Printing in Holland

In case anyone thinks I’m on holiday in Europe, it is totally not true. The Big Fat Skinny Europe Tour is turning out to be incredibly hard work! But hard work in interesting, beautiful places is worth it all, no doubt. That’s why I live in Cape Town, right?

One of the things I’ve been doing while in the Netherlands, working with our European distributor Marian Counihan, is a couple of printing workshops inside a greenhouse (inside a building) at Urlaub in Utrecht.

This is Marjolein and Jules of Urlaub, arriving at work on Sunday (summing up the amazing bike culture of this country very nicely).

I taught two groups of students on Saturday and Sunday, in a workshop about pattern generation through block printing.  My lesson was not only about how to carve a block and make a print, but also about the value of letting go of expectations of success, and about committing to working the heck out of a motif to find a good pattern.

The Saturday group was experienced and confident, and full of designers, who dived in with exuberance, and Sunday’s group had beginners (including a zookeeper and a lawyer), who took a more meticulous approach, and I was absolutely thrilled with the results.

See the #skinnylaminxDRUK tag for some of the results, and also to find some fab people to follow. We’ll done, everyone!

Cape Town, I’ll do a workshop soon. Promise.