Teaching Textile Printing Course

I taught my 1st weekend printing course recently at the West Yorkshire Print Workshop and a good time was had by all I'm pleased to say. I'm defiinately going to do it again and although I'd originally hoped for 4 people in the class I've realised that 3 is the ideal number as it gives people more room on the textile printing table which is only so big. If anyone is thinking of teaching others I'd recomend it. Just start off small, keep it relaxed and be prepared.

The plan for my course was to teach people the basics of printing onto calico bags and t-shirts and hopefully have enough time for each person to do a couple of designs and take home at least 2 bags and 2 t-shirts. Every person ordered more t-shirts to print on and I was worried we were going to run out of time as I'd been warned not to expect too much as the time goes quite quickly, which it did. I needn't have worried about printing times though - one girl caught the printing bug and managed to print over 30 t-shirts, front AND back!

It was very interesting how each person had their own design ideas which were totally different from the others. Pretty much most of the printing turned out very well which was another concern but then as one of the students pointed out, it was good to learn how to deal with problems that arose and it would give them confidence that they would know what they were doing when they were printing themselves in future. They were all very keen to do more printing and so hopefully they will become members at the workshop which is always good - the more the merrier.

I'd had it in my mind to do the next course at the August bank holiday (mainly so I would have the Monday off work to recover from being on my feet all day!) but unfortunately the next course leaflet is for October onwards so I'll have to pencil in a different date and a day off work..... just needto figure out the best way to advertise it now.