Super screenprints!

It's always great when I get to work with textile students and this summer I had the opportunity to work with two enthusiastic groups of Year 10s.

We had two topics to play with, screenprinting and felt making. The students produced some great pieces and it was great to see them experimenting and pushing the boundaries of what they could do with multi-colours, layering, multiple prints and positive/negative printing. Although the first prints were a little tentative, the students quickly developed confidence and their prints were soon bursting with colour and life. By the end of the sessions there were some stunning results with students making their own stencils and really developing their understanding of the processes.

Screenprinting can be expensive but I thought I'd share a few tips on keeping costs down...


Cheap stencil materials
For anyone who fancies having a go at screenprinting without investing a lot in materials and equipment, we used old plastic document wallets to cut out washable, re-useable stencils. The plastic was just thick enough to give great definition to the prints but was easy to cut accurately with a craft knife and was quick to clean and re-use. You can also buy cheap packs of document wallets from £1 shops, Wilkinson's and stationery shops. One pack is enough for quite a few stencils.

I found plenty of interesting images by searching for "silhouettes" or "free templates" on google. Simple designs with bold outlines are ideal for this technique and once students have had a bit of practice it will give them lots of ideas for their own designs.

Cheapy squeegees
As some of our designs were quite small, the squeegees were a bit too big to allow small images to be added to a print. And the answer? Old credit-card style plastic loyalty cards! (I don't recommend actual credit/debit cards even if they are out of date!). The bendier cards are best and they proved very effective at giving good ink penetration whilst being easy to manage and get the pressure right, too.

Printing inks
We used screenprinting inks on cotton fabric, but you could use thickened procion mx dyes as an alternative. Any leftover dyes will then double up for later dyeing experiments such as tie-dye, shibori, shaving cream and snow-dyeing.

Fabrics
Old cotton t-shirts or shirts are great to print on. Use as they are or upcycle by cutting them up to make smaller pieces that can be used to embellish bags, clothes, accessories etc.

Show and Tell time...

It's always great when I teach dyeing workshops, but even better when I get to see what my lovely students make with their dyed yarn. At the moment we're updating the gallery on our website so I thought I'd post some pics here in the meantime. First up one of the projects shared while we were at Woolfest....

See the laceweight skein on the right of this picture?

Here it is wound onto a ball

and being knitted into a beautiful lacy scarf

Thanks Joyce!

(Keep your eyes peeled for more of your shared projects - and if you have made something with our yarn or dyes, email me a piccie or two or a link to your blog and I'd be happy to feature it :-)  )

The Club Catch-up to Beat All Club Catch-ups - Part Two!

I wasn't kidding when I said this was an epic catch-up. You'll be pleased to know, however, that this does bring me up to date!

So, we're onto May with Jethro Tull-inspired Songs from the Wood....

June was Cupcake....

July with Royal Sunset....

And August rounds off the update with Perseid meteor...

Blankety-blank - Sock blank dyeing in Bradford

 It's been a while since I've done a blank canvas (sock blank) dyeing workshop so it was fun to go to the Bradford Guild of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers and spend the day with the members producing exciting, colourful knitted fabrics ready to be unravelled and knitted into socks, warps and other such interesting pieces.

The Guild meet at Bradford Industrial Museum which is a super place to visit if you're in the area.

 
Bradford was, of course, one of the main centres of the woollen industry and the museum has some great exhibits - steam, textile machinery, printing and vehicles. And of course, no discerning textile enthusiast would want to visit Bradford without making a trip to the amazing Saltaire village. At the moment there's a super exhibition on there, Cloth and Memory, and there are regular exhibitions at Salts Mill.

Gig update! SB6, Hadouken, Bleach Blood, Sharks, Current Swell, the Skints

Lots of gigs since April, too!

Sonic Boom Six and Hadouken at Manchester Academy
A perfect pairing of two of our fave bands :-)

Take a look at the new SB6 video and, for anyone who likes a bit of drum and bass, crank it up loud and have a listen to Hadouken's Levitate.

A great night followed by a trip down memory lane with a visit to Big Hands on Oxford Road. In our day it was Champers and served carafes of killer red wine, usually accompanied by large slabs of garlic pizza bread (presumably so our stomachs didn't completely disintegrate). Champers holds a special place in my heart as it was where Pete and I had our first kiss (awww!) so it's fun to go back there and find it hasn't changed that much (well, to be fair, it does serve a rather wider range of beverages and the dodgy red wine has gone!). Happy Days!

Bleach Blood and Sharks
Bleach Blood features as its lead singer former King Blues guitarist Jamie Jazz. The band's set was short but punchy and the new songs are impressive with a very slick and powerful performance for a relatively new band. If you fancy checking them out, you can grab a download of their four-track EP FREE! and as it includes my personal fave track, Anything Anything, I'd highly recommend it.

Sharks delivered a great performance and it would have been great to hear more from them but sadly the band announced their split shortly after this gig :(  (pretty sure it wasn't anything to do with us, honest!)

Current Swell
We did miss the very start of this set and my first thoughts were eek, country and western (not my genre of choice by any stretch - me and Robert Plant nearly had to part company over Alison Kraus). However, my bad, this was an unfair early judgement. Hailing from British Columbia the band describe themselves as acoustic rock, blues, reggae and, having heard the rest of the set, that was fair for sure. If I tell you I bought the CD even tho' I had to fight my way back up two flights of heaving full stairs to get it, you'll get an idea what I thought!

The Skints
Our second outing to see the Skints and Marcia and the band did not in any way disappoint. Knitting afficionados note the stylish take on the Fairisle sweater as sported by drummer Jamie in this video - nice!