52 Weeks of Linocuts on Textile: Week 1

African Textiles:

I have always loved beautifully embroidered fabrics and exquisite textiles, especially handwoven silks, cottons, and wools. So when I was given luminous handwoven African textiles back in October and encouraged to turn them into mixed media fiber arts, it took me a few days to figure out how I was going to tell stories with them.

I wrote a few blog posts about my experiences, but did not have time to follow up as much as I intended. (I've been so busy researching the textiles and sewing.) During the next 52 Weeks, I will blog about my experiences of printing on 70s, 80s and more contemporary African textiles and turning them into textile pages/fiber arts.

This week I've been experimenting with traditional patchwork techniques and seeing how that looks. I plan to try various techniques, using a different one on each book. There will be 12 books total.

This is a detail image of the patchwork. This purple textile goes with an 80s textile from Nigeria that is very difficult to print on. I was told by a textile curator that the African textile has metal it.

I also like this log cabin design, I will also try to use this technique in various ways.

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