Mono prints and a pink cat

I'm now in my 4th week of the online mono printing class and I have really learned a lot. I've made lots of prints, most of them no one will ever see, but I'll share a few of them.

A series of yoga prints.

A couple of hand prints.

I've never done much with paper and inks so this has really been a learning experience. Now I've got to figure out how to take some of what I'm learning and transferring it to fabric.

The pink"jaguar" is on it's way to my granddaughter, here he is getting into the travel box.

The Weekly Leaf

This week I used a print made with a rubbing plate, the Gelli plate and Jacquard textile paint on hand dyed fabric.

The leaves were outline stitched with a stem stitch. As I stitched them I became very enthralled with the negative space around the leaves, so I did lots of french knots in that space and left the veins unstitched.
week #15

Daily stitching projects
Line dance #101 - #104

The Daily Paper #29 - #32

Linked to "Off the Wall Friday"

Learning new things

Since January I've been taking a Master Gardeners class,  there are just two weeks left and I'm amazed at how much I've learned. Now I have to get outside and start putting what I've learned into action, if only the weather would cooperate. I think I'm a fair weather gardener. I will have to put in thirty hours of volunteer time so that should get me moving.

This past week I started an online Monotype class with Linda Germain. We started the week by making a 9" x 13" gel plate, gathering tools, making stencils and learning how to work with the inks and brayer. I made regular gel plates many years ago and have most recently been playing with a Gelliarts plate, but this is the first time I've made a plate with glycerin as one of the ingredients. My big learning curve is going to be the inks and brayer. I've always considered myself brayer challenged but have been doing better with textile paints and the gelliarts plate. In this class we are using speedball block printing inks and I'm feeling brayer challenged again, I'm sure with enough practice and re-watching the class videos I'll get the hang of it. We are working on paper, but already I can see some wonderful possibilities for prints on fabric. Here are some of my first prints.

So far this one is my favorite.

On Friday I did my final guest blogging post over at ...And then we set it on fire. This time I wrote about my weekly stitching.

The Weekly Leaf
        This week I did not print a leaf, instead I took a piece of hand dyed fabric and stitched a leaf shape with french knots and then added the veins with stem stitch. I used one my favorite leaf resource books.

Drew a leaf the correct size to use for guidance.

 Then added stitches.
Week #13

Daily stitching updates.
Line Dance #84 - #89

The Daily Paper #12 - #17

Some close ups.

linked to "Off the Wall Friday"