This is my first quilt for the group and quite a challenge! I have monoprinted onto paper before, but have little experience of printing onto fabric in this way. None of the designs from my design stash seemed to lend themselves particularly well to this technique so, I confess, I did end up making the technique do what I wanted. Had I a free reign I would probably have used a stencilling technique to create the fish, however, the results would have been more predictable. Experimenting with the monoprinting technique has given me an unplanned result with which I am quite pleased.

I used a piece of acrylic as a printing plate. I didn’t buy any new textile paints, just used up the ones with a creamy texture that I already had. I fixed two pieces of white fabric to either side of the printing plate with masking tape. A picture of my fish was placed under the plate. I put the paint onto the plate over the fish shape and took a print on one piece of fabric and a second, ghost print on the other piece of fabric. I used textured plastic pressed over the fabric to try and get a scaly texture. I did this twice with two colours. The darker pink fish is the print and the yellow one is the ghost. The fish where cut out and appliquéd onto a background of shibori fabric that I made a few years ago. Wavy lines were embroidered onto the background before appliquéing. Decorative stitch was embroidered onto the fish after appliquéing. The border is overstitched rather than bound as that is my preference for these small quilts.

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