Last week my art book club (the one where we never read books) had the theme of printmaking. I was busy and instead of embarking on a new printmaking endeavor, I found the roll of quilts that included several that I had printed many years ago. That seemed good enough for government work, so I took them for show and tell.
I was surprised to find one quilt that I had absolutely no recollection of ever making, and some that I had pretty much forgotten about. But all of them looked fresh and interesting, which made me happy! These quilts were made as long ago as 2000 and as recently as 2009, and most of them followed the same general recipe: make an interesting abstract fabric background, with fabric paint or discharge, then print letters or numbers from my big collection of old wood and metal printer's type. I would do the letters one by one, applying fabric paint with a brush and then printing them onto the fabric like a rubber stamp.
I first tried this approach in 2000, making a little wall hangings with people's favorite mantras. Here's mine -- a comment that I wrote on dozens of essays and stories submitted to me for editing:
The saying read: Tim was so learned that he could name a horse in nine languages. So ignorant that be bought a cow to ride on."
“Never letterspace lowercase” sent me on a most interesting path of discovery. I particularly like a quote by Frederic Goudy: “A man who would letterspace lowercase would steal sheep.” I’ve found it written as “lower case,” “lowercase,” and “lower-case.” The Ben Franklin quilt is delightful, too.
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