Making a Silkscreen Ndebele Table Runner

Heather is an American expat who lives in South Africa and Dubai. She invited me to her studio in Parkhurst for an impromptu workshop to teach me how to silkscreen a table runner to go along with my Ndebele Easter table.

Heather is an international artist, primarily a printmaker. Her husband has always traveled alot for work and for a while Heather traveled with him all over South America. Eventually they moved to Dubai when his work brought him to northern and western Africa for long periods of time. And then to South Africa when his work shifted to southern Africa.

As an artist, Heather is lucky that she can create her art in all of these locations and her esthetic has expanded by intimate exposure to the diverse cultures she has encountered living and traveling abroad.

I chose a Ndebele design to go along with my Easter theme and decided to decorate a table runner. Let me just say right up front that my admiration for the silk screen artist has catapulted to extreme adoration since trying to do it myself. It takes patience, obsessive compulsive cleanliness, and meticulous attention to detail ... none of which I possess. It is a craft with very little forgiveness or margin for error. I need a lot of leeway!

That - coupled with the fact that as an afterthought Heather said I probably chose a project that was way more advanced that the typical "beginner" project - meant that I did get to make just about every mistake there is to make. And you know what they say, "Failure is instructive." I learned a lot over the two days I spent making my runner with Heather.

Heather is a very good teacher. For one thing she made me do everything myself. From drawing and cutting out my stencils, choosing my colors and design placement, to actually silk-screening and painting the fabric. She gave her instructions laced with good practice skills gleaned from years of experience and training. No short-cuts. (That's the other thing ... I love short-cuts! Bad for silk-screening though.)

I used two designs for my runner. A Ndebele church and a painted door inspired by my Africa Meets Africa book. So two designs equals four stencils, two for each design. One each for the main shapes and one for their respective outlines. Using transparencies, sharpie pens and an x-acto knife, I first made the stencils. Heather had all the screens, paintbrushes, paints, and squeegees I needed to silkscreen six churches and four doors onto my white cotton runner.

first printing!

aqua, orange, sky blue, red, yellow, and violet

the church with the black outline overlay

next, add the door stencils

violet, yellow, sky blue and orange doors

letting it dry after some touch-ups

After the paint was completely dry, I set the prints with brown paper and an iron. Finally my table runner was ready for Easter morning at Valley Lodge!