From print blocks to Journal Quilts

I started printing fabric at a Textile Without Limits meeting on 21 April. I hadn't had much time to think about what I would do at the meeting, so took along a box of things that would allow me to do block printing or screen printing.

Over lunch I came up with a plan to make some print blocks. I based these on a couple of shapes in paintings by Hundertwasser; a window shape and the ubiquitous stripes. The print blocks were easy to make. I cut shapes out of a thin foam with a sticky backing and stuck them to an offcut of mount board.

Some of the pieces were discharged rather than printed. The discharge paste was great fun and easy to use. I have used household bleach before, but we used Formosol mixed with print paste, which was much easier to control. You use it just like thickened dye. After applying it to your fabric, you just have to wait for it to dry and then iron to activate. The design appears like magic and gets paler the more you iron it.

Here are the results of my printing session, after I had washed and ironed them. The piece top right is a small square of discharge velvet. The print blocks are also shown.

Then I started piecing the fabric into journal quilts. The first one combined rectangles into strips and the printed windows formed rows of buildings, with taller buildings behind. Incorporating the black, discharged fabric was a challenge as it stood out beside the red and yellow. I have tried to blend it in by picking up the black colour in the quilting. This quilting outlines the shapes in the fabric.

In the second JQ I challenged myself to move away from rectangles and to use more irregular shapes. I started adding scraps of blue and purple fabric to pieces of the yellow, printed fabric. Then I built these up into irregular, wedge shaped strips and finally into a rectangular panel. Not sure how successful the overall design is here, the middle is OK but the left hand strip is less successful. If I'd had more time, I would have unpicked it and made changes, but I only had one day left (and that a working day). I was also unsure how best to quilt it, but moved again away from the obvious (outlining the printing), which I thought would take too long. I tried instead stitching window shapes across the piecing. These are quite (too?) subtle and could perhaps be made more visible in some way.

I got both JQs finished just in time to meet the deadline on the last day of April.