Masterclass with Claire Benn

The UK Festival of Quilts was on over the weekend, but it was a virtual quilt show this year. They also had classes over the internet for the first time. I signed up for a Mark Making class with Claire Benn, I have always admired Claire's work and want to try and do more mark making and screen printing kind of work.

The class was for one hour and was on at 8pm on Friday night for my time zone. Here is my Ipad set up waiting for the class to start via Zoom.

I had my work space and tools all set up, waiting to go, it was exciting.

Claire Benn recommended that we only use white fabric and black paint to keep things simple. I used black screen printing ink.

Our first instruction was to put masking tape on our fabric to act as a resist.

Then we followed along with Claire starting with a gelli plate and foam brush.

I didn't take any progress photos after that because I was busy keeping up with everything.

Here is what it looked like finished.

I really enjoyed the class. I left it to dry overnight and I went and cleaned the paint off all my brushes and tools.

The next morning, I took off the tape.

I love it. Claire said that the idea was to try lots of things and eventually you will get to know the marks that you enjoy making and continue on with those that suit your own work.

Of course, this is just a practice piece and not a completed work, but I definitely think I could do more of this kind of thing. I have to start and try it soon though. I have learnt from the past that I can do a workshop and then go home, pack things away and get on with my life and lose the momentum and excitement of the class.

The zoom class worked so well and it was amazing that people from all over the world were doing it at the same time. Claire is a very experienced teacher.

I can imagine doing this sort of class again, so much cheaper than an airfare to the UK and hotel fees etc. That is one of the only benefits of this horrible Corona virus.

Speaking of which, my state, Victoria has now gone into Stage 4 lockdown. All retail and business closed except for supermarkets, banks, petrol stations, doctors and a few more things.

We have a curfew and are not allowed out from 8pm until 5am unless we are coming home from work.

Only one person may leave the house for shopping and it must be within a 5k radius and for one hour only. We are allowed to walk or run for an hour a day with only one other person from the family. We must always wear a mask when outside of our house. There are huge fines for disobeying these rules.

The virus had got out of control and we are having between 400 and 700 new cases daily and 10-13 deaths daily. Too many for the size of our population.

This will go on for 6 weeks. It will be spring before we are allowed out again. I hope this works!

Luckily, I have plenty of sewing to do and we can see friends and family over the internet.

Bye for now,

Linda