Printing on Paper

I'm used to printing on fabric but today I have been printing on paper. The last two Saturdays I have been on Kim Major-George's 'Stitch into Print' course, which was run by my EG branch. The plan was that we would spend the first Saturday creating stitched printing plates and the second printing from them. Call me indecisive/thoughtful/ careful/slow but by the end of the first Saturday I barely had anything to print from but I came away with lots of inspiration and ideas. So I spent a large part of the next day creating print plates.

I was particularly keen to use a design that I am working with at the moment, to see if  the printing would develop the design and here is the plate I created....

and the print I created from it:

I also enlarged one of the sections and created an individual plate....

....and then printed from it.

 

I think I could have used plates to print with all day but I had other ideas that I was dieing to try. The next plate was based on a simple design I did a few years ago. The strip of 'trees' was made by stitching sari waste silk together onto dissolvable fabric.

Again, I could have printed and refined this print.

 

but I was also keen to print with the scrim that I had prepared before the end of the day.

 

I was disappointed with this print but I know how I would do it differently next time and the technique definitely has potential.

 

Out of all of my prints, this is the technique that I would like to develop further. My only disappointment was with the colour that I used.....I really wished I had used a darker colour rather than the green.

Unfortunately, this was the last print of the day. I really enjoyed the workshop and I was starting to find my way when it was time to come home and without a press, it's not something that's easy to continue at home. What did I get when I got home? 'Did you do that all today? They've turned out better than I thought they would'.  Was that a complement? Well, I'm going to take it as one!