An Afternoon of Block Printing

I've block printed a couple of kaftans and Pietro's Master of the Blade scarf with acrylic craft paint and textile medium and had been collecting block printing stamps for a while so the Baronial A&S Activity I organized for August was blockprinting.  A dozen ladies arrived last Saturday afternoon to play with paint and fabric in my garage and be social. At least three of them knew far more about block printing than I did, so I learned a ton last weekend.

Countess Gwynhwfar brought so many lovely stamps!

Experimenting on scraps

 Playing with paint

Some folks were just experimenting but others brought projects that they worked on.

Countess Gwen experimenting with different types of paint

Mistress Kerysten decorating the neckline of a tunic

Sir Kytte decorating the hem of a tunic for Sir Artos

Things I learned:

• Dawn dish soap works great to clean paint off the block
• Exterior house paint works well for block printing
• A dense pad (like a yoga mat) underneath gives a better result
• You need Mineral Spirits to take oil pased inks off blocks

Things I want to try:

Mistress Margavati was using a "stamp pad" that she had seen block printers in India use -a large square plastic container with several layers of padding that she poured the ink (I believe she was experimenting with Dynaflow) onto and inked the block by pressing it onto the padding. 

Mistress Margavati taking a break from her stamp pad and talking to Mistress Portia

Mistress Portia had a fascinating way of producting a copy of a stamp using a legos for a frame and pouring a silicone mix (I think) into the frame.

Mistress Portia working magic!

Everyone enjoyed themselves and there was enough interest that this may become a recurring event every couple of months.

For  myself, I have bought a variety of paints, inks and other block printing tools and plan to do a lot of systematic experimenting to determine which paints work best on various stamps and types of cloth.  Watch this space!