Thursday, April 16, 2009

Gocco, My Gocco or The Rewards of Patience

Several years ago I received a Print Gocco for my birthday.  It is a device that flashes small silkscreens to make cards and other fun stuff with.  I made several screens of various designs for projects as varied as mermaid ornaments to individual doll panels to surface design on fabric for quilts.  Then the company who makes the Gocco decided to quit exporting it to the US and I hoarded my remaining bulbs and screens (I have since found suppliers, but I still have to have a Very Special Project to pull out the screens and bulbs).

While quilting the quilt that never ended (it finally did, yesterday, yay!) I had lots of time to think about what I was going to do next.  This piece is about 50” x 80” and there will be a lot of blue sky in the background of the wonderful red and white checked tower.  What to do with that space, beyond the basic quilting, I didn’t know.   However, I figured since the quilting was taking forever I could, like Scarlett O’Hara, think about it tomorrow.

The answer came while changing bobbins at one point (I went through a LOT of bobbins).  Make a Gocco screen from my reference photograph and screen print the quilt with lots of little white water towers (I knew that they had to be white, to help with the “realistic sky” feel of the background).

Yesterday, after I had done my happy dance upon completing the quilting, I dug out my Print Gocco.  I scanned the photo into my other computer and printed it out.  Then I drew on the printed image using an Ebony pencil (they have enough carbon for the Gocco to work), flashed my screen, and…

Could not find the stamping accessory attachment that I received with the Gocco.  No clue if it was where the Gocco was, and the bathroom/storage room is kind of full right now due to almost every book’s projects having come home from the publisher.  So I had to do it old school, using an old credit card as a squeegee.

P4161349

The tower, in full and you can see the legs of other printings in the corner.  It is not as detailed as the original photo, but I am still happy with how it’s turning out.  I probably wouldn’t have thought of doing this had the piece not taken so long to quilt, so there is something to be said for working on big pieces that take forever to make.

Next up, heat setting and binding.

3 comments:

Treasure Ann said...

Beautiful work on the quilting. It's a lot of work on great pieces like that, so it's worth it.

Kristi aka Fiber Fool said...

Ooo, I like the printing on the fabric. It's kind of ghostly and ethereal!

Alpaca Farmgirl said...

Wow! That is ethereal (thanks for the word I was looking for Kristi!). Well worth your patience. This is a true work of art.

Thanks for sharing it with us at Fiber Arts Friday!