Fiona Dix, Author at loveFibre :: colour to touch

seaweed bundles

First of all I hope it’s not too late to say Happy New Year, I can’t believe that was a week ago already.

The kinds of seaweed lying around on the beach here at Crossapol when the tides goes out seem to vary from day to day. I’ve been thinking about gathering some for making cold-dyed fabric bundles as shown in India Flint’s book Eco-Colour, but most of it is in large and heavy bunches and would require the kind of forethought that seems to be beyond me at the moment, such as taking a carrier bag along. However, yesterday there were some kinds of thin string-like weed, easy to carry and great, I thought, for wrapping bundles. I collected a small assortment and brought it home.

I laid out most of the branched pieces with bladders on a piece of damp habotai silk …

… then rolled it up and wrapped it with the long flat pieces. There were a couple of little bits of the flat stuff left and one that is like string with just the odd bladder along its length – not branched, so I concertina-folded another small piece of silk, laid the flat weed inside the folds and wrapped this with the stringy piece.

I sprayed the bundles with a mister, put them into a glass jar, covered it with a bit of plastic, and have put the jar outside for a while. India says at least a week and a month isn’t too long. I will check them daily in case they start to go mouldy but hope I can resist opening them up for a fortnight or more. My hands were a bit orange after I’d done this but as this is new to me I don’t know if that indicates anything about the final outcome.

Nothing to do with seaweed, but I couldn’t resist sharing these lovely fibres, merino and bamboo, in the colours of the winter machair with some sunset thrown in, which I got in my Christmas stocking, complete with bog myrtle soap bought at the Farmhouse Café here on Tiree. I’m told it’s good for eczema so I’m hoping it will be kind on the hands if I use it for felting.

mmmmm, rust

Saturday morning on the beach yielded a rusty treasure – a pole, the size of an axle, perfect for shibori wrapping. My wonderful husband lugged it home for me – though it’s not far to go, it was quite heavy! I’ve collected a few other little rusty odds and ends on our walks as well.

In the new year I’ll try some silk wrapping, but as it’s going to be outside in the salty air anyway and it’s bound to rain quite a bit I’m just leaving it covered in a strip of calico and will see what’s happened in two weeks’ time.

I had a bug last week, still recovering from it in fact, and so I got behind with work and that left very little time for making. Just a couple of small felt samples, trying to capture some of the colours of the sea and sky, and the winter machair. The top one is nuno felt – merino and silk tops on silk georgette, and the bottom one is merino – it looks the same size but is really just a scrap, much smaller – how hard it is to get a sense of scale on-screen. I actually remembered to measure shrinkage on the nuno sample, which started with a piece of silk 35 x 26 cm and is now 23 x 13cm.

hairy felt and fluffy felt

I made three felted fleece samples yesterday – from Hebridean, alpaca and merino roving.

hebridean fleece felt sample

alpaca fleece felt sample

merino fleece felt sample

The Hebridean fleece is quite hairy, just a little rough and yet soft as well, while the alpaca looks hairy but feels fluffy and silky. However, I think I did something wrong felting the alpaca, maybe rubbed it too hard too soon, it’s not very well felted after a lot of work, and doesn’t look anything like other alpaca felt I’ve seen on the web. More experiments obviously needed.

I think it would be interesting to dye the Hebridean fleece, could it give a rich deep colour with a hint of brightness wherever the white fibres take up the dye?

And the merino – I didn’t really need to make a sample of that, just an excuse to play with the colours!

slippers and sampling

Today I finished off the felt slippers for Alan. He was away when I started them and I wanted to wait to do the final sizing till he could actually try them on. They turned out very hairy! I used a mixture of Hebridean, alpaca and merino, but I think the stray hairs are the white fibres from the Hebridean fleece, as they’re all pale. I did use some pale alpaca but also an equal amount of chestnut and that has all felted in fine. I’ve now done what a sensible person would have done first, and made a sample of each to see how they felt alone. Everything is drying in the airing cupboard (it’s so nice to have one of those).

I’m quite pleased with the slippers for a first attempt and glad to say Alan seems to like them too. I tried to be restrained with the colours and not put in any pink or purple! In contrast, the card I made last week has rather a lot of both.

I’ve been enjoying some ‘new to me’ blogs recently – India Flint’s Not all those who wander are lost; Elvis Robertson’s Lovely Textiles, found through Neki’s blog; and Jenny Dean’s Wild Colour, found through Helen’s blog.

We’ve had some glorious winter sunshine this week, with clear skies and beautiful sunsets. We don’t see the sun set over the sea from here, but the distant clouds catch its colours and give us a glimpse of it.

treats and things

Treats that came in the post in the last few days – a set of beautiful cards by Caroline Inckle; and a copy of Alyson B. Stanfield’s I’d Rather be in the Studio – The Artist’s No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion. I’ve read good things about this book, and although I’m not (yet) making things to sell, I think that some of the ideas will be relevant to promoting any small creative business, including web design. Marketing is not my strong point – self-effacement, that’s easy; self-promotion doesn’t come naturally at all. It’s something I very much need to change so I’m looking forward to reading and learning from Alyson’s book.

Another treat recently was going round to Tiree airport (all of half a mile from where we live) – three times – once to meet the plane and twice to see it off. For some reason I find planes very exciting and airports very interesting! I blogged about it on my other blog. This is a different view of the airport that caught my eye.

I made something yesterday too – a needlefelted thingy to go on a birthday card – but I won’t post a pic till after the day. Just a little scrap of frivolity, but I’ve been feeling blocked since I packed up to move, so it was good to have a deadline to play to. My aim for this week is to make Alan some felt slippers; I’d been thinking about it anyway and I feel inspired by this tutorial posted a few weeks ago by Monika of red2white. I’ve got as far as drawing round Alan’s (size 11) feet! And shortlisted some fibres – I’ll mostly use some Hebridean roving I got at the Woolfest, which is a springy dark brown/black with some white fibres, and card it with undyed alpaca and dyed merino for softness and to enrich the colour.

fleece