It has been years since I last did any printing of any sort, other than using rubber stamps. I recently picked up a book Print Pattern Sew by Jen Hewett and decided to give block printing a try again. Now that there are a variety of blocks made of softer material, it’s a lot easier, and faster, to carve a block. I used Tosnail Rubber Stamp Carving Blocks because they were relatively inexpensive and I didn’t want to spend a lot on a project that I wasn’t certain was going to turn out.

I decided to pick a design that could be printed in a random pattern so didn’t need to any registration marks. Maple seeds (also known as maple helicopters) fascinate me that’s what I decided to used as my motif.

I had an old set of Japanese wood carving tools which I used to start carving this block. But they weren’t very sharp any more and none of the blades in the set was fine enough to cut fine lines. So I purchased a Speedball Linoleum Cutter which had the perfect blades for my design.

Because I planned to print on fabric, I also purchased Speedball Fabric Block Printing Ink. I found it prints beautifully on both fabric and paper.

It turns out that I think block printing on fabric is lots of fun!

Here’s a close up of the printed fabric (Kaufman Essex Linen ) and my carved block, cleaned up after printing.

In my next post, I’ll review the book I mentioned above and show a bag made using a pattern from the book.