Block Printing Fabric Floras for Print Inktober 2024: Goals, Set Up, Process, and Celebration

In late September, I decided to join #PrintInktober, hosted by Julie Fei Fan Balzer. My game plan was to revisit my previously carved blocks to create block-printed fabric floral elements that I could then layer into floral arrangements to stitch and finish into art quilts at a later time.

In preparation, I gathered the necessary materials and supplies which included:

• A variety of fabric swatches from Fabmo Creative Reuse center: In order to get crisp prints, I chose fabrics that had a tight, flat weave. Thankfully Fabmo recently had Dupion silks available and I stocked up (with another Fabmo visit halfway through my project to add more colors/swatches to my stash)
• Ranger Archival Inks: These inks work well on fabric and are permanent once heat set. I gravitated towards the darker value inks for use on the colorful silks. 
• Acrylic blocks mounted with Tsukineko Tack N' Peel
• Pellon 805 Wonder Under paper-backed fusible
• Iron and parchment paper to protect my iron and pressing surface from fusible and inks
• Karen Kay Buckley Perfect Scissors Medium 6" blue serrated scissors for fussy cutting my printed florals
• And my collection of previously carved blocks (below is a photo of all the blocks I printed and I still had another tray of blocks with print potential that I may revisit) While my aim was to revisit a different block or set of blocks each day, there were 3 blocks below that made repeat appearances--see if you can spot them in the fabric florals and I will reveal the answer below.

With all my stamps and supplies gathered, I looked forward to my daily block-printing sessions. Day by day, my collection of fabric floral elements grew in beauty and quantity!

Here is an inventory of the fabric florals block printed each day:

1. 18 roses and 2 split leaves
2. 19 California poppies
3. 4 echinop/globe thistles
4. 10 marigolds
5. 16 grow leaves
6. 15 radiating florals
7. 17 copper poppies
8. 17 black-eyed Susans
9. 10 poppy seed pods
10. 5 big daisy blooms
11. 10 purple anemones
12. 9 pink trumpet flowers
13. 13 leaves with spiral veins
14. 5 trillium flowers
15. 11 cornflowers
16. 18 hex flowers
17. 10 mod flowers
18. 9 cosmos
19. 12 marigolds
20. 14 mod daisies
21. 18 big and 12 small roses 
22. 37 bold leaves
23. 12 golden flowers
24. 11 periwinkle
25. 25 more leaves
26. 17 leaf sprigs and 48 small leaves
27. 44 funky flowers
28. 24 stylized leaves
29. 21 persimmon inspired flowers
30. 17 modern morning glories and 51 buds
31. 24 marimekko inspired flowers

For the most part, my daily block-printing process was the same each day:

1. Choose and press fabric swatches. Since the fiber content was not always known, I tended to use parchment paper and start with a lower heat setting. 
2. Halfway through my project, I started backing the fabrics with fusible prior to block printing. Of course, sometimes this resulted in bubbles/wrinkles. But with time and practice, this got easier and I was able to minimize the bubbles/wrinkles by carefully applying the fusible and working the iron slowly across the fabric.
3. Block print the selected motifs. Sometimes I explored different inkpads to see their interaction with the fabrics, especially when printing on shot silks and darker colors. I found that placing a single layer of paper towels underneath provided a bit of a cushion to yield more crisp prints.
4. Heat set the prints (for the first half, this is when I applied the fusible to the backside)
5. Fussycut my floral elements. I found it helpful to roughly cut around the printed elements which made it easier to then trim away the background as shown above.
6. Fuse layered elements when applicable: split leaves, black-eyed Susans, large daisy blooms, and periwinkle flowers.
7. Photograph and post online

Weekly celebrations were a fun way to reflect on my growing collection of floral elements while also surveying what was missing in terms of colors, shapes, sizes, and designs. Some weeks were heavily floral while others included more leaves and foliage. I am really happy with the variety that was printed and can always print more if additional flowers and/or colors are needed in my compositions!

A few days before my San Diego & Arizona trip, I spent an afternoon of choosing blocks and fusing the fabrics to have ready to block print along my travels. Having all the planning and prepwork done in advance made it possible for me to keep up with my daily printing!

Have you spotted the three blocks that were used on more than one day? I had fun using them to create very different floral creations as you can see below:

• Left column: smaller pebble-filled circle that I used in the black-eyed Susans as well as the centers of the modern flowers
• Middle column: tiny leaf print used as the base of the trumpet flowers and to create sprigs of leaves
• Right column: tiny asterisk used for the centers of the morning glories and marimekko prints

Thanks to everyone who joined me on this 31-day creative journey. I hope you will continue to follow my progress as I start to layer these units into floral arrangements that I can stitch and finish into art quilts. I've got lots of design ideas and play ahead so I hope you will continue to join me for the next phase of this creative adventure!