SAQA and Sentinels at the Festival of Quilts

Wonderful to be back at the Festival of Quilts in 2014 - and be able to share SAQA's 25th Anniversary Trunk show with so many visitors. caught up with Dijanne Cevaal who brought the Sentinels exhibition to Adelaide - spectacular exhibitions and wonderful to be able to see it in the cloth, as was Brenda Gael Smith's  Living Colour exhibition adjacent to my SAQA table. 

Screenprint breakdown

My first experience of breaking down a screen print was during a "play day" with Ankie King a few years ago. I had been printing from a lino cut and Ankie invited me to load the lino cut with dyed print paste  and place it directly onto the silk screen. Once the screen had dried for several hours we "pulled" clean manutex over the dried  paint and created an abstract version of the lino print. As the clear manutex being pulled across the screen started to break down the dried dyes, it took up the blue dye and this added another  element to the subsequent prints. I really liked the unpredictable outcome and the way one lino cut could be used in so many different ways. Long after the prints had been set, I rubbed them with gold Shiva, using the original lino cut to pick highlights and add movement to the prints. I've started to stitch them ... and I'm still using that lino cut.

The latest edition of Down Under Textiles has a great article on Breakdown Printing by Dijanne Cevaal where Dijanne talks through the process and provides so many ideas there may not be enough fabric or life left in me to try them all ...