I am a printmaker, or at least I keep telling myself I am. 

This past Sunday I got to spend the day back in the Kirkland Arts Center printmaking studio.  A few of the artists, designers and organizers of Locavore, including my design partner Tina met to take a mini-class from my dear friend Mary Mac who showed us a few basic techniques. 

I did a couple of dry emboss runs of our linocuts through the press.  This is something I try to do with all my prints, before they get inked up because they will never be clean enough to do this again (at least mine won’t be).  Next I inked them up in blue and printed some green fabric I’d brought. 

Finally we ran the four yards of fabric through the big press.  I’ve done long pieces of fabric before but nothing that is longer than the press.  Mary Mac, Tina and I were all standing in front of the press trying to figure out how to pull this off.  The only way that seemed to work was Mary Mac’s suggestion that we remove the blankets with each run.  If you are a printmaking you are groaning to yourself right now and saying, “noooooooooooooo!”.  Tina, bless her heart, suggested cutting up the fabric into two foot lengths.  She said it would probably be faster to re-sew the pieces together than to spend 8 hours at the press. She was right.

Less than an hour later we were done.  For more photos, nip over to Tina’s blog.  Wow. I’ve never been featured on someone else’s blog before.  Thanks Tina!  Oh, and for a chance to win a fabulous one-of-a-kind kimono t-shirt designed by Tina, head over to My Girl Thursday!