Doilie Making!

One of my favourite new things to do, just for fun or a distraction from my work is to emboss heavy watercolour type paper with doilie patterns.

I have a tendency to collect doilies from flea markets, etc (I honestly don't know when enough will be enough) but there's just something about the patterns, the labour, the texture, feel, look of them.  Everything about them I love, I respect the work that went into them (I mean really - people used TINY threads/yarns for those things!), and there's something nostalgic about them that draws me.  It always seems to be people who're cleaning out their mother or grandmother's estate who have tonnes of them, along with stories about where they came from/ which furniture they were used on, and other memories.  That's what does it for me, as far as textiles go, I think - that strong link between textiles, touch, and memory.

Anyway, without getting too tangent-y here's some quick process shots for embossing.
Essentially, I soak out the paper in water to make it softer, then lay out my doilies in whatever assembledge I want on the paper and sandwhich it all together with newspring, and matte board.
My doilie-matte sandwhich then gets put between two layers of heavy industrial felt which lie on a metal slab that rolls underneath a huge metal roller.  Everything gets tightened up so it just barely squeezes through, and rolled 3-4 times back and forth (dunno how much I need to do it multiple times, but I like the number 4, so I do it 4 times).

When I take everything out, and peel the doilies off my paper has the imprint of all the stitches, and doilies are for the most part unharmed (maybe a bit squished but that come back to life again).

And VOILA! done.  Some I'm making household prints with, some I paint with pastels or ink, some get scanned & used for digital prints, some just live in my drawer.  At any rate, I think it's a nice homage to these ladies little labours of love (also something I love? Alliteration!)

(one more thing - to see some work I've done for these check out my post on the Alberta Printmakers Society Postcard Exhibition right..... here)


A very small sampling of my collection.




Doilies on paper.




Ready to be sammiched on the press.




If you notice the blue ones, they're dyed with indigo, and leave blue imprints on the paper.





You can sort of see the impressions made, in this shot.





The doilie used, and the impression on black paper.