Dyeing, Displays and Demos

I spent some of the morning dyeing this silk velvet. I still haven't left any of my Arashi Shibori crinkled because curiosity has me peeking between the folds!

In the afternoon I was back at the Victoria College of Art to talk to visitors at our exhibition. I met textile artist and instructor Elaine Duncan, who gave me a demonstration of tapestry weaving on a copper loom. She had a display of her beautiful natural dyed yarns, books and some of her lovely pieces - and - some indigo shibori! Elaine will be teaching a tapestry weaving course and one on natural dyeing at the college soon.

Lesley Turner, who taught the Mark Making With Machine class I just took, was showing how to make a pattern using various stamps and paint. She is offering a course on pattern design this summer that is sure to be comprehensive.

I also have stitched a few more hearts:

Texture With Stitch

I decided to work with stitching a small piece of silk for Orinui Shibori. The transformation of the texture on this is amazing - a little bouncy, 3 D and alive! Almost a shame to pull those ties...The stitched side has interesting texture, too. It is now tightly bound into such a small bit that I made sure I placed it in my studio last night instead of leaving it on the coffee table in case someone might mistake it for a kleenex and toss it. I am excited to dye it because yesterday I got more colours of the Colorhue dye.

I also continue to stitch this cloth:

And I completed this - a moment of wonder in the early morning when it was snowing at the cove which you may recognize, as it's based on a photo I took and previously posted on this blog. Other then the rectangular outline, I didn't draw any of it with a marker but used my eye and the machine, as I wanted to keep it fresh and alive - and I wasn't going for an exact rendering:

This will be in the exhibition and sale at the Victoria College of Art beginning this Friday night and continuing in the afternoon on Saturday and Sunday. Our class has covered alot of ground and there will be much to see, as well as all the work done by the other classes in various mediums.

Shaping Up

My Shibori on Silk online class with Glennis Dolce has begun, now. We are using Colourhue dyes - however - I was only able to find black, scarlet and magenta locally, so I worked with what I had. These dyes are so completely easy - instant colour gratification, no chemical mixing up, no waiting, one quick rinse and no heat setting or washing!! And they are very concentrated. Too good to be true. I only wish I had more colours, but I do have other options in mind. The silks I dyed are a mix of habotai, noil and organza and I will work to improve getting the pattern throughout the fabric, as it's not consistent. In the Mark Making With Machine class, we have also been working with shapes, accentuating either the pattern or the ground with stitch.

And also experimenting with embroidery on various water soluable fabrics. While I love the visual texture created, it is hard in terms of how it feels. I did try sandwiching threads between two layers of water soluable and doing only a small bit of stitch on it, which yielded a softer result.

I've added gold thread to this heart since taking the above photo, but I think I prefer it with the open spaces. I did other samples using automatic stitch, tulle, more open space and an organic kind of grid.

Drawing and Learning

After trying the cutting back technique, I wanted to explore it with natural fibres I had dyed and stamped to create a pleasurable feel and texture. I sense a joining here, of learning from the two classes I've been taking - it's not woven, but it does have multiple layers. Machine stitched, but I could add some handstitch or do another one that way. It has raw edges and I've added to the texture with patches on top or folded cut flaps back and stitched them down. In the Mark Making With Machine class we were each given the same image to trace with free motion machine stitch on the same ground fabric with black thread. What I really liked about this exercise was seeing how unique each class mate's flower was afterwards, in spite of the identical parameters. I've been in a painting class before where everyone has painted using the same image to copy from , and they all turned out differently, but this was even more revelatory, because we traced the same image!

Then we partnered up and drew each other's portrait with our machines as we looked at each other - very fun and it sparked a variety of ideas for me.

What next?

The snow and flowers are reflecting movement towards spring, with it's unpredictable changes in weather.I made some colourful holes of my own as part of the Mark Making With Machine class - something I've wanted to try for a long time and hadn't gotten to until now.

This palette of pieced silks with some of my snow dyed linen also seems to reflect the changing season.

And I made a few more woven blocks. Contemporary Woven Boro will be over in a few days and I still have much I would like to do.

Small Bits Adding Up

One more mini fragment from today's designing:

I pintucked some silk and have added pieces of it to a next contemporary boro design modelled on a traditional block. I'm leaving hems from discarded clothing in it because I like the extra interest of the stitched lines. In yesterday's Mark Marking With Machine class, we were exploring cable stitch, twin needles, and couching. I am feeling excited to discover more of my machine's capacities!

And someone in CWB had mentioned Pojagi - Korean textile wrapping of housewares - and I wanted to try stitching some transparent fabrics together just to see what it looks like. I used the machine, although I believe handstitch is the traditional method. I've laid the white and black joined fabrics over a quilted piece - so the only stitch I've done is in the purple thread.

I will do another post as I tried something unexpected, today...

Closing the Gap

The sun illuminated this holly tree outside my window and a rainbow appeared just after I completed this piece, and I noticed the parallel shape and colour. I have made cords and added them, as well as outlined shapes with stitch and added fringe to the focal point. It is about closing the gap or making the connection that is part of growth and I hope it creates a feeling of tension or uncomfortability, which is often the case when I reach a growth edge.

Scrap Happy

A night sky in progress: And imagine my joy when I found that this old Hungarian cotton tablecloth I bought for a dollar at a garage sale has mended patches and holes! Signs of being loved and valued.

I notice how I'm drawn to the smallest scraps that seem to magnetically pair together, becoming more beautiful - the simple beauty of fabric itself.

This one reminds me of a feather.

And I have been developing a focal point with machine stitch in this piece - but still have further emphasis to add. I am understanding what it's saying to me now.

New Blooms

Here's a developing piece I'm making as part of the Mark Making with Machine class using fabrics I've dyed and stamped, as well as a few solids. I chose to rip strips and have the hems facing up for maximum texture. Former classes I've taken with Nancy Crow and Jude Hill came to mind, as it is strip pieced but looks a little woven. I will be adding stitch and any embellishment I think will enhance it. And my second year of blogging book arrived today, along with some crocuses in the garden.

And I have another fabric weaving on the go...

Textures Found and Made

Roses in Winter

Roses aren't blooming outside, but inside is a different story... I used my stamp on these fabrics in the Mark Making course, yesterday.

We are also doing a variety of free motion sewing exercises and delved briefly into differences between patterns.

More This and That

We are to bring a stamp for the next Mark Making class, so I decided to make one. I've also been sewing various materials into cords

and building up stitches on the flower I showed yesterday. And I did a little

dyeing - and washed out some cotton that I had dye painted in the class - the red one on the right.

Automatic Can be Artful

Here is some stitch exploration I've been doing as part of the Mark Making With Machine class. It's a mix of an automatic stitch and free motion. I want to fill it in further but my thread kept breaking so I thought I would take a break too :). I've also been sampling a few automatic stitches and feel delighted to explore them through content, placement, colour, size and composition. I made some shapes and lines and a story began to unfold and ideas were igniting and then I was in that feverish state of creative excitement you may recognize. And then I found that the conversation on Boro in the online class had begun and I felt moved by all there is to learn and the sheer beauty of the world of fibre and stitch. Bliss....

I also tried out my free motion couching foot with limited success, but I will experiment further with different yarns.

Holding the Tension of Opposites

The sun joined the moon in this window, today, and a stitched door also formed below it. I am going to be challenged taking two courses at once in what feels like such opposite directions. While Comtemporary Woven Boro doesn't begin for another week, the class blog is open and I want to ease into the spirit of that as well as carry on with samples and projects for the Mark Making With Machine course. I considered adding machine stitch to this - even felt intrigued and chose two potentials, but just couldn't bring myself to do it. I enjoy both handstitch and machine - but there is a very different feel to each. While I have combined them in other pieces - it has to feel right.

In class yesterday, we sorted our threads to sew samples of colour scales for value, temperature and intensity and we tray dyed fabrics in a pleated, swirled, scrunched and twisted fashion with two temperature variants of our chosen colour, as well as did a dye painted piece. For some unknown reason, my warmer red dye hardly gave any colour. I'd heard dyes have a shelf life, but I didn't believe it. I brought my batching fabrics home to rinse and iron before next week's class - partly because I also did a bucket full of a wide range of fabric samples, using the same two reds, plus a teal green and a pink, and I added a few other manipulations. Here is burlap, silk velvet, silk gauze, trims, a doily and crocheted squares. I was surprised at how purple came into the mix - because I had expected the two compliments of green and red to yield some browns - but considering my green was a teal, the blue in it was enough to tip the scale in the purple direction. Sometimes combining opposites can yield something unexpected!
From the same bucket, here is cheesecloth, silk ribbon, a variety of threads, scrim, some kind of chenille/towel fabric and rayon that was a pale green.

More dyes in a next post...

Patterns

While at the beach, I kept finding gorgeous swirling patterns of colour on various logs that carried into a felting experiment which I feel quite excited to enhance further with stitch. I am also continuing to learn about what my Pfaff can do. This bendable light is proving to be very useful - I've had it for at least a year and finally put it on!

The testing out of automatic stitches has built up to over 100, with many more yet to go. There is such variety and I hope to read my Pfaff's manual to further my understanding of what else

is possible. And these cotton threads arrived in the mail - but I will have to supplement the reds to have a wider range for the textile art course I'm taking.

Off to shop...