I’ve finally opened the Cotton & Flax Etsy shop! There are only a small number of pillows listed right now, which I’ll be selling until the Fall/Winter collection is ready to launch (hopefully at the beginning of next month). Feel free to browse the Cotton & Flax shop on Etsy!
Print It Yourself – My favorite DIY printing books
I meet so many creative people, both in person at sales and events, and online on Etsy and Pinterest. Lots of people ask me about how I learned to print on fabric, and the truth is, I’m almost entirely self-taught! I learned traditional printmaking techniques (relief printing, intaglio, lithography, etc.) in college, but I didn’t learn to print onto fabric until after graduation.
I learned fabric printing, both silkscreen printing and relief printing with hand carved blocks, by reading lots of books and by experimenting. The best way to learn to print on textiles is by trying it out for yourself, and you don’t need a fancy studio to get started. These books will help you learn the basics, and guide you through some basic and intermediate project that you can give as gifts, or keep to decorate your home.
These books are invaluable parts of my library, and I return to them often. Some of them focus completely on printing on fabric, but a few are great introductions to printmaking in general, and cover the basics of printing on fabric as well.
Print Liberation / Mastering the Art of Fabric Printing and Design / Dyeing and Screen-Printing on Textiles / Little Owl’s Little Prints / Lotta Prints / Printing By Hand / The Printmaking Bible / A Field Guide to Fabric Design
This book from Christine Schmidt of Yellow Owl Workshop is a great way to introduce young ones to printing – the projects included in her book are absolutely adorable, and will keep you entertained all afternoon.
Lena Cowin’s new book Made By Hand also has some fun printing projects. I didn’t include it in the roundup because it’s not strictly about printing or textile design, but it’s worth picking up!
Do you know of a textile printing book that I shouldn’t miss? Let me know on Twitter or Instagram!
Want to learn more about printmaking? Check out my screenprinting class for CreativeLive, and learn to print your own designs!
How does silkscreen printing work?
Update: I now offer an online class to learn to screenprint your own designs! Sign up for my screenprinting class, and transform your artwork into texiles, prints, posters, and more.
When I sell my textile work for Cotton & Flax in person, I’m often asked, “How do you print your fabrics?” The answer I usually give is that the fabrics are silkscreen printed, which I do by hand in my home studio. I talked about the process behind creating hand printed textiles last week, but I didn’t go into much detail about the silkscreen printing (or “screenprinting”) process. I know not everyone is familiar with how silkscreen printing works, so I made this little video that shows a snippet of the printing process.
This wasn’t intended to be a tutorial, so I skip over all the setup steps (like covering the silkscreen in emulsion and exposing my imagery onto the screen), as well as the parts that come after the printing (like heat setting the ink). The video just cuts to the chase, and you can see how I use a squeegee to hand print each piece of fabric through the silkscreen mesh template, making a piece of patterned fabric that will later be sewn into a pillow cover.
In the video, I’m printing one of my favorite patterns, the DNA squiggles, which will be sewn into small pillows. I’m hoping to expand my studio soon to print larger pieces of fabric (and maybe begin to sell yardage of my hand printed fabric), but for now, I’ll continue to print small pieces. If you’d like to learn more about silkscreen printing, there are a ton of great resources both online and in print for learning how to screen print at home. I’ve featured my top 6 DIY Printing books here, in case you’re curious!
Patterned iPhone Wallpaper – Black Diamonds
I meant to post this at the beginning of the month, but it’s already the 16th, can you believe it?! As a thank you to everyone who has been keeping up with this new(ish) blog of mine, I wanted to offer a little thank you gift for your support. Thus, I will begin sharing a free, downloadable iPhone wallpaper every month, featuring a new pattern that I designed for Cotton & Flax.
Click here to download the Cotton & Flax iPhone wallpaper for September.
This month, the wallpaper background will be my new half-diamonds pattern, which I am super fond of at the moment. I made this pattern by hand drawing each shape using pen and ink, so it has a nice imperfect edge to it.
This wallpaper should work for most smartphones, not just the iPhone (although it may get cropped depending on the screen size!) You can also download the many other free wallpapers I’ve created, too!
To Download: Click the link and it will take you directly to the image. If you are on your phone, you can simply save the image to your phone, and set it as your wallpaper in the settings area of your phone. If you’re on a computer, save the image to your computer, then email the photo to yourself. Open the email on your phone, save the photo to your phone, and set the photo as the wallpaper!
Snail Mail Saturday – Vintage Stamps
Stumbled upon an amazing Tumblr this week, simply called Vintage Stamp Designs. It features tons and tons of beautiful stamps from all over the world, many of which seem to have been collected and compiled by Karen Horton, who also posts her beautiful finds on her vintage stamp collection on Flickr. She does an amazing job sharing information about the stamps, and I admire her dedication to cataloging all these beauties. I spent way too long saving all my favorites, and then compiling them into the collage above.
Print of the Week – Woodcut by Bryan Nash Gill
These incredible prints, made by Bryan Nash Gill, are created using remnants of tree stumps, which the artist inks and hand prints to make these large scale records of trees that have been felled. The printing process for this series is incredibly laborious: after rolling out the ink, the artist gingerly places the thin Japanese paper atop the section of wood, and uses the pressure of his fingertips to impress the ink upon paper.
You can see a more in depth explanation of Brian Nash Gill’s process on the Ashes & Milk blog, or take a look at his portfolio.
Looking for more creative inspiration? Check out the archives, and see all the amazing artists who inspire my work as a printmaker.