'On the Shelf' Three

My three day course at City Lit last month was ‘Monoprint on Paper and Fabric’ non-traditional applique and hand stitch. The course tutor was Amarjeet Nandhra   who now runs the Windsor Textile School; we had a laugh when I took in some photos of her some sixteen years ago when we were completing City and Guilds Embroidery part two together at Great Missenden Abbey.

We used binder and pigments to work with on a base of acetate sheet; I have not used pigments and binder before and am still wondering about the outlay for these new materials compared to acrylic paint and textile medium. Any opinions on this would be welcome. We worked on a mixture of papers including brown and tracing paper, and fine and medium weight cotton poplin.

The left hand side of this piece is fabric and the right is tracing paper.The middle folded section is paper. You can get a better  idea if you click to enlarge the image.

 Paper,tracing paper and fabric.

It was good to use hand stitch, but of course always tempting to go in with the sewing machine. One of the best parts of the course was seeing other peoples’ work and having show and tell sessions built in. It is always nice to be in the company of people who have similar interests, and to see how different and individual results can be. The worst part was definitely travelling into London three days in a row, especially as trains were horrendously delayed on the first day. One person used insertion stitch, which I have not used since my final piece for C&G’s, and it really appealed, I have stored the idea away.

 Monoprint on fine fabric.

 Monoprint on drawing paper and brown paper.

Monoprint on fine fabric.

For my sample pieces I worked on adding texture, and layering paper and fabric.The sample below was much too busy and I learned a good deal from inserting the blue bottle shape.

'On the Shelf' Two

For the next step I made some ‘prints’ on paper using blocks made from ‘fun foam’. I liked the black lines left on the prints when I drew the shapes with pencil. 

I made a stencil cutting out some of the shapes I saw in the photographs. I worked into these prints in various ways,  spraying through stencils and drawing into them etc..I used acrylic paint and textile medium in a fine tipped bottle to add writing. I also used a dimensional white paint to write with.

 It was all very absorbing.