. I just need a quiet few days to get to grips with it.... Soon hopefully.

Here are some images from my work earlier in the week. The first is the result of digital print onto scrim. It has a lovely translucency to it. The other two are knit. On Monday, it was really successful with no disasters and the black and white piece has felted well. Tuesday was a different matter. Two pieces fell off and this second knit piece looks a bit insipid, but will look great when projected onto, but it not only fell off, it also developed a huge hole on felting. Got to try again on Monday now.