A Mid Century Adventure for (new) Fabric Printers

1. Introduction: Welcome. My name is falling while I'm a fabric printer and a maker and a fabric designer. And I live in Utrecht in the Netherlands. This is my second skill share class. And on for this class, I have been on a really interesting journey. I have been to the sixties, in the seventies of the last century, the mid-century to look at that style, to look at that period at these designs, at these patrons. And I have been using them to make my own patrons and make my own design to you. And I have found that really interesting. I have made dozens of designs and you will find just a little bit of those on the wall behind me. That is where I usually put my current designs. And I think that this is a really interesting way to work to find inspiration and start printing. If you love simplicity and if you love color, then I think there will be something in this class for you, because their style is all about simplicity and color. I think it will be interesting for you if you are new to printing and you want to learn to print the techniques that I use a stencil printing, which is really easy to learn. And I have included everything you need to know in this class to really get started. But also, if you are a more experienced printer and you want to try something new and go on an adventure like I have done. I think it might bring you a lot to use this class as a kind of art practice too. And really also dive into this tile in this period and these motives and this all design language. So I hope that you will find this an attractive idea. And if you want to go on this journey with me, and I am really curious to see what your are going to make with these kinds of motifs and patterns and designs that I've been working on for such a long time now and see how they look in your taste and your style. So I really hope to see you in this class. 2. Class project: designing, printing and sewing a cushio: The class project for this class is to make a cushion. Because it's really nice to end the class by making something beautiful and practical. But don't try to get there too fast. The joy is really in the process. And for this, we will have a look at a number of elements in the mid-century style that I am going to use for this class. We're going to look at where they came from and how we can use them. And of course, if there are other motives that you really like, you're free to use those as well. We will practice some stencil printing techniques that you can use. And then we will use three different kinds of motives to play with. Look at the way you can use different techniques on them. You can make different kinds of patrons with them. And when you're through with your explorations and you've decided on a motif in the pattern. And explain to you how to get in on a cushion with the right alignment and how to sew a cushion out of it if that is something that you haven't done before. And I'd really love it if you'd share your results as well as your process on the project gallery of this class. 3. Finding your Mid Century inspiration: In this lesson, I am going to take you back to the mid-century. And when I first told people that I was going to do a class about the sixties and seventies. I got some kind of mixed reactions. Some people really loved kids and some people absolutely hated it. And I am a child of the sixties and seventies. I was a teenager in the seventies. And I have some mixed feelings myself. And there were quite a lot of things that I didn't like so much, the oranges and the browns and they're very loud kind of design of the seventies. Sometimes it was just too much for me. But there are some elements in the, in this period that are really interesting and I really like to play with. So at first I thought I would show you a series of pictures, but the quality of the pictures from the sixties and seventies is not so great. And also it is such a huge design era that there is so much to show and there are actually quite a few of the elements that we are going to work with. So I thought I would just tell you about a couple of them and show you some pictures along the way. So one of the elements that I really liked is the geometrical patterns. And there were a lot of geometrical patterns when you look at that period. And they had very simple, basic shapes like circles and half circles and squares with these simple rounded corners. And there were so many different variations on them. There was so much playfulness going on. And I really like that you can get so much variation with some really simple shapes. And for our purpose, if you want to learn to Prince or if you want to expand your style, expand your skills and really get playing with and making patterns. This is perfect. So that is one of the things that we're going to do. And one of the things that we're going to look at, and another is a style element that I started to recognize as I was researching, especially the seventies. And that is what I have come to call loneliness. And I saw it everywhere in women's fashion. There were a lot of styles, but one of them was this really long dresses with a lot of fabric going on. These really long flowing sleeves. And then we had, of course, the bell-bottom jeans like John tra Horta and Saturday Night Fever walking along the pavement with his and why it's tragic legs. But also in interior design, you had these, for example, these wallpapered with these lines going all across the room, these flowy lines. And in furniture design you have these pods like chairs, everything was around, nothing was straight and nothing had hard corners are edges. Everything was, had this kind of soft feeling to it. Also had these tables with these kind of curvy legs and terrorists with curvy legs. This, this was something that I saw just about everywhere. And also in patterns and patterns there are these a kind of undulating ribbon mike shapes that come back in many variations. And from the start when I started making patterns, there have been very interesting to me. And I think that I like them because of the movement, because of this flow we movement. And the movement is something that we are going to work on and play with in this class. And the last thing that I am inspired by Israel's and there were a lot of laurels in, especially in the seventies. But the ones that I like most are the really simple floral STI, Scandinavian inspired, inspired plurals. And there were a lot of those in our home. And so this is also a tribute to my childhood memories. And we're going to work with us as well, and we're going to make combinations. And I hope that you will find elements in this period that you like. Maybe the ones that I'm showing you, maybe some other different ones. And that you are willing to go on this journey and play with them and make some really inspiring and beautiful patterns. But first, in the next lesson, we are going to look at the things that we're going to need to start printing. So I'll see you there. 4. Materials you will need: In this lesson, we are going to look at the materials that we are going to use for printing. It is not very large selection. They are very simple materials, most of them not very expensive and you should be able to get them easily. So let me walk you through them one by one. Everything starts withdrawing your, your designs. And what you will need for drawing is some millimeter paper. We are going to draw designs out on this really fine grid. If you don't have it or if you can't get it, I will supply you with a link where you can download papers like these from the internet. Of course, you need a pencil and eraser. You are going to need a ruler for some of your designs. And if you are going to work with circles, I think it would be handy to have a drawing compass like this one for making your stance. So you are going to need a permanent marker like this one was a fine point per making really precise drawings. You are going to need a knife, central cutting knife. This an executor knife. This is the one that I recommend. A surgical knives or any other nice have not worked so well for me. You're going to need to tensile material. I strongly recommends that you find mylar that Israeli perfect stencil material, especially mentor as tensile cutting, its easy to cut on, easy to clean. But if you can't find it, I've started off with another kind of plastic sheet that I could find strong cities strong enough, cuts easily and cleans easily. And then you need a cutting board like this one. For printing, we are going to need the following. We're going to need to tensile brushes. They are these brushes with the flat ends. If you can tap on your fabric. And if you have taken my first class, you will have heard me speak about looking for brushes which have stiff hairs. And for this class, it is a little bit less important because in last class we worked a lot with structure. In this class we are working a lot more with gradients and her gradients, soft gradients, you can use software brushes as well. I have been using a size eight to a size ten, mostly for this class. I have also used flat pain precious for some of the patrons. And when you are printing a larger surface like a cushion, you may need to gets at least four brushes because they get soaked with ink as you're working with and PR for awhile. Also, you're going to work with different kinds of colors. You are going to need more anyway. So get a few. Then you are going to need one of these. This is a perspex plate or something like it. This is where I put my ink on. But you can use anything that is flat and that you can wash. And then most importantly, there is the fabric ink that I'm using. I'm using a Dutch brands of screen printing ink. It's called Tinto and exists of pigment and a pasta and well used container that I use for mixing colors. And you can use any kind of brands because this is not easily available abroad. But most screen printing inks for fabric. And you will be able to acquire one where you live. I have two different kinds of varieties of ink. They have a more transparent one and they have more, more opaque one. And as we are going to work on a larger colored February, we're going to need the transparent one. For fabric. You are going to need a light colored fabric, either a linen or cotton in any case. And natural fabric. I really like printing on linen because it's, you get these really nice, beautiful contrast between light and dark more easily on linen than on cotton. I'd like to print on this kind of oatmeal kilohertz linen. But it is of course going to affect your colors. Make them a little bit darker. And for some kind of color combinations, you might prefer this kind of ivory colored cell or even white linen. If you are working with some colors where you want to have really fresh effects. And you're going to need euro to wash your fabric first. They might shrink if you don't, even while you're printing. And that's gives a really dramatic effect. But also they are often treated with a kind of substance which makes it hard for the ink to penetrate into the fabric. So do Washington. Of course. If you are going to make a cushy, you're going to need a sewing machine. And so matching thread. And that's it. 5. How to use this class: In this lesson, I want to say just a few words about the West best way that you can use this class. You can, of course, get an idea about what you want to print and then print it and make a cushion out of it. But what I would really love that you would try out is that you start playing. That's what I've been doing when I was preparing this class. This is a journey that I've undertaken as much for herself as to make preparing this class. Like everybody, I have my own preferences of printing the things that I do over and over again. I have always loved to work with tossed patterns, this irregular repeating patterns. And I have often loved to play or to print with just one color. And this mid-century style was an invitation for me to really dive into this world with a lot of color and these really regular repeats. And it was a way for me to try out things that I wouldn't otherwise have done. And it has opened quite a few new, at least for me that I find really interesting and that I really loved. And whether you are new to printing and you want to learn to print, or if you have been printing quite a bit before, it is a possibility to play and to really discover things about your printing. Because I promise if you are not going to just execute a thing that you have in your head, but use it maybe as start there, but use it as a departure to start making variations and expanding on it. Then you will discover things that you would never have thought that you would make. And I think you will be a much better designer if you do that. And you will have, at least have a lot more fun. And also in this class, I will take you to do a lot of looking, a lot of watching your own prints, but also, I've added Pinterest boards to the resources of this class. You can have a look there. I have lot of examples of my own work in this class. Not so much to tell you that they are good prince. In fact, I'm going to show you both my good ones and my bad ones. But I'm going to take you to look at them the way that I do. I often put them on my wall and then have them up there for a couple of days to see what I like and what I don't like. And I'm showing you what for me is a good print and what isn't. Which is not to say that this should be your opinion. You can have probably will have different opinions. But it helps you to find ways to look at your own Prince and to find what you like about your own printed and what you don't like. So for this class, I would invite you to maybe if you are able to take a little bit more time and a little bit more fabric and start playing. Motives as we are going to work with in this class, are a square with rounded corners. Something like that. These undulating ribbon like shapes that they have so many different variations on like that. A very simple flower that are used often in the mid-century style. And a combination of these two Mayflower within this ribbon like undulating shape. In the next lesson, we are going to make patterns with these squares with rounded corners. And also we are going to look at some stencil printing techniques. I'll see you there. 6. Learning stencil printing techniques. Printing rounded square patterns: In this lesson, we are going to start to print. And we're going to print with this tensile with around its square. I'm going to use is central to show you the printing techniques that we are going to use in this class. First thing I am going to do now is show you how to cut this tensile. And I've already drawn these rounded squares on my grid paper. We are going to go into working with grid paper mill more later on. But for now, I've drawn them and I've also already traced them with my permanent marker. So that leaves us just with needing to cut them out with the executor knife. Start anywhere. If you have a fresh blade into, your knife. Shouldn't be too hard to cut. This. You see, I am moving this tensile around. Instead of moving the knife. And I am trying to cut in one go in order not to have any kind of sticky out bits. Because that's not very pleasant when you're printing. And with this kind of shape, you should be able to cut in one go. Not quite last bit. So I'm checking if there are any little spots that needs extra attention here like this one. Otherwise the sensor is fine. And I'm going to cut the next one. But you have got the idea. I think before I'm going to show you some printing techniques, I would just like to quickly show you how I set up my workspace. I use a table met to protect my table. And I have a perspex plates to put my ink. And on the right-hand side of my workspace, we also have some specialists to take the Inca out of their containers. And I put the ink that I'm going to use on the right hand side two. Then I have some brushes, brushes that I'm going to use. And I have a container that I'm going to use for dirty brushes and I'm no longer using on the left-hand side. I have my stencils and I have a class for writing my hands and providing my stencils. I have now put my fabric that I'm going to work with on my table, Matt, I've put out some of the blue ink that I'm going to work with and I have my stencils ready. So I'm going to show you some examples of what we could do with different printing techniques. I've already got some ink on my brush and I typed it out on the perspex plate to divide the ink color on the brush. I'm now going to completely fill up the area of the first round. It's square. And I can do that by tapping. Most people think of tapping when they think of stencil printing and that's a perfect way to print shape with tensile. But you can also use a different kind of movement with your brush, more of a painting movement to get the ink into the fabric. And this is also a good way, but it depends a little bit on the fabric you're working with. If you are working with a fabric that has a loose leaf, or if you are working toward the edge of the fabric, that will not work so well because it's my shift why you are printing. The next thing that I'm going to do is to print a contour. If you have done my first course, you are going to recognize some of these techniques. And most of them are very similar to what I've taught in the first class, but you will also appropriately notice some slight differences. And this is because of the completely different kind of printed way going to make in this course. I've made a really subtle contour here. But you can also make a boulder contour by taking a little bit more ink on your brush. And I have worked in my last class a lot with a dry brush technique where you tap out your ink as much as possible, either on the fabric or on the plate. And use the remainder of the ink to make a prince that is much lighter. And you can use setEffect as well. And you can make a combination of the two techniques that I've shown before, the contour and the dry brush print. By making a kind of a gradient. I accentuate the contour first and then work towards the middle with a dryer brush. And that is a technique that I particularly like in this kind of style, in this mid-century style. Because the flowing movements of the patrons go really well with his gradient's. Going to try that out on a larger stencil. And I'm going to use a somewhat larger brush as well. And again, I accentuates the borders first because I want to get some really clear, crisp borders before I'm going to work in words will so my brush is dryer when our work towards the inside, when I've accentuated the contours first. And our lab kind of doing this in the middle of this tensile. But you can also do it in a more asymmetrical way. Doing the same again, I'm first accentuating the borders of this tensile, making sure that they are clear and crisp. And now I'm going to take a little bit more ink to get a different kind of effect. And also, I am not working from the middle. I am kind of trying to get a, an asymmetrical shape with. A lighter area in the top right corner. You can see that there's an effect that you can play with when you're making patterns. The next thing I would like to show you is that you can make contour of stencil also with a flat paintbrush. In this class, I'm using a flat paint brush quite often if I want to accentuate small details or if I want to make a really subtle find contour like here, it's easier to, sometimes to choose flat paintbrush then choose a stencil brush. But you need to make sure if you want to work release and a fine, fine line like here, that your paint is really fresh. If it has dried out on it just a little bit, it can make your contour look a little brittle. The next thing that I'm going to do is work with different colors on top of each other. And I'm going to do that a lot in this class. And I'm going to wipe my stencil to go to a next color. Often if I just want to change from one color to the next ones, I wiped my stencil clean rather than washing it because when it gets wet, it takes longer to dry and wiping it nor make its clean enough. I'm taking the next colour. And I am going to make some really simple Randy square shapes and filling them up completely. And I'm going to make some to use later on. I'm just going to make a couple of them. And I'm going to and I'm using a lighter color and a darker color in combination. And you will see why I am doing this in a minute. Painting the squares grief is really nice and smooth fabric. Or I can do this. Now I am going to make a green prints on top of the blue ones. They have dry, it's mostly dried enough to put print on top of them. Usually I tweet a little bit longer, but for the purpose of this demonstration, this is low enough. And as you can see, there is a clear overlap. Where are the green print overlaps? The blue one, you get as it were, a third color. And you can use this effect to your printing if you'd like that. And I'm going to show you the inverse. I am going to show you what it looks like. If you are going to print a blue square, were blueprint on top of the green ones. Tapping this time because a Green Print painting is not completely dry. And as you can see, I am not getting a visible overlap here. So if you want to play with that effect, then you choose usually the lighter color ink on top of a darker color ink instead of the lighter color first and a darker color on top. We're now going to make our first classroom. And for this high-priority prepared a first layer of just solid blue rounded squares and they've dried so that I can print on top of them. And I'm going to make this panel Patreon as it were, as I go. And they tell us the effect that I've just shown you with the overlapping color. I'm going to use the same green color and going to make some overlapping solid green shapes. And I am going to speed up this video a little bit in order not to bore you. And so you can follow the whole rest of the pattern-making. And I will talk you along through the whole of it. And trying to find a good rhythm to these green rounded squares. As you are, when you're making a pattern like this spontaneously as you go. It's a matter of finding out if you like what you're doing. Sometimes I make something and I really hated afterwards and I throw it away. But I will have learned something. I will have learns that I like the effect that I've been using or I don't like the rhythm in the pattern that I've been making. So this kind of pattern making is a learning process that only you can do yourself. And of course you can watch other patrons, my patterns, other people's patterns, and decide for yourself the things that you want to try out. But really mostly it's a matter of doing these things. So that's the green shapes. Darren, and I am now going to add another layer on top of this. I thought it would be nice to add a contour. And I'm going to use both green and blue contours. And I have just one stencil. So I thought it would be good to do all the green to green contours first. After wiping mice tensile so that I don't have to wipe my stands for all the time. You can, of course also have two different stencils if you want to make a pattern like this, I've been doing that as well. But this is another good way. I see that. I am finding that the pattern is coming together a little bit, but it lacks something. Its legs. And elements that brings the squares together. There are new squares that are formed by the blue squares, the green one on top of it and the contour. And they are kind of separate from each other. They need something to bring them together. So I will try to find something to kind of make more of a whole outfit. And as you see, I am finding that I have missed some things are just a couple of the contours on the sides. That's a spokesman. I often forgets to make an extra print. Just one more on the top. And then I thought it would be nice to use the gradients technique to bring the squares together. Yes, and that is a really nice one because it gives another color to the patron. And I quite like the combination of this dark blue, the lighter blue and the green. But also it connects the larger squares. And it kinda feels more like a hole to me, nicer rhythm. And in the next part of the lesson, I'm going to show you more examples of pattern-making. This was the pattern that you've seen me print. And so you've seen what I've done with that one. And this was one that I printed immediately afterwards, in which I have alternated the green and the blue squares as the basis was a pattern. And then overprinted these lighter colored contours and has already a different feel to it. Then I made them much bigger and much bolder one in which I've used to large squares. And I have accentuated the middle of these four squares together, like kind of a bold flour or something. And then I've done the same with the green squares. And when I've done that, it looked kinda boring, didn't look interesting at all with just these blobs on the canvas. And I thought I needed something to bring it together. So I overprinted with very light colored dry brush, little squares. And I've done this in the center of the flower as it were. And I've done this in between. And that looked already a lot more interesting, but it's still needed something. And then I added this blob, just brush, tap, a lot of paints, a lot of ink on it to get, to give some dark focal pointed. And that made it much more interesting, according to me, than a completely different one in which I have just use very light contours for brown and light color two, square. And I've added just some dots with my brush. My sister said it looked like jellyfish. I am not so sure about that, but it has a really nice transparent feel to it. And the same goes for this one. And this one, I have made bold contours of the red square. And I overprinted some lighter dark brown contours. And I've added some teal colored dots to it. And then this one's maybe the one that has the most mature country feel to it. And that's just really bolt contours of a darker and a lighter teal color. And I've added some lemon colored dots. So if you think that I have exhausted all the possibilities that there are with the squares, that's absolutely not the case. I can think of hundreds of things, maybe not a hundreds, dozens of things that I would still like to do. And, but if you find it, if you find yourself attracted to the squares, but you find it hard to start and to find a way in. Maybe just start with one of the patrons that I've just shown you and use it as a basis to move away from it and to expand on different techniques and different kinds of patterns. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what you're going to make with this. In the next lesson, we are going to explore a different kind of shape, an undulating ribbon shape. And we are going to need to design that on grit paper. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 7. Printing wave patterns: Welcome back. In this lesson we are going to explore these beautiful ribbon like undulating patrons. But you see so much often the mid-century style. And I have been making quite a lot of this kind of pattern, especially in the beginning when I just started out printing. This was a cushion that I made early on and I've turned the same pattern into a lamp shade. And it was because I discovered that this kind of shapes that I was strapped it to anyway went really well with some of the techniques that I started to use in stencil printing, especially the gradient technique. And it kind of adds to the flowing movement of this kind of shape. So I thought that was for one that is really nice to explore with you. That's what we're going to do in this lesson. For this kind of pattern, there is much more precision needed than in the last class, which I made quite spontaneously without looking for very precise alignment. For this one, we are going to design the patron on grid paper. And let's start doing that. I want to quickly show you why it is so important to get the alignment right for this kind of undulating pattern. If you were to print your first row like this, and you want to make a second row tightly fitting in with the, with the left one. Like this, you want to be the distance between the two rows, the same everywhere. And also I've here are going to put your rows like this next to each other. You will have an empty row in the middle. And also these kinds of spaces, you want them to be the same size. For that to happen. I've cheated a little bit. I've drawn it at likely the motive that we are going to use on the grid paper. And I really like working with this paper because with the millimeters, you can really see from the whole shape exactly where you are. What I do is I make occur on one side or the shape one side of the motive. And then I tried to replicate that curve in the same way on this side of the motif. And then I replicate these two on the bottom half of the motive in the inverse. And the way that I do that, I use points in this curve. For example, this point with that's the first where the curve starts and there's another one. And I just count the little squares and then I can't little squares on the opposite side of the grid to get them exactly in the same way. So I, I'm not going to show you the whole process, but I'm going to do the same all around to get the shape exactly right. And I've actually already done, and I have also already cut this tensile. And what I'm now going to do is set, I am going to make some help lines. And this is only when you are going to print the definite pattern that you're going to maybe use for your cushion. I don't do this for the triads and enable the blip playing around. At that stage, I kinda eyeball the alignment. But as soon as I wanted to make something that I want to use for a cushion or anything else. Then I draw the motifs that I know what the pattern will look like. And then I draw the surrounding motifs around my first one out in on the grid paper. Like I will do here, like that. And I'm going to do that all around. Now show you in a minute. And then I'm going to use these lines to trace her aunties tensile and to use them as help lines as I'm printing. This is what it will look like when you have drawn the surrounding shapes around the first motifs that you've cut out. And I have already traces on my stencil, there will be more visible to you. Understand so and they are going to help me. I'd be in alignment all the way through my printing of my pattern. And especially these on the top and these on the bottom are going to help me because when I have intrinsic printing for a little while, these edges of the tensile our tend to get a little bit smarter when you can't see these lines anymore. But then these, and these were really helped me to be in alignment. So let's start printing with this tensile. So now I have kept my fabric knife cut my sensible, and I am going to print a pattern for you that I 4D printed before, that I've tried out before, and I quite liked it. And so let's see how we can make this one. I'm using a rather soft brush to get a real good gradient insides the pattern shapes that I've chosen. And I'm using the salvage of the fabric to align my pattern. That is usually not the best way to do it. As you can see, I'm already having a little bit of trouble to align. And they rose or motifs that I'm printing. And later on in this class we will learn in a later lesson how to do it in a better way. But for now, I'm using the salvage edge. And I am going to speed this video up a little bit so that you can follow along. As I am printing it. The motives that I'm printing sit quite closely together. And I'm always touching the previous sprint with my stencil. And that could mean that I'm switching my fabric. But I have been printing for quite a long time and I know exactly when there is too much ink on the fabric and I need to wipe my stands for inbetween prints. And there are quite a lot of factors involved, like the fabric that I am printing on and it kind of ink that I'm printing with and the amount of ink that I'm using. And if you're just starting out to print and you're worried about this, don't worry, because you will probably get the hang of it. It's quite quickly, just as I did when I first started. You can see me make kinda circular movements with my brush inside stencil. And that is something that I really like to do when there is some movement in a, in a pattern like this flowing pattern, I see kind of circular shapes and I like to make circular movements with my brush to accent, to accentuate this. And now we're going to cut to the next part of this pattern, the next element. The next element is the little circle, actually two little circles, and I've cut them from the same piece of tensile material. I would normally cut my central separately, but in this case, they are so small and I want to keep them together and otherwise I keep losing them. So if I want to reprint the pattern, I've got everything in the same place. I am printing this pattern in a kind of tall certain shades, teal and turquoise and blue colors that are quite close together. And I've tried it also in more contrasting colors. And I will show you after I finished this one. But somehow this one works the best for me. It's more interesting field to it. I'm printing these circles not in the middle of the first motive, but either on the bottom left hand side or on the top right-hand side of the motive. And that makes it, I think, more interesting because it gets more movement to the pattern. The kind of changes of the position of this circle. So now I'm ready to start the last element of this pattern. And that is a darker blue dot, darker blue circle. And I don't know if you can see, but for me, at this point of the pattern, it's suddenly starts to pop, suddenly starts to be interesting. And this is probably because it fills up the pattern, but mostly it's because these little circles inside each other look like eyes to me. And it's it's as if they are looking at each other. It has a kind of cheeky feel to it. And I quite like that. I think it's quite a funny pattern that way. But this kind of effect is really hard to predict and it's something that you come across when you're printing. And the last part of this lesson I want to take you to see a few more examples of this ribbon pattern. But first, I want to take you back to the lesson in which I talked to you about inspiration. And remember that I told you that when you look at a source of inspiration, you can take things out of a tree and you can reject other things. For me, there are quite a few things about the seventies style that I don't really like. Like the exaggerated, the colors. It's a bit too loud for me. But one of the things that really stands out that I really do like and that I find really interesting is to movement in the patterns. And I think I called it waviness. There was a lot of waviness and a lot of things going on in the seventies. You see it everywhere. It's an, it's an, a culture of the seventies. And that was something especially in this kind of pattern that I wanted to play with. So the first thing that you can do with movement, adding movement pattern in itself has movement because of the waviness. But adding a gradient inside the motives helps to give its extra movement. And then I edits these ice that had just shown you that you've seen me print. And because of the eccentric position of the eyes, it's ads movements to the whole pattern. And I quite like that. And I promised you that I would show you the same pattern, but I've done it in a different, more contrasting color combination. And it doesn't work so well for me. Part of it is because the circles are placed in the middle and not to the side as I've done in this pattern. But also the colors I think in this kind of pattern, this kind of color combination that the large contrast, I haven't got the words for it yet, but it doesn't work so well for me. It's personal, I guess. And then in this one I really played with the waviness. What I've done in this one is I printed the vertical rows first and our overprinted with horizontal rows with the same wave pattern. And what I've done then is that I used the same sensible to shift a little bit to this side and a little bit to this side. And our overprinted it with dry brush. This is what you can see, lighter waves. And that really adds to the, to the waviness as it were of the pattern. It's kind of a almost psychedelic effect. And I really like the effect that it creates and I think it is something that I am going to elaborate on later. A very simple example is this one is very narrow ribbon shape. And in this case, I have played with a combination of two colors that are really closely, a close together and darker color tool and a little lighter color, turquoise. And the fact that I made a gradients of these two colors really adds to the movement that is already there in the patron itself. And I quite like it's in its audit simplicity and I think it will be perfect for a cushion. And then I was thinking of this very first ruin patron that I ever printed this boxy prints. But I wanted to make a smaller version of it. So I made a tensile and I printed this pattern first with it. In this case, I have printed the contours of the boxes shapes first, and I've added this square where I have accentuated one corner in empty space of the square. And then I've overprinted with a row of the boxy patron shapes with a dryer brush. And I think that makes us very interesting because it looks like this is Shadow of the first row. It's like looking through a gate and I engage you seeing the shadow of the iron. Then I thought maybe this is an effect that I can exaggerate a little bit more so to make it more interesting. And I made this one. But when I compare these two together, this one is shifted a little log more to the left. Instead of becoming more interesting for me, it is becoming more chaotic and the effect of the shadow is a little bit lost to me. So prefer this one. And then I am showing you this one, which for me, it's not succeeded very well. And the reason for that is partly because it has some technical problems. The contours here and a dark brown in itself. I liked the colors together, but the dark brown, It's done with a brush that was a little bit too dry and it is a little bit brittle. But also, these squares in blue are very heavy in combination with these popping yellow dots. And this is a very light contour and it is not balanced very well. Maybe if I would have exaggerated the contour a little bit more, given it a little bit more of a gradient, it would have come to come together a bit more. Maybe if the squares and wouldn't be have been in the middle, but a little bit more to the side, it would have been more interesting. But that will be something to see if you are going to make a pattern like that. And then this last one, really simple one, small swatch. And what I've done here, I've printed these rows of the boxy ribbons. And then I have overprinted just in a couple of spaces with an extra row here and here, and here and there. And I quite like the effect because you need to look twice to see what, to see what is going on here. Because it creates extra motives in you see, of course, the first motives in the larger rows. But then you see extra motives here where there is an overprinting of these two and kind of Christ-like figure. And you have kind of extra motive going on. So there's a lot to see and I think I am going to make some more variations on this one as well. So this was the end of the lesson on the ribbon like patterns. And we are going to come back to the ribbon patrons after the next lesson. Next lesson will be on plural patterns. And the lesson after that will be a combination of ribbon, patrons and floral patterns. I'm going to see you in the next lesson. 8. Printing floral patterns: And this lesson about flower patterns, I thought I'd start off by showing you a couple of the flower patterns that I've made. And I've made all of them using exactly the same stencil with this really simple flower hat and two leaves. And this was the one that I made first along with this one. And this is a pattern that I normally would probably wouldn't have made because of the simplicity of the pattern. But it really is a tribute to my childhood bedroom curtains, which had a similar pattern. And I have to say it makes me very happy. It's such a simple and nice and clean pattern. This fresher colors the submit bit war room, but otherwise same kind of pattern. And I use the same two, overprint this pattern with just let yellow flowers with a little bit of shading in a warm brown color. And I made these veins of the leaves to give it a little bit of interest. Next thing I did is printing this pattern in two layers and print it a darker blue color first. And then overprinted if with a very light color blue. I think for the effect is very interesting to me. And this layering of this array really like lights transparent color and the darker one. Not sure if it comes across very well on camera. And I've done the same with this color orange and come and peachy color. In this case, you can clearly see the overlap of the two colors. And in the peach in orange one is not so clear. And then I have done a patron with exactly the same colors, but I've used the lighter colors, two prints. And the first layer of the flowers, and I've used a darker color to print the contours. It's a little bit too sweet to my taste, but I think it would be maybe nice for a baby blanket or something like that. Then I've printed this one which is little bit different. I printed the green layer first, all the same green flowers, and then our overprinted with clusters of dark brown contours of flowers. And I liked this effect because it's like a field of flowers in which there are clusters of different flowers, which are not all the same size. And the last one is this one. I like the fact that there are two really close colors. Yellow ochre one and a more sunny colored yellow. And I overprinted with these diagonal lines of just the contours in a dark brown. And I'm going to show you how I printed this one for the flower pattern. I've already drawn the pattern on the grid paper. And also I've cut out the stencils to need. But I want to show you something. If you are going to cut out is tensile for a motif like this. And you're going to cut out just one stencil. You are going to end up with a sensible. See that you're probably like this with two sticky out bits. And that is very hard to print with. So if you have a sensible, like, if you have a motif like this one, then usually what I do is I make a stencil of the flower and the stem and one for the leafs. And that's what I've done. This is the first censored and I've made this a sustainable for the flour and the stem. And I'm going to use this one for alignment. So I've drawn all these extra flowers around, well, to use as help lines. And the council for the leaves is just simply this tensile where I've drawn in the flour and I don't need anything else for alignment. So that's really everything we're going to need for printing. But I want to show you one thing more before we start. These are the colors that we are going to work with. And if you are going to mix your own colors, which I hope you will, because it's very nice to do that. And it will give you tons of extra opportunities. Then you will probably need to be aware that the colors that you are mixing in your containers are going to look very different from what you are going to see on the fabric. And this is a very good example. This is, I'm not sure if you can see well, this is a color. Here on top is a stay ochre color. And in the container it looks like brown, very dirty color brown. When I first started to mix okra, I was always inclined to make the color to light and then it will turn out like this. So if you are going to mix, then continuously try your colors out onto the, onto fabric that you are going to work on. This is the color in the container, middle color yellow, and that array looks a little bit ochre. So most colors look very different. That's just something that I wanted to add, something to be aware of. So I'm going to prepare my fabric and we're going to start to print. As you can see. What I'm doing is printing just the first row of the flower hats and the stems. And then I'm adding the flag, the leaves to the flour. And then I'm going to go to the next row of ochre printed flowers. And here you can see very well the help lines that I've drawn on the stance will help me to get a good alignment of these two rows. And for the leaves, I know I need nothing more than just the flower head and the stem that I've drawn onto this tensile. In order not to bore you too much because I am going to finish the rest of this pattern. I'm going to cut to the next part, next layer of this pattern I shall, and I'm going to show you what I'm going to do there. I'm not going to print the second layer of the contours of the flowers. And I'm not going to do that everywhere. I'm just going to do it in a few of the diagonal lines of the pattern. And I'm not printing right on top of the first layer, but shifted a little bit to the right. So that actually gives a little bit more depth to the pattern. And I'm just doing first the flower hats and the stems and then adding the leaves later on. These are the last few prints of the flower patron. And it's also almost the end of this lesson. In the next lesson, we are going to put together the printed flowers and it printed wave patterns. And we're also going to put together everything that we've learned so far in this class. And we are going to make a pattern that we are going to use for a cushion. So I'll see you in the next lesson. 9. Printing wave patterns with florals: This is the fourth and the last lesson printing mid-century patterns in this class. And in this class we're going to combine the ribbon like patterns and the floral patterns. This is just to remind you, this is one in which I combines the exact same ribbon with a simple floral. And in this case, I have aligned the leaves of the floral with the outsides of the brand motive. I like to colors together very much, but there is something that I don't like about this pattern. I think the most important thing is that I don't like the prominence of the stem, of the flour in comparison to the leaves, it really jumps out to you. And I, I don't think I like it very much. And then I thought maybe it would be nice to work on the ribbon like motives, but leave out the connecting piece between the two motives. And that's what I've done in the next one. I've used the same kind of color, dark brown. And you have just these motifs that are not really connected well almost. And I've inserted a really simple floral. I've done two different rows. I've done this row with just a blue, cobalt blue. And I've done a row in which I've inserted yellow dot. And these flower heads are done with a dry brush where I have outlined the outside of the flower heads. Given it a little bit of extra contrast. And I really like it. There's enough interesting things going on and I laughed a color combination here. I also love the fact that these, the pointed ends of this motive. I've given them extra contrast, extra ink. And the sites are, have a little bit less ink. So it gets some movement and that's what's one of the things I was After the movement in the patrons. So I have done the same larger surface with some different colors. I have done this one with more reddish brown. And this is the same color, blue. And I've done, the flower has also in a lighter, very light shade blue. And I've given them some shading to the side with a darker color. And there's also a rose in-between graph just done the flower hat in the same color, blue. And, and given it some contrast, I've done this with a rather stiff brush. So you can actually see the brush strokes or you see some structure in the flower heads. And I like this one a lot too. And then I have done the same, but in a difference, motives of just taken a circle. You might imagine that these would be connected to. And I have used the same color combination that you've seen me use before in the ribbon patterns and which didn't work at all and the ribbon patterns. But in this one, I've used a really simple floral shape inside the. The circle, which I've done in a really translucent kind of grayish green. I've let it line with a circle. And then I've had these circles with just the same pattern in this translucent grayish green. And because there is such a large contrast between the circles, I actually think it works quite well. And from a distance, these circles just jump out at you. And these are much less prominent. And I quite like the the contrast between them and also like the color combination that I have. I'm working more on the spectrum that I've shown you and I've decided to give it an extra layer. So in this one, I have use the same color, brown. First motive, and I have added just a simple orange flower. Done nothing. Well, I've gotten good affiliated a little bit of shading to the top of it, but otherwise have not done very much with it. And then I've added to edit an extra layer of the same dark brown motifs but with a much drier brush. And if edit them later, but because they're so light, they look as if they are in the background. And I really like this 3d effect. And I think it has something at the same time, very modern because of the simple floral and popping orange color. But it also has something really classical because of this kind of shape, which is also refers to earlier periods. And this is the pattern that I wanted to show you. I wanted to show you the whole process because in the process, all the parts that we've been doing before and some extra information come back. I'm going to show you how I drawn it and printed it and made this tensile and everything. So that's what we're going to do now. And to make my stencils, I first drone out the pattern on grit paper. And I've actually drawn the two layer separately. The red layer is the layer in front and a blue layers layer in BEC. And from this, I have drawn and cut a couple of stencils. I have used these lines to make the sensible and to draw helpline surrounded. The lines that are in black are the lines that I'm going to use for the first layer and the dotted lines are for the second layer so that I can distinguish between the two. And then I have made separate stencils for the flour. There's a stencil for the flower hat and the stem, and the stencil for the leaves. And I've drawn in the surrounding motives that I can use that as help lines. So that's what I'm going to use and I'm going to print a little bit differently in this patron. I am going to use the center fault that I made in this fabric. As the starting point for this pattern. In the previous demonstrations, I have used salvage edge the fabric as my starting point, and I already said that it's not the best way to do it. In your kind of suppose that a cell which Azure for February would be straight and it should be, but it's not always. So if it's not, then you get a deviation without really noticing it. But also, it's easy to make a little mistake. And when you start on the left-hand side of the fabric and you work your way to the right. You've got a whole area to get these mistakes grew bigger and bigger. Because if you make a little mistake here, it gets bigger when you get to the end. So if you start in the middle and work sideways, this will not affect your printing so much also. But I really like about starting in the middle is that if this, this is a fabric that I'm going to use for a cushion. And this center row of motifs will be in the center of the cushion. Probably have some motifs on the side of the cushion does are going to be cut off. And they will be cut off and exactly the same way on both sides. So that looks a lot better. So I'm going to show you the printing of this pattern, but I'm not going to show you the whole way because it's much too long. I'm going to show you two different stages of the printing. Okay? So after print the first layer, I am using a tool and a green color for this pattern, which I quite like together. And I am doing this first motive and which you will see me do is to accentuate the point of the motive in both ways. Then I am going to use a helpline sets before to position my next print. Accentuate the point. And the rest of the motive is much more subtle. I am going to continue printing this and I'm going to speed up the video a little bit. So this is these first layer of the pattern done. And as I hope to work tied perfectly, all the different motives are aligned very well on the sides of the fabric where the pattern is cut-off. It is cut off at exactly the same place in the row of motives. So I'm happy with this layer. I want to printing the next layer, the layer with the flour. And I'm going to first prints the flower hat and the stem and then the leaves of the flower. And for this layer I want to print a really solid color, green. I don't want any of the fabric shining through. So I'm applying quite a lot of ink for this layer. And that makes it a really need to be very careful not to smudge the ink while I'm touching previous motif with my stencil. And it has worked out. All of the flowers are nice and green. And all of the, none of the motifs are smudged. And then it's up to the very last layer. I'm about to start the last layer. Just wanted to show you that I've been cleaning this tensile yesterday evening before before starting this morning. Uh, so that's a couple of the lines were rubbed out. I got some questions after the last class about cleaning your sensible and I clean my stencils with this kind of thing. I'm not sure what it's called in English. And I rub the ink off. I've been trying different kinds of things, but this works best. But it does take some of the lines with your permanent market, even though you made them with a permanent marker, it takes up a couple of the marks. In this case, there's enough left, but it's a good thing to keep your original drawing on the grid paper always. In order for you to be able to retrace some of the help lines that you're going to need if you're going to need your stencil more often. And I often use my stencils quite a few times. So I am going to print the last layer, which is the layer done with a really dry brush. Brush I've selected. I like it because it's hard enough for this. I'm prefer a heart brush. And I'm going to just go over the February lightly when I am applying the ink without lifting this ten. So you might not even see that are providing. You see it's very light print. Unlike this one with the points that are done in a darker Inc. I like to do to do this extra layer in a really light color. So I'm going to continue to do that and I'm going to show you the end result in a minute. That was the last layer down of this print. And I think it worked the way that I hoped that it would. I'd made it couple of times before and I think that's this color, dark green and the dark to work really nicely together. And you get this 3D effects that I really wanted to have. There is one thing more that I wanted to say about using colors. Choosing colors when you are doing the dry brush technique. When you are making a contrast between this kind of darker part of a prince and the 3D light-colored layer that I made behind. You want to choose a darker color because you have a lot of variation between the dark shade and the lighter shade. And if you were to choose my be a yellow and you want to get this kind of a difference in contrast, a little bit hard to get. This was the last lesson on printing. Before we are going to go on to sewing a Christian in the next lesson in case you want to have some instructions for that. I wanted to add some things about heat setting your fabric and this is necessary because if you want to wash it, you need to heat it first. As far as I'm aware, all brands of ink for fabric, screen printing, inks, neat setting. And you can do that with the domestic ion. And where it gets a little bit complicated for me to give you instructions is that different brands work in different ways. So you really need to look at the instructions of your brands to know how long you need to do this. But if the instructions say that you need to do this for 15 seconds, This means that you need to iron ever little, little piece of your february creative 15-6 seconds, move your ion like this meticulously bit by bit all around your February until you have covered the whole piece of fabric. I often put a little class, an old cloth in-between the printer my eye, and just to make sure it's not absolutely necessary whether it's something that I like to do. And there is something that might confuse you when you are looking at instructions because some kinds of brands are meant especially for screen printing studios. And if that is the case, then they are designed for these large tunnels that screen printing studios often have for heat setting the ink. And that doesn't make sense if you want to know how to use your domestic ion. So in that case, you can do two things. You can either ask your manufacturer or you can just try it out. And which is what I would probably do it because so it's nice to have a personal feel of something and just get a feeling of how this works. So I would get a piece of fabric, some ink, and then let it dry overnight. Always do that before your heat setting for together to get the best results. And then the next day you can just try out. Maybe have different spots on your fabric where you try out. Maybe ten seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds to give you an idea for me, it's too, is 15 seconds. And then you wash your fabric afterwards. And you have a look at a temperature of 30 or 40 degree Celsius. And then you see ever look if your ink stays put, say suppose you're fine and you finished. That's all I wanted to say, but heat setting. And I'll going to see you either in the next lesson about sewing a cushion or if that's not something that you are interested in. I hope to see you in the final lesson with some final bits of information. And I hope to see you in either of these. 10. Sewing a cushion: This is already the last lesson in this class. And in this lesson I wanted to show you how to sew a cushion cover. And I wanted to make it feasible for everybody. Also, if you haven't been sewing a lot before. So I didn't want to put in a zipper. And we're going to make this envelope shape pillow case. Where are these pieces on the Becker overlapping like a hotel pillow? And what I've already done is I have cuts the fabric of the pillow in this nice teal and green pattern. And we're going to soak up the cushion cover or 50 by 50 centimeters. The inner cushion is 50 by 50. And what I usually do is that I, so I cut the outside fabric and exactly the same size. And that is because I want to the pillar to be early snack inside the cover. There is something that I wanted to warn you about because it has been driving me crazy since I first started to serve with linen. Linen has this beautiful drape to it. But it also means that if you are cutting it, it is very easy to shift it while you are cutting it on your table. And at first I used to use a cardboard template that I put on the February can then are used to draw all around it and then cut it out and it will always lopsided so that it's not something that I would do now. I think you need to put it really flat on your table, laid on fled. Measure it out well. And I use the threads, threads in your fabric to really cut straight. And then now usually I get it, I get it arrived. But it takes some patience. So I have already cuts the three pieces that we are going to need. The to beg, beg pieces are both 35 by 50 centimeters. And they are going to be enclosed in the seam allowance of the cushion cover on three sides and the bottom and on both of the sides. But there were the envelope opens. We need to finish the seam. And what I've already done this, I have folded it over one centimeter, ironed it, and folded into over another centimeter and iron did. And then now what we're going to do is finish that seem on the machine. At this point, you could put in pins, but I find that usually it's not really necessary when the fabric as well pressed. What I do to get a really straight line on my sewing machines, I use the side of my presser foods. But you can also use the lines that are indicated on the bottom of your sewing machine. And we're going to pin this read pieces of the cushion cover together. I'm putting the fabric for the front of the cushion cover with the right side facing Me on the table. And then I'm going to put back pieces with the wrong sides facing me. These are the sites where the seams are exposed. And so the right size of the boasts of all the parts of the fabric are facing each other. And then I am going to pin all around the cushion cover and making sure that all the sides are lining up in the right way. I like to put my pins in, in such a way that I can just stitch on the machine without taking them out. And as I have, put my pin all around, I take the whole thing to the machine and then I stitch all around the cushion cover all the sides. And I use the side of the presser foot of my machine to run along the side of the fabric to make substituents are really nice and straight line. When I've done that, I either put my machine to a zig zag stitch or if I have a lock machine, I take the fabric to look machine and I finished all the seams with a zig zag stitch or I looked them. And this is to prevent the fabric from fraying when it is washed. And the very last thing that I'm doing is I cut the corners of the fabric. Not too close to the stitching, but I caught him anyway and then I finish them with a zigzag or I lock them as well. So this is being done and I have just given it a good press, like going to turn it inside out to see how it turned out. Quite literally in going through all the corners like that. And then I'm going to use something pointy but not sharp. And I'm going to use tobacco Fei, paintbrush to push out the corners. There is little loose threads where I need to cut off. Yea, that's a cash cushion, finished like that. And our envelope at the back. So let's put the inner insight. Folding them over makes the easiest way to put a cushioning. Now you can see really well how the envelope works. Which makes it really easy to take the inner out and to get it washed, to get the outside washed unless the whole cushion. So this was the last lesson of this class, and I really hope you enjoyed it. And hope you're going to join me for just some few last remarks. In the closing of this class. 11. Conclusion: We've reached the very end of this class. And I have made for cushions as a result of preparing for this class. And I'm really happy with them. But most of all, I am really happy for teaching you this class. And I hope that you have enjoyed it. Most of all. I hope that you are going to really enjoy the printing and making and playing and exploring that we have been talking about. And I hope that you are going to leave. The thanks that you are going to make in the project gallery of this class. Your prince, your explorations, your cushions, but also maybe your process. It would be really nice to see what you make. It will be nice also for other people to see what you make. You can find the project gallery on the website of skill shy, not on the app. And the same goes for the place where you can leave reviews. If you loved this class, which I hope you have, and you feel like leaving a review, you can do it there. Don't feel obliged. If you have any remaining questions, I will be happy to help you out and you can leave your questions on the discussion section of this class. And there are some extra resources, some extra information that I have left for you at the class resources specifically about materials because satisfy the thing that I always get a lot of questions about. So I've tried to be as specific as possible. And also I have left you a link to the Pinterest board that I've talked about. If you want to know about any things that I'm going to do here, upscale share future classes. You can follow me here. If you want to follow me on Instagram. That's a place that I as my preferred place of communicating with the world. You can follow me there. I have a website and there you can read my blog about printing and about the creative process. Have a newsletter if you want to be absolutely up-to-date with everything that I'm doing. You can follow you can subscribe to my newsletter on the website. And I think that's it. And that leaves me with wishing you really happy printing. A lot of fun, a lot of nice explorations. And I hope to see you again in future. Bye bye.