The course outline sounds interesting and covers quite a variety of techniques:

Lesson One

• Preparing your materials and workspace
• The mechanics of printing
• Paper stencil screens

Lesson Two

• Found materials and other resists
• Finger blending
• Plastic stencil screens
• Bonus – discharge printing

Lesson Three

• Flour paste screens
• Preparing images for Thermofax screens
• Printing with Thermofax screens
• Printing yardage

Lesson Four

• Cheap and easy home-made frames
• Glue and paint screens
• Spray paint screens
• Bonus – drawing fluid and filler

The courses are also imho very good value for money. This one is costing me $37.

Just as well really when you see what the supplies are costing me and this is just part of the shopping list!

Luckily I don’t have to shop for everything on the supply list.

• There is an important difference between the type of ink your printer uses. It is either dye-based or pigment-based. You need to know which.
• There are some solutions on the market that claim to permanently fix the dye-based inks to your fabric. The most well known of these is the Bubble Jet Set from C .Jenkins Company. I say claim as I have not tested these myself.
• The fading and the unevenness of the fading on my pigment inks seems to be due to crocking. Pigment inks cannot take abrasion very well so the colour rubs off.
• Pigment inks seems to have a better fade resistance when in strong light sources.

So the conclusion seems to be you need to consider where you will be using the printed fabric. If you are aiming to do a lot of washing then you are probably best with dye-based inks and using one of the fixatives. If you are not making something that will be washed then pigment-based inks appear to be the better option.

Gloria Hansen has a good article on her website about inkjet printing on fabrics.

These are some of the stockists of either pretreated fabrics or the chemicals to treat your own fabric for using with dye-based inks:

• C. Jenkins Company There are some good articles about the process and the difference between the types of inks on the site too.
• Color Textiles Inc
• Soft Fabric Photos The FAQ page is quite interesting too.

There is another interesting article on Gloria Hansen’s website about pre-coats for inkjet printing. The article mentions inkAID products. These products seem to be better suited to pigment-based inks.

The FAQ page on the inkAID site has the following information:

Q. Can inkAID be used to precoat fabric for printing?

A. Yes – inkAID can be used to precoat fabric for a variety of purposes, including collage, banners, or stretched art. Your best choice is to use inkAID White Matte precoat, which is water resistant and can be machine washed. For best results, you should use a pigment-based ink for this application. Don’t use any inkAID Clear precoats, as they are water soluble and cannot be washed.

I am still not clear as to whether this means the fabric is also washable with a degree of permanence after printing. This may be an avenue to pursue, but I’ve not done anything about it yet. It sounds like an interesting product though.

What is most annoying though is that the printer is “intelligent” and thinks it knows when the ink is used up. It then refuses point blank to print anything. Last week it forced me to replace and throw away all 4 ink cartridges that were still half full because they were “empty”. I don’t use the printer all that much, so sometimes months go by before I want to print something again. I don’t know if this contributes to the darned thing thinking the cartridges are empty or whether it is just another way of getting more money out of you. The printer itself wasn’t too expensive, but the ink cartridges are – when I only get to use half the ink they contain, which in my case was equivalent to about 20 pages. A set of 4 Epson cartridges costs €31.

We also have an HP Color Laserjet 2550L colour printer. It gets used almost as infrequently, as we don’t do a lot of colour printing. I did use that printer for any colour printing I did during my C&G course and we only had to replace the yellow toner cartridge once in about 3 years. It is still going strong now. It is also less prone to paper jams – I can’t actually remember if we have ever had one. The toner cartridges for the laser printer aren’t cheap either, but each cartridge is supposed to print 5000 pages. Colour cartridges cost €85 each, black is slightly cheaper.

So I am doing a little experiment. I have printed the same image onto 2 pieces of cotton using the laser printer and the inkjet printer. I am going to throw them in the washing machine each week when I do the washing and see how the colours hold up. Then based on these results one or other of the printers will go. We really don’t need 2 colour printers in the house – along with a B&W laser printer.

I have been looking at the works of Andy Warhol recently as part of some research for a new piece of textile art. As these are colourful and I had one to hand I used it for my experiment. The artwork is not mine.

Here are the two pieces straight from the printer. The laser printer piece I ironed as I thought it may help to fix the colour to the fabric. (Laser printing is based on heat being applied to fix the toner particles to the paper or in my case cloth.) The laser printer produces slightly darker images on cloth and they seem to be somewhat sharper too.

Left laser print, right inkjet

Watch this blog for the results of my experiment in the coming weeks.

So what has all this to do with textile art you ask yourselves? Well to be honest not a lot. I’m just trying to get you accustomed to the idea that this blog may not be updated as frequently as you are used to.

While we were in Valencia on one of the visits to the architect we went to the Plaza Redonda again. It is in the process of being renovated and we saw quite some improvement since our last visit. This time there were two groups of ladies: one doing drawn thread embroidery and the other making stitched lace (not sure of the correct term and no time to look it up now). There are women of all ages there and it seems quite a regular get together. Actually that is not completely accurate, there was one gentleman in the group of lace makers, who was busily stitching away on his piece of work. I guess I will need to learn Valenciano before I can join in. Maybe they’ll take pity on me and speak Castellano?

As we drove to Spain to avoid getting stuck in airports due to dust clouds or air traffic controller strikes, we only had the middle weekend to relax in. We stayed just outside Xàtiva at Genovés. There was a town fiesta going on that weekend and we were lucky enough to catch the end of some folk dancing by the local dance group. I really love the fact that the Spanish still wear their traditional costumes for the fiestas. Although not as elaborate as some of the dresses you see in Valencia these ones were attractive too.

In the gallery there was a link to the website of Fine Cell Work. It is certainly worth a visit. There is some very fine needlework displayed there. If you are looking for a gift for someone who appreciates handwork you might well find one there. The testimonials are positive. I have to admit to being tempted by the needlepoint and tapestry kits. There are some lovely designs.

The artwork (that changes) across the top is all taken from my textile art and quilts. Sqeze wouldn’t let me have my father’s eyes on this one, which I am quite sad about. I have to nip over to Use Your Eyes or into the library to see the twinkle in them. If you’re interested, my dear reader, you can see them here too.

I was interested to read on her blog that she is teaching a class called Cartographic Constructions like her blog. In it the students are first taught the basics of traditional quilting. And 12 of the 14 are men. I was quite surprised at that as it was an elective class. Maybe some of them will catch the bug and there will be a few more male textile artists out there.

The tour was well organised with everyone being given a headset and the tour guide using a microphone. So despite it still being quite crowded we could still hear everything well. The tour lasted about an hour and took in 6 or 7 of the paintings, which was quite enough. The choice of paintings was also very good to cover a wide range of the works. The tour guide was obviously knowledgeable and told us lots of interesting background information, including some about how the exhibition was organized and how the paintings were transported.

Idealized Female Portrait, Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Venus, Botticelli Workshop, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

This painting is a copy probably made to order for a particular client of the famous Birth of Venus, which appears to have been a big hit from the beginning, with many wealthy clients wanting their own example. The copies were produced in the workshop of Botticelli, but most likely by his students rather than Botticelli himself. Again the figure is idealized showing the extremely sloping shoulders and the second toe being longer than the big toe – a hallmark of Botticelli apparently. The hair in this painting is styled differently to the Birth of Venus, but the pose in instantly recognisable.

Adoration of the Christ Child (“Wemyss Madonna”), National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

The detail on this painting was amazing. There was quite an amount of gold paint, some as embroidery around the edges of the cloak. It was as if you could see every stitch! Apparently as it was a fairly recent acquisition to the National Gallery of Scotland from a private collection it had not be subjected to any “unfortunate” restorations. It was restored at the National Gallery and benefited from modern techniques that allowed it to be returned to what is believed to be the original condition. Certainly you can see lots of detail such as very fine lines around the finger nails and defining the individual fingers.

Having recently been to another tour of the most important works of the Städel where some of the mediaeval paintings were explained, it was interesting to hear how the style had changed and been developed in the Renaissance. Botticelli still used quite a lot of gold paint in his works, but to add detail, whereas in the mediaeval works it is often used as the background.

When we left the museum after noon there were long queues of people waiting to get in – right out onto the street. It was miserable weather – raining and near freezing temperatures. I felt sorry for the people standing out in that weather and probably getting very cold feet standing in the slush of melting snow and glad that I had forsaken my Sunday lie in to beat the rush.

All images are press images from the Städel Museum, Frankfurt