I have been printing on cloth lately, cutting it up, making it into quilts and now little flags. Pennants to boost morale. #1 Print (or: Go Print!) and Respect are the recent forays into the sporting life (the former a direct homage to El Lissitzky's book of Vladimir Mayakovsky's poems, For the Voice, the latter inspired by our non-ranked faculty union fight).
They are each printed on a rectangular piece of muslin. "Work and turn" is this style of printing. Feed one edge, rotate it, feed the opposite edge. Letterpress, that is. Print is made from two photopolymer plates in the style of El Lissitzky. Respect is a linocut in SEIU purple, with handset type on the back. You could make stamps from Speedy Cut, carve a potato, or stencil the the cloth with acrylic paint or gesso.
Cut the printed cloth diagonally. A rotary cutter with a metal ruler as a guide is great for this. (I actually did cut precisely from corner to corner, but lined them up this way for the photo.)
Trim the top corner off the pennant. (This is so it looks flat when it is glued and rolled up and doesn't look like a croissant at the top of the stick.)
Get some cheap grocery variety bamboo skewers (as thick as you can find), and cut off the pointy end with an old scissors, mat knife, or tiny saw.
Apply Aleene's Tacky Glue on the back of the pennant, along the edge.
Smooth out the glue with one skewer. Roll the skewer so the cloth sticks at the edge, then wraps all the way around.
Make some for everyone in your community. Wave together!
As a lively action organized with our union, I taught students and faculty a simple pamphlet stitch today. Each book took about five minutes to bind, and they were excited to make a book. They were also interested to read the stories of the treatment of twenty different adjunct professors and support us as we continue our fight for a fair contract at CCA.
They are each printed on a rectangular piece of muslin. "Work and turn" is this style of printing. Feed one edge, rotate it, feed the opposite edge. Letterpress, that is. Print is made from two photopolymer plates in the style of El Lissitzky. Respect is a linocut in SEIU purple, with handset type on the back. You could make stamps from Speedy Cut, carve a potato, or stencil the the cloth with acrylic paint or gesso.
Cut the printed cloth diagonally. A rotary cutter with a metal ruler as a guide is great for this. (I actually did cut precisely from corner to corner, but lined them up this way for the photo.)
Trim the top corner off the pennant. (This is so it looks flat when it is glued and rolled up and doesn't look like a croissant at the top of the stick.)
Get some cheap grocery variety bamboo skewers (as thick as you can find), and cut off the pointy end with an old scissors, mat knife, or tiny saw.
Apply Aleene's Tacky Glue on the back of the pennant, along the edge.
Smooth out the glue with one skewer. Roll the skewer so the cloth sticks at the edge, then wraps all the way around.
Make some for everyone in your community. Wave together!
As a lively action organized with our union, I taught students and faculty a simple pamphlet stitch today. Each book took about five minutes to bind, and they were excited to make a book. They were also interested to read the stories of the treatment of twenty different adjunct professors and support us as we continue our fight for a fair contract at CCA.
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