I’ve experimented with lots of different ways of doing this on fabric – using bleach is really powerful if a little toxic. And there are resist binders you can buy commercially but I prefer a lower tech approach that’s safe to use and completely harmless to the environment.

That’s why I was so thrilled to have three different resist print techniques to explore with at this Springs Wild Textile workshops – ‘dhabu’ or Indian mud printing, ‘Adire’ Nigerian cassava paste & ‘Katazome’ Japanese rice paste, which Honami brought so kindly from Japan.

To make the mud resist we collected mud from the River Adur and mixed it with chalk from the hill & some gum arabic. The chalk had to be pounded until it is very fine – this is the hardest part.  When the resist was ready it smelt of the river but also of the sea (it has a high salt content as the Adur is very tidal near us) and was a lovely smooth consistancy, a pleasure to handle and squish through our stencils, also to flick as we discovered.

Next was the ‘Katazome’ or Japanese rice paste resist which was probably the hardest resist to prepare and involved mixing the rice flour with the rice bran (a kind of poetry here as the rice kernal is re-united in this way) & then steaming it like dumplings. The final resist was very silky and we could apply it with a icing funnel (?) as well as comb through it and make very fine lines.

‘Adire’ or cassava paste resist was relatively simple by contrast. I mixed half a cup of cassava flour and half a cup of water and cooked them together until they made a porridge. This I sieved to get ready of any lumps. Cassava was lovely to apply and once again we were able to make very fine lines through it.

All the resists were left to dry overnight and much of the next day when they could really bake in the sun. They then went into the indigo bath – the mud for the shortest dip, then the cassava, then the rice paste.

The cloths were left to fully oxidise and then we rinsed off the resists and were left with the final prints…

We all agreed that the next thing was to try and combine the different techniques, using what we now know about their different qualities. If you are interested in resist printing and indigo do get in touch about joining the next workshop, which will be in September.

The post Printing with resists & indigo dyeing appeared first on Sarah Burns Patterns.

There is a rational way to design a pattern – I remember Orla Kiely suggesting that you first consider the purpose of the design, then the scale and lastly the motif itself. I’ve also got lots of lovely books about the subject, which I could use but rarely do.

Instead, I kind of feel my way out of the dark: for me pattern grows out of a moment in a specific emotional time and place – I’ve often used similar inspiration and yet come up with completely different design ideas that bare little resemblance to each other.

I’ve learnt that by my personal approach is through printmaking itself: cutting and printing and recutting my printing blocks – moving them, rotating them, cutting them up untilI find a little clue of something that intrigues me and offers possible solutions… I’ve also learned from some of my favourite pattern makers like Barron and Larcher and Enid Marx to always shape my repeat unit (never square) and to overlap, reverse and flip patterns – what ever it takes to keep them dynamic and above all to keep off the train tracks. When I think I’m almost done, I look at every line and ask why it’s there – always a good way of simplifying.

Here’s some of the earlier incarnations of the Sompting design that I designed for the Virginia White Collection. This two colour design took me a while and in the end I just cut the block up and collaged the whole thing – messy. I remember coming in from the garage and showing David the final print, knowing that I’d finally cracked it – always a lovely feeling…

The strange thing is that each time, instead of knowing what to do I have to go through the whole strange and elusive process again, experimenting, developing, refining – with no shortcuts or tricks. It’s such an all consuming process that I remember what Sheila Paine says in the introduction to her book on Embroidered Textiles and quietly apologise to my boys:

The post Pattern making appeared first on Sarah Burns Patterns.