Exploratory Mark-Making on Cloth
By Claire Benn
Sponsored by
When setting out to make your own surface-designed cloth, it’s hard to know what can be achieved or what you might respond to. As such, it’s very important to establish what a range of simple tools can do for you in terms of line, texture and shape. In addition to making marks, you’ll use masking tape as a surface resist on the cloth to introduce structure into the ‘chaos’ caused by this free and spontaneous way of working.
To keep things simple and accessible, and to minimise the need to mix thickened dyes, you’ll use black acrylic or fabric paint on white or unbleached cloth. Sticking with black and white ensures the marks are very graphic and will help us to stay focused on the results (colour – although lovely – can sometimes be distracting!).
What you will learn: Claire will show examples of different outcomes from this activity and discuss how to progress the resulting cloth with stitch or additional colour, potentially turning it into an artwork, cushion cover or tote bag.
Duration: 1 Hour
Level: Beginner/Intermediate
Available until 31 December 2021.
Exploratory Mark-Making on Cloth
Sponsored by
When setting out to make your own surface-designed cloth, it’s hard to know what can be achieved or what you might respond to. As such, it’s very important to establish what a range of simple tools can do for you in terms of line, texture and shape. In addition to making marks, you’ll use masking tape as a surface resist on the cloth to introduce structure into the ‘chaos’ caused by this free and spontaneous way of working.
To keep things simple and accessible, and to minimise the need to mix thickened dyes, you’ll use black acrylic or fabric paint on white or unbleached cloth. Sticking with black and white ensures the marks are very graphic and will help us to stay focused on the results (colour – although lovely – can sometimes be distracting!).
What you will learn:
Claire will show examples of different outcomes from this activity and discuss how to progress the resulting cloth with stitch or additional colour, potentially turning it into an artwork, cushion cover or tote bag.
Duration: 1 Hour
Level: Beginner/Intermediate
Thank you to the participants for sharing their work:
