Sunday 23 October 2016

A day spent printing

Today was spent in the garage (rather cold) printing in various ways and on various surfaces. So block printing, stamping with foam letters, stencilling, thermofaxinb on fabric and three sorts of paper.

Everything was successful though not at first. I need to stencil on a big area so I need to repeat the printing as the stencils I have are much less than A4 never mind A3. And if I tried to position them I ended up with smudges. So I printed on a sheet of paper wide apart, used a hair drier to dry the printing (2 minutes), printed and dried again, changed the colour of ink and repeated twice more. Very effective.

The lettering on book fronts was very effective. I have a number of blank textblocks which I have covered rather nicely with my cloth and wanted to print the word NOTEBOOK on the front. I had a Thermofax mask made for this job and it all worked.

I tried block printing on paper - that worked. And I tried wood block printing on handwoven fabrics and that worked.
And I have discovered a solution to my photography problem. In Malvern, I used the walls, pillars and railings just outside the front door to put the object to be photographed on. I like to do the photography outside with an overcast sky. There are no shadows and no pools of light. I have been wondering what to do ever since we arrived in our new house. Today I realised I now have a table in the new patio which is perfect. That explains the mosaic background to the above photograph. Next time I will drape a length of black velvet over the tabletop.

I retook the photo of the Makars book as it was so bad taken indoors.


1 comment:

  1. I have used grey or black commercial felt for background - much less expensive than velvet! Then I discovered a source for studio photographers' graduated black-to-pale-grey background material.

    ReplyDelete

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About Me

I am weaver and - -. I dye my yarns with acid dyes, I paint my warps, put fabric collages and stencils on my weaving. I have three looms, a 12 inch wide, 12 shaft Meyer for demos and courses, a 30 inch Louet Kombo which is nominally portable but has a stand, two extra beams and a home-made device containing a fan reed. And last a 32 shaft Louet Megado which is computer controlled, has a sectional warp and a second warp beam and I am the proud owner of an AVL warping wheel which I love to bits and started by drilling holes in. I inserted a device for putting a cross in. I have just acquired an inkle loom and had a lesson from an expert so I can watch TV and weave at the same time. I am interested in weaving with silk mostly 60/2 although I do quite a bit with 90/2 silk. I also count myself as a bookbinder with a special interest in Coptic binding.