CQ Summer School

I am just recovering from the exertions of Summer School at Belstead House near Ipswich. I was so lucky to get a place this year as it was subscribed twice over! I spent Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday with Linda Maynard screen printing. I knew of Linda's work in advance, from seeing her students' pieces at The Bramblepatch, Weedon, I had admired their pieces and wanted to be able to begin to emulate them.
We spent Friday evening preparing our fabric in a soda ash soak and getting them dried and with black paper and a sketch book, learning to make our own Notans

These were going to form the basis is a screen print later in the weekend. I found it hard to visualise the patterns I wanted, and was a slow starter. Eventually I got the hang of it.
On Saturday morning we were up bright and early, perfecting our designs before breakfast! Linda then showed us how we could create a mask on a blank screen with just masking tape! Just a roll of 2" wide, which she tore and cut. Cut out intricate shapes from it and applied them to the outside of the screen. Of course the trick was to be able to conceive of your design in the negative or one ended up printing a background!! This we then printed onto a length of soda soaked fabric.
Next we used the same screen, now clean and empty to block print plain colour onto onto more pre-soaked fabric.
We worked all day and well into the evening, enjoying the complete focus and lack of interruptions. It was lovely to spend time with like minded people. The food was plentiful with wonderful salads at lunch.
By the end of Saturday we had also created a vilene screen, with the image outlined in acrylic paint and some of the vilene cut away, a freezer paper stencil from one of the Notan designs and more fabric prepared for Sunday.