Inking up

Today I printed scarves in a surreal butterflies and skull pattern which is one of my favourites despite being quite abstract in form. I hope the flaming red linen will work.

Then I decided to ink up a pattern for a new Christmas table runner Ive had on my mind for a while using some tjaps and wallpaper blocks Ive been dying to use.

Its quite a laborious process inking the tjaps and repeatedly block printing a  new pattern template which needs regular tweaking.
Doesnt help when your three year old decides she wants to squeeze onto the already heaving table (ink, tjaps, paper etc) and decides this is the best time to start her own masterpiece with the (foolishly) laid out ink I was poised to use.

This is the end result fifteen hectic minutes later at which point she serenley  wandered off covered in paint and oblivious to the disaster she left in her wake.

So after a bit of a clear-up I carried on printing - starting off with the bird at the top. However I kept changing the lay-out as the pattern needed to flow smoothly and coherently without breaks  whilst still achieving that lush factor I have in my head (!)

I usually cut out some of the print when its just not working for me and use it to help with the next attempt at a  lay-out.

Finally I got there - a lay-out that Im happy with (ish)

I re-inked it up again and joined the two halves together to form the entire 2 meters of what will be the full runner length. I use these templates when I come to print my patterns - most of the fairly complicated lay-outs I have will have gone through this process and then I have a visual guide for when I come to block print the fabric.
Bearing in mind I work free hand and by eye when I block print each piece of fabric, they  will never be an exact duplicate of the ink -up but always a very close match.
The final lay-out -

So now I will decide what colour ink to mix for this pattern - I will probably keep it to one colour rather than two as its quite busy on the eye already being ornate in detail.