You may remember that I said I'd brought boxes in from the garage...well, in one of them, I found a small lino block (and this one is actually made of lino, not soft cut, so dates before ME). I actually ditched most of my lino blocks, not sure how this one survived, to be honest. I thought it might be fun to print it on one of the books. So... first I needed a background, because I didn't want plain white. I have a fair number of ink blocks, the kind used for stamping, and one of those was in the same box. It happened to be green, and I wondered if it would work on Lutradur. The answer to that was, yes, it could. I simply dragged the ink surface across the fabric, and it worked fairly well. Bit unfortunate that the ink pad fell off, bending itself in two as it did so, but actually, it left some interesting marks, so that was okay.
And then it all started to go to hell in a handcart. I decided to transfer dye the lutradur, using the block I'd found. Firstly, I found a couple of places on the block that should have been carved away. Takes too much energy to remove them, so I sucked it up like a good little princess. One or two of the prints I made looked okay, though, so I left them to dry. So far so good. Ish.
Later, I went to iron on the transfers. And there's where things went pear shaped. I made every single mistake in the book, all the things that I advise students not to do....yes, them. I didn't check the iron temperature, because I always have the iron at its hottest setting, right? Wrong. So when I transferred, I got something that looked like a ghost print, and managed to drop the paper when I checked it, so couldn't realign the print, and ended up with a smudged, double image. I used one of the prints I wasn't happy with, the one with lots of odd bits and pieces that shouldn't be there, and no, I have no idea how they got there, either...but they're on the book now. And then another double image. Things were starting to get out of hand. The back didn't go as planned, either, and I have no idea why.
And yet... here's the book, ready for stitch. (I know... at last, a book that's going to include stitch as a major design feature... finally...). And I Rather Like It.
The front has a good balance to it. Yes, there are flaws; click on the image, have a closer look, you'll see them. What's important, though, is that they don't dominate the piece. They don't scream, look at me, I'm a mistake...ha ha ha. Adding stitch will take what little attention they get, away, I think. I rather like the double images; think I might try that again, deliberately, see what I get... some other time.
The back is more densely coloured than I wanted, but that's not the end of the world. Boring, you say? Meh. Not as boring as all that, reasonable variety of both tone and mark. What will bring it alive, though, will be the free motion machine stitch, following the shape of the flowers. And that's what this background was designed to contain, to support. It's not that great on its own, but once the stitch is added, it will be the perfect counterpoint to the front. And this is an excellent example of how I think fabric books need to be conceived, designed and worked.
I couldn't work out why I'm not keen on fabric books as a genre. As a book lover, it ought to be a no brainer...and yet... I think it's because the examples I've seen, seem to be random collections of stuff, sometimes with a theme, sometimes without, contained in a cover. Imagine a story book created on that basis: I find it very difficult to do. The story is the thing, in my books, the concept. There always is one; it's just a question of finding and expressing it.
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