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I tried to post this on my old blogger account but they want me to ‘create’ a google account, I don’t want a google account I am fed with people who want my ‘details’ and knowing google they probably know more about me than I do myself anyway, so as some people showed an interest in how I work my textiles I thought I will post it here, so if you are not interested you might want to give my blog a miss, this is not linocuts though it is collographs which is another form of printing but for collographs you need a press.

I took a basic fine art course through my in 2004/5, it gave a taster of many techniques and although I enjoyed most I loved the printing, especially collographs, everything I did on the course was with paper except screen printing, but I naturally wanted to try things on fabric, the tutor we had for lino cuts told me if I am working on fabric to use a water-soluble oil printing ink.

while I was on the course there was a discussion on the about printing on fabric which I read with great interest and one person who posted some good helpful info was , so as I decided to work my final collage project as collographs on fabric I e mailed Rayna for any tips, Rayna also said to use a water-soluble oil printing ink and to use lots of news print because the ink goes through fabric much more than paper and it did, the photos below show on the left the printed collograph from the front then the photo on the right is the back so you can see how much ink has penetrated the fabric.

I used the water-soluble oil printing ink the lino cut tutor recommended from as the collage had some, I have not used anything else for collographs but have for lino cuts and monoprints mainly textile paint (thicker than silk paint) and acrylic paint.

the collographs printed well into fabric, good close weave cotton worked best out of the fabrics I had, the silk I have is thin and I found it 'moved' so the print was not true to grain, I ironed it to freezer paper which helped a lot but...it bled a little and I think it is having a non absorbent paper backing, I really, really wiped the ink off the plate next try and it was much better, a heavier weight of silk than I had might have been easier, you can see from the photo below the difference between the cotton and silk I had, on the left is silk and the cotton damask is on the right as you can see the cotton has picked up more detail.