10 Days after the last post on meadow grasses, I was finally ready for more printing. 16 days now, it’s finally been rinsed and hung to dry.

This was the original artwork for some loosely based designs:

Challenge 1: Could only get Indigo Dye - one color (note to self: used 3 tbsp pigment to paste)

Challenge 2: Maple Woodblocks cut with xacto’s like to whisker when soaked, dried, soaked. Had to keep a blade close to trim off the whiskers.

Challenge 3: Inital idea of ‘literal blades of grass’ was getting really cheesey the more I had time to dwell… So I returned to the original photoshopped pic of the blue tarp with a screen on it. Merged with the blades of grass, tiled, etc… I kind of liked it from the start but wasn’t sure about straying from the simpler image of the grass… but what the hey… can’t do grass.

Challenge 4: One maple block carved which was intended for the yellow patterns, became ‘the’ pattern. Lost my nerve 1/2 way before printing, ran out and bought some stamps from Michael’s “just in case” and proceeded to print.

4 days of angst later + 2 days of printing, it’s a relief - no - seriously - to have the pieces printed, rinsed and drying!

After soaking the fabric in a ‘fixative’ I laid it out on the worktable (which was covered in vinyl, newsprint, single layer of flannel) slightly damp with a fan on it.
I had made up the print paste the night before, I started printing.
The first prints I did were on a play 1/4 yd scrap at one end which had dried by then.
Then I printed, using the largest rubber stamp. Printed about a yard of it before calling it a night. Not too happy with the difficulty of registration on it, I bucked up and went to the woodblock I had carved the next day. Ahh… so much easier than stamps! All in all there were some wonderful suprises along the way, some major grumbles at several untried methods of registration, but I really loved doing it and can’t wait for the next time.

Here are some pics with more technical notes following. These pics are of fabric fresh from their final rinse, still very damp. When they dry, I hope to see the underprinting a little better. The layering and underprinting and resist techniques are things I’m really looking forward to playing with in the future. Also, the washing soda did an incredible job of getting rid of the plastic residue left from the green fabric paint used previously.

Maple Woodblock:

Rubber Stamp:

Some of the differences I found throughout the printing are:

If a rubber stamp has solid areas of more than a 1/4 ” they were more difficult to apply ink faithfully with the waterbased pigment paste. Fine lines are absolutely amazing to print. I haven’t seen that kind of detail since I made aluminum plate etchings. Rubber stamps also require a ‘break-in’ period of 4 to 6 prints and then some.

The maple block required about 40 printings before things were not fuzzing up so much.
The wood also had fewer cleanings (mainly because the rubber is so shallowly engraved).
The print pad was made of poly foam 4″ thick, set into a tray, covered with one thin fleece and one sheet of flannel, topped with muslin. Tucked into the tray tightly, hot glued to keep sides down, allowing a slightly rounded top. (Guess washing it out will be a challenge, I’ll have to let you know as I still want to play print on some other fabrics before tossing the remainder.)
I brushed the pad about every third print 4 times in one direction, 4 in the opposite. Reinking each time. The woodblocks faithfully picked up the right amount, I found that daubing the block on the pad about 7 times was giving the best amount of ink for the design, though it took a-l-o-t of prints to get to that point.
Underinking was taking place at 3 to 5 ‘daubs’
Overinking at 8 or more ‘daubs’
While 6 to 7 seemed a good number for reproducing without losing the crispness of the block.
The rubber block on the other hand was extremely difficult to control. As evidenced by the randomness. Even when inked the same amounts, the rubber wasn’t always receptive. A few times I ran into the table not being absolutely flat and the fabric having damp spots.

Susan Bosence recommended dampening newly carved wood blocks and wiping dry, as used blocks tend to print better than fresh ones. The dampening did help with printing, initially, but it really took about a dozen times printing with it for it to settle down. The edges began to fuzz quite more than I had expected, not having been used to water-based inks. In the old days of oil based inks and kerosene, the blocks took ink and gave ink like a silverstone pan! And, ultimately, after lots of printing the woodblock settled in it’s water paste environment like a good ol’ cast iron skillet!