Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I’m a bit late posting this as I had paid work to do as soon as I got home from NZ.

My last two days of classes at Quilt Symposium were both with Claire Smith (a Kiwi), and they were very different. The first was monoprinting, a technique I’ve never tried before. I really enjoyed the process and the variations of what you can produce. I’ll likely use it again.

By definition, monoprinting means getting a single print from a painted surface. Here’s a summary of the steps:

1. Lay down a paint medium on a surface (we used old x-ray films [with foam rollers], and Gelli plates [with a special brayer]; the paint was a thick acrylic paint like that used by school children).
2. Optional: Use various objects and textures to make designs in the paint (I used everything from clothes pegs to the end of paint brushes, to notched baking scrapers, to bubble wrap, to fronds and leaves). NOTE: If you want to write something, you’ll have to write it backwards on the painted surface so that it prints ‘right side up’.
3. Lay a piece of plain fabric over the top of the painted/marked surface.
4. Gently rub the fabric to transfer the paint and design onto it.
5. Remove the fabric from the surface and allow to dry.
6. Once dry, repeat with different paints/patterns to create various print layers, or, if you’re happy with the result, iron the fabric to heat set the acrylic paint.
7. Repeat for each other piece of fabric you want to print.

Some photos of the MANY pieces of fabric I produced during the day—most of the small ones are about 6″ square:

Plastic sheeting to protect the table, newspaper, x-ray film, small Gelli plate, foam rollers, brayer, pots of acrylic paint, fern for making a pattern on the paint

My first efforts, drying. The two large pink pieces were the result of rolling the excess paint off the roller onto spare pieces of fabric—you can get some amazing extra pieces this way and there’s no way to predict how they will turn out. The circles in the blue were created from the bottom of a drink cup.

Most, but not all, of the pieces I printed

The large pieces were all created by rolling off excess paint onto spare pieces of fabric