Easter and Monoprinting

I hope everyone had a good Easter. I accompanied my husband to an airshow in Temora. While he salivated over the latest in small aircraft I happily sat in the sun and made kumihimo braids. There were a number of men wanting to know what I was making. When I explained that the Japanese braiding I was doing is used by NASA to make extremely strong ropes which are used by the astronauts in space they seemed very impressed! Everyone was happy, while Michel, my husband did not return with an airplane, I did return with some more kumihimo cords to add to my collection. Heres one made up on my faux turquoise piece I created in our workshop on faux turquoise. I also loved the way I could make the hours pass by very quickly in the car with my kumihimo disk. Of course I was not driving!

Last Thursday, I spent a wicked day learning to monoprint at Jean Collyers studio. Jean is an amazing Southern Highlands textile artisan whose work I have admired for many years. I had to wait for almost two years to become a student of Jeans. Jean runs workshops each month, with many of her students having attended for 10 years now. As Jean decided to start another class, I was very fortunate to take up one of these places. My first workshop with Jean was learning the art of monoprinting. Monoprinting is a form of printing where images can only be made once. We took acrylic paints and applied these onto a glass surface. While the paint is wet we pressed paper and material onto our glass surface to make an image transfer. Here are some of my images. Watch this space as I will be embellishing these with stitching and other forms of textile embellishment to create my masterpieces.At each class , Jean teaches us a number of hand embroidered stitches. There is something very meditative about handstitching. I love it!