#the patch zone

I don't know if you're looking for specific technique advice, but here's some of what I've figured out after a year of making my patches:

I usually make my design digitally and then use tracing paper to transfer it. If you trace it onto tracing paper using pencil, you can then just flip your tracing paper pencil-side down onto your block and use a little bit of pressure to transfer the pencil markings. This process also simultaneously mirrors your design so that you carve it backwards and then it prints forwards.

Before transferring my design to the block, I like to do a wash with an alcohol ink on the carving surface, so that it's easier to see my carving.

I usually trace the larger details of the design with sharpie, but for the smaller details trying to trace them will often just mess up the lines, so I leave those in the transferred pencil and carve them first to avoid smudging the transferred lines.

I also carve my entire block using the smallest tip on my carving tool, which does take longer but I vastly prefer the really precise control that it gives me! After I have the entire design and an outline around it carved, I'll use a craft knife to cut off a big blank margin around the outside of the design.

For printing a batch of patches, because I typically do a lot at one time, I usually cut out all my fabric before starting to print. I ink the block a little bit heavily, but I keep a close eye on any excess ink around the edges of the design and clean the block off as needed. I don't have any fancy equipment for making prints, I pretty much just put a sheet of paper down on my work surface, put down a piece of fabric, press my block face down on the fabric and use a large book and some pressure on top of the block to make sure the print transfers well. It's taken a lot of practice to figure out how to get prints to turn out well and I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning!

[image descriptions:

1 - a digital drawing, black lines on a light green background, of a ring of keys with a large key and a plastic motel keychain with the words "practice being brave".

2 - the same design, copied to tracing paper.

3 - my hand holding a pink rubber lino block with a blue ink wash on the surface and the mirrored design in pencil.

4 - the same block, fully carved. it fits comfortably in my hand.

5 - the block with a ruler held up against it to show the scale of the text, the entirety of the word "practice" is about 1 1/4" wide.

6 - the design printed in black ink onto light green fabric.

end IDs]

[video description: a timelapse of a white person with dark hair and glasses at a desk carving a linocut block. the shot is stationary and mostly focuses on the block, which is a design of a key ring with a keychain and the words "practice being brave". end VD]

This shows more or less my entire process; the design went through many iterations over the span of a couple weeks, but once I got it nailed down I did the entire rest of the process in one night - just the carving alone took about two hours. I prefer to write text physically not digitally, so the text in the digital version is basically just in the correct alignment so I can freehand over it on the physical copy. This being my most recent design (for now, I'm hoping to knock out a new one before next show in three weeks) is by a pretty big margin the most precise and detailed one I've done!