Daisies

As part of the Hot Bed Press Summer School this month, I took a great course in Textile Screenprinting. Tutors Mandy Tolley and Kiran Williams packed a lot into 2 days and by the end we had created repeat designs, printed them up and made our fabric into bags and tea towels.  I’m especially pleased with my bag which is in regular use!

Taking the same repeat design principles, last week I had a go at translating this new learning into the world of lino blocks.  I’d sketched some large and small daisies this summer and the arrival of Daisy – a beautiful kitten who lives next door - prompted me to use the drawings to create a small repeat daisy design, to celebrate her arrival.

I drew the initial design onto a small tracing paper square in order to reverse my design for the lino block and also to make it easy to cut up and rearrange the design to create a 2 way (horizontal and vertical) repeat pattern. The tracing paper square became the irregular shaped template pattern for my lino shape and after transferring my design onto it, I cut the lino block. Here you can see the rearranged tracing paper and lino block ready to print.

The experiment worked and printing the lino 4 times side by side in Crimson ink, I gained a design which could extend infinitely. This is the first result which still needs to be worked on further. It’s a good start!