One of the many lovely visitors to my stand at Printfest this year was Geraldine from Kendal. We got chatting about the prints I had on the stand, and it turned out that she particularly intrigued by some of the prints where the printing plate had been made from pieces of fabric. After a while, she mentioned that she was the proud possessor of a length of vintage lace, which I think was obtained from a fair near where she lives. Geraldine said that the lace had been damaged or had rotted away at the edges, making it unsuitable for incorporating into clothing, and that she wanted me to have it, so that I could use it in a plate and subsequent print.
What a nice lady! Of course, I said yes and I thanked her for her offer. Well, just a few days ago, the lace duly arrived.
Lace material, sent by Printfest visitor Geraldine, from Kendal
Carefully wrapped in tissue paper, the lace section is beautiful, with an interesting texture that will be interesting to play with. I particularly like the looped structures at the bottom, and the loose weave should allow space to work inks in and around the shapes.
As it is a relatively short length of material, I really want to make a feature of the lace. This will probably mean that I won’t want to just use it as a decorative element in a large print which might be lost visually. I may want to create something like the image ‘Layers I’ shown below. I like the idea of using even more metallic inks than were used in that print, but I’ll wait and see what happens when I start to look at the fabric in more detail.
Layers I
I’ll show some progress on this project next month.
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