I’M BACK! / PRINTING
How long have I been gone. Embarrassingly too long. And longer I kept this place quiet, more difficult it was to come back. I wondered if I should start posting from old stories and try to catch up to most current? Or start from most recent story and move backwards? Well, I should stop thinking and let you know first where I am now, and the rest will follow in random order : )
I’m printing on tea towels right now. It’s something I wanted to do for quite some time. Quite some years to be honest. My first attempt to make tea towels was a tea towel painting series I’ve done a few years back. Those tea towels were closer to paintings as each piece was a unique piece. Afterwards, I wanted to make a series that is closer to being a simply tea towel, a product. Fast forward to now, I’m stamping on linen tea towels with fabric dye. More precisely, I made giant stamps and Mattie made a press surface with wood pieces for me and I stamp with my feet.
Dye is a very difficult medium for me. The color I see when mixed into liquid is different from when it is soaked into the fabric. Then there is always another surprise when the fabric is washed, and usually an unpleasant one. It requires lots of tests, patient and time. I struggled with all three of them.
Two weeks into printing, testing, cursing and 75 failed tea towels later, I manage to make nine satisfying tea towels. These nine are not perfect in any ways, but I told myself while looking at those nine tea towels that if I can’t enjoy these ‘unpleasant’ surprises, I should not continue the project. So I decided, and here I am, continuing the project.
To add to a big mess I am already making in the house, Mattie started printing his zine using the same technique but on paper (if you’ve been following this blog for a while, you would know that our small flat is our home and our studio). First few days, we had no floor space as it was covered with Mattie’s prints.
After tiptoeing around for a few days, we installed drying lines across the living room, and at least we got our floor back : ) Then to top it all up, we also made prints on papers with the stamps I used on tea towels. The house is still a big mess, and it will be for some weeks. But I am happy my hands are more often dirty than clean these days.
I don’t have many photos documenting the process up till now, because the process hasn’t been all fun fun and I was quite buried under it. But I hope to share more with you soon and I can’t wait to show you the final tea towels and prints in a couple of weeks : )