A project to dye for

My textile course comes to a finish next week for the Christmas break. I've found this term rather challenging possibly because the theme "Worn and Torn, Faded Glory" didn't really rock my boat and I found it difficult to find an idea, a source or just anything that inspired me. Everything I thought of I quickly lost interest in. I finally found some inspiration at The British Library on a group visit we made there - lets be honest.....plenty of worn and torn stuff there!
After a few false starts I eventually settled on a pattern derived from a Roman wall which Louise, the tutor, suggested could be done with transfer dyes. I was rather intrigued by the comment but had no idea how to go about it.

This is the wall pattern and, of course, the colours have become faded from what, originally, must have been vibrant, singing colours.
I used the transfer dyes to make a collection of colours based of the blues, yellows, browns and reds in the
pattern.
1. Paint a piece of copy paper with the colour of choice and leave to dry
2. Transfer the dye onto synthetic fabric by ironing or using a heat press (natural fabrics will not take transfer dyes)
3. Cut out fabric shapes from the transfer dyed fabric and place them between two pieces of soluble fabric, the bottom sheet of which is a sticky fabric to which fabric can be adhered.
4. Machine stitch all over ensuring that the stitched lines join up with each other in some kind of "web" pattern so it all holds together when the soluble is washed away.

5. Place the finished fabric into water and allow to soak as a start to removing the soluble fabric which can take several attempts to remove most or all of it.
6. Take finished piece and pin out onto a piece of foam board or polystyrene to dry.

After leaving the piece (and I had to push down the sides to fit the sink) this is what it looked like!

They have now dried to a rock hard consistency but are quite lovely and mad in their own way. My fellow group members made some suggestions such as, "make it into a hat, a swimming hat, a boob tube" but I may just be plain boring and stick it up on a wall!
Hope you like it - lol!
Next post will show my experiments with creating a large length of fabric using transfer dyes. I started this week and am getting some exciting results....watch this space!
x

Folk Sampler Quilt

I've now finished the quilt inspired from an idea by Linda Kemshall of Design Matters TV. I made a stencil based on pots of flowers I have on my balcony. It's a mixed media piece using acrylic and textile paints, discharge paste and markal paint sticks. Text runs around the border from painted bondaweb - "If you have a library and a garden you have everything you need " -  a quote by Cicero. It was great fun to make with lots of dense stitching to reinforce the flowers and pots.

I have started a new term of textiles and our theme is "Worn and Torn". We recently had a sketching session at the British Museum so I may use one of my photos/sketches to develop into a final piece.

Ok, holidays are over so. I have no more excuses about updating this blog. I've been really busy with workshops......
City lit weekend workshop with Dawn Dupree on screen printing with procian dyes
A one day workshop with Clive Barnett at Art Van Go again, on screen printing using various techniques
A one day workshop at Art Van Go with Edwina MacKinnon which focused on how to develop a design using one image.
I found all these workshops interesting and challenging enough to add some skills to my "repetoire".....oh, I really sound as if I know what I'm talking about don't I?? Lol!

Anyway, in my previous post I talked a little about a stencil quilt I had started and it's one of the projects I've been focusing on this summer and comes from based on a stencil suggested in a Linda Kemshall video. I made a stencil from mylar plastic and then applied the image to hand dyed fabrics using various techniques.
I made several panels before piecing them together.

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These two panels were made using markal oil sticks and spray paint.

Pieced together with varying shades of blue strips - the large strip on the right will become the border.

A final touch was to add text around the edge using painted bondaweb. The border now needs quilting before adding a binding. I'm quite pleased with the outcome particularly as I've tried out several new techniques here.

In addition to this I've been making the biggest quilt I've attempted so far which was a commission from a friend - dear God, it has knackered me this week as I've pushed myself to finish it before i go off on my painting holiday in France. I've taken some photos to show the stages need to make and complete a quilt:

1. The fabric needs to be cut up and sorted into their colours - in this case dark blue,  medium blue, dark olive, medium olive.

 The strips are sewed together and then cut into rectangular shapes.

 The shapes are then pieced together into larger strips which are again pieced together to make the quilt.

You can see the pattern emerging with an interplay of dark and light fabrics.

The final quilt - this was hard but I'm pretty pleased with it now. Hope she is!!!

A few more things....

I'm continuing with my stencil quilt and now have sewed all the sections together and am ready for quilting. I don't have the right colour threads so hope to get those this weekend at the Festival of Quilts. I just need to take a few photos......

Summer continues....

The beautiful weather is continuing here which, surprisingly, I am loving. It's a bummer for sleeping though and I'm waking up continually through the night, sometimes up to six times. Apparently there is a facebook page dedicated to people who turn their pillows over to the cool side during the night and it now has over a million followers. If I didn't have better things to do I'd join it!!
Anyway, hopefully I have been spending my time productively and have been starting some new pieces of work and putting finishing touches to others.

Oh my, it's hot here at 31c and high humidity - just waiting for the thunderstorms to arrive while I lay on my bed in the cooler (so far) bedroom. Thought I would post the next part of the process trying to piece these separate fabric designs together into some cohesive whole. It was a lot more difficult than I imagined and meant lots of pinning up on the design wall, taking down, ripping out stitches and redoing. Not sure where this is leading.....

I'm really not fond of this piece of work although I have learned t a lot this term in terms of design. I'm adding some more to this with couching threads and embroidery stitches and I will try to complete it just for the hell of it. If I'm still not keen then I'll maybe chop it up into smaller, interesting pieces. We shall see.

On another note I've managed to finally finish a quilt for a friend's significant birthday. I needed my new machine to attempt the quilting on such a large piece.It's comprised of 16 crazy quilted blocks which, when all were completed, were sewn together with an added border. She chose all the fabrics and I'm very pleased with the result. It's much more controlled than I'm used to with my textiles work but fun and relaxing.

I've recently been asked to make a quilt for someone for which I shall be paid. This one will be quite different and I will try to take pictures as I go along.
I'm also booked up for several workshops in the autumn including a water colours painting course in France, a screen printing workshop at Art Van Go in addition to my textiles course which I am signed up for again. I have also signed myself up for a 4 day 3d machine embroidery course at West Dean in February 2015 using the vouchers some lovely friends bought me for my 60th birthday. I've been waiting for a "special" course to use the vouchers and finally one has arrived. I'm very excited by this course!!

Last, but by no means least, is I finally bought myself a new machine after careful consideration for nearly 18 months. I chose a Bernina 750 for several reasons; large space for quilting, interchangeable presser feet from my smaller Bernina, clip on presser feet and a touch screen instruction board which are great for arthritis. It also has the potential for an optional embroidery unit which I intend to purchase in the future as I want to explore machine embroidery using a machine attachment. I would like to make my own designs, scan them onto my computer and use them via a memory stick.  I would like to then incorporate these designs into future quilts and textile work. It is a beauty and sews really well....I love it!!

Isn't she gorgeous?? Hey ho,speak to you soon x

It's been ages since I last updated this blog! My textile course is over for the term and I've made a piece, currently unfinished, that I had no intention of making but it somehow organically grew.. I decided to focus on screen printing and collected leaves from Hyde Park which I used a templates for my pattern pieces. The patterns were made from  thin paper and screen printed over in both dyes and paints - I was working towards some luscious foliage.

 Having made many samples I chose a selection and started to place them together - much easier said than done! I really wanted to develop my design approach this term and this exercise has certainly stretched me in that capacity. Firstly, I laid the pieces one by one onto the floor and jiggled them around with a view to balance, scale,colour. This was ok as an approach as I have no wall space on which to hang the piece. Most people designing textiles will have a design wall, a precious commodity I have no space for. That bit needed to be left to when I was next in class....

Next time I'll show  how the pieces eventually came together after several hours of maneuvering ( and swearing).

Back at college.....

My textile course started four weeks ago and we are all well into screen printing designs for the project this term called "The Enchanted Garden". I'm not completely sure which direction I'm going in but think it will pretty much be lots of leaf shapes with maybe beautiful bursts of flower colour coming through. We will see but I have been working on a design in my sketch book using soft pastels and home made stencils - amazing what you can do with a few leaves from the local park.

Then I had a go in class at screen printing using similar stencils. In this example it is on cotton:

And this one onto linen which was originally dyed with procion yellow dye - impossible to see in this photo.

Having spent one of our days dyeing lots of different types of fabric we then screen printed directly onto these to create a variety of samples. We will return to these samples in future weeks for further printing, stitching.

This sample was made from linen dyed light pink and screen printed over in layers with leaf stencils, sequin waste and strips of thin paper as resists. I was aiming for a more abstract design rather than a literal reproduction of a leaf.

Here i used a commercial stencil of a flower design - was surprised that a stencil worked with a silk screen as I've always read that they don't. Well suck that!

And finally, Rosemary in our group is making an enormous banner for her Church in memory of WW1 so I've made the 12" base she gave us and tried to fit in Wilfred Owen's title to his famous poem - I made the text out of painted bondaweb, which is a sheet of fabric glue backed onto release paper. You paint the glue side, allow it to dry and then draw/ cut out designs, in this case, text. Stencils were used for the poppies with inktense crayons.

I'm off to Rome next week so miss the session on mono printing but back for photo transfer and sun prints. Will keep you posted.
Bye for now!

Transforming a dog's dinner

I was at a friends last weekend for a painting session which we both gave up on after a couple of hours - lol! We both struggled a lot and I overworked mine into a dog's dinner. However, I looked at it this morning and decided to work into it with some inktense pencils and some stenciled text with soft pastels. I love the effects text gives to a piece of work and am pleased at how this particular piece turned out. Shame I didn't take a picture of the original version.

I'm going to use as one of my sketchbook pieces for my creative sketchbooks course, module 4.

I love the shape of horse chestnut leaves so picked some while walking in the park yesterday to use as a base for some drawings / paintings.

And this....... really want to use some text in my textiles.

Bye for now...

A girl can never have too many bags.

I've just made two simple bags from patterns - an Amy Butler and Lazy Girl patterns. I did a workshop to give me some confidence and finished the second one at home. I'm pleased with the final versions and can see lots of creative possibilities here with other types of fabric or my own hand dyed/ block printed/ screen printed fabric.

Bye for now x

My textile course has finished for this term so now I have some time to focus a bit more on my creative sketchbook course. This is the final module where we have to "bring things together" and look back at the techniques and work we have covered and try to bring it to some cohesive finish - easier said than done, especially as my sketchbook seems to jump all over the place with little cohesion to hold it together! Anyway, I've attempted a few pieces using stencils ( love them!) based on some photos and block prints I made in module 3. My friend Liz lent me her soft pastels which are just perfect for this technique.

I've been putting in a lot of work on my textile project (and using a lot of thread!!) I finally finished this weekend, sponged off a dirty mark and decided to iron it dry.......disaster!!!!!!! I have scorched the fabric - aaaaaaaaarh. I'll take it in and see my tutor for advice but have to accept it may not be saved. Oh well, all part of the learning process.

Scorch mark top right corner - doesn't look too bad here but not good in reality.

Probably looks unfinished but this is intentional by decreasing the stitching as I worked down the project until I only had outlines of stones.
The machine stitching is very dense and so has pulled the calico - hopefully it could be stretched out prior to framing. Wanted this to be apiece for Devon but perhaps only sweet dreams now.

I have started a sample using two layers of base fabric to see if it would be more stable and less distorted. These pictures show the ongoing process within a sewing hoop.

This has all involved really intensive stitching and I'm getting a bit tired -  it's hard work!
This week I'm starting a new piece of work which will be very different.
Will keep you up to date
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