colour Archives - Page 6 of 9 - loveFibre

judging a book by its cover

I know you shouldn’t but sometimes it’s hard not to – this new book Eco-Colour by India Flint looks so beautiful and the subtitle is so enticing – ‘Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles: Environmentally Sustainable Dyes’. I feel a moment of weakness coming on. India Flint’s web site is delicious as well – beautiful work and a sidebar that takes the phrase ‘navigation metaphor’ to new poetic heights.

It’s been a lean and hungry textile week for me, with a time-consuming project keeping me stuck at the computer, but I did sneak away long enough to make a little piece of nuno felt, on a cotton scrim base. I’m really trying to get that lovely barnacle-like effect on the cloth side – this is a bit more like the nuno felt I’ve seen than my last attempt, so progress in the right direction.

The pastel side:

… and the bright side:

I imagine a garment with the delicately coloured textural side outward and the bright soft fleecy side within.

more felt

I’m not sure about either of the pieces of felt I made today but at least I made them 🙂 One is an experiment stitching into prefelt before felting – more play with a piece of fleece. The images show before and after the felting was completed:

I want to explore this effect some more, but would prefer finer wools for the stitching, I think.Â Then, rather than getting all wet and soapy for one little piece, I also made another piece of felt based on thoughts of the sea at sunset. It didn’t really turn out as I wanted, but it’s all experience.

TIF Challenge March 2

It’s April already and March has… gone – I’m not sure where. I don’t really think I’ve risen to Sharon’s challenge to pay attention to the tiny details during March, but as the month dashed on I thought about dots and spots and decided to try a small piece of shibori, something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. I tied some buttons into hand dyed muslin, bound some points around them and then bound the ‘tail’ at intervals. I soaked it in soda solution for a while…

… then dyed overnight in Procion MX marine violet…

… and ended up with this …

It was exciting to see what emerged, and I’m glad I managed not to abandon this month’s challenge altogether. Shibori is definitely something I want to explore and learn how to do properly. It was magical – and fun :-).

Happy Easter

I’ve been away a lot over the last week or so, and seen both daughters (which was lovely) so I haven’t done anything textile-related, nor been reading blogs or blogging. But I didn’t want to let today go by without posting Easter greetings. Though it felt more like Christmas this morning as we woke to the heaviest snowfall of the year so far – Tansy thought it was wonderful – here she is wading happily across the garden.

At our church we have a tradition of decorating an empty cross on Easter Sunday morning with spring flowers to celebrate joyful new life after the darkness of Good Friday. Each person comes to add something, and in a few minutes wood and wire are transformed into a vibrant swathe of colour.

“Spring comes: the flowers learn their coloured shapes.” Maria Konopnicka

little pieces of fabric

I recently spent a happy couple of hours snipping samples of my fabric stash, which I’d sorted by colour in preparation for some collage exercises in my OCA Textiles 1 course. It reminded me why I love fabric as a medium. Partly the textures, the combination of warp and weft, its weight (or lightness), the way its colours and patterns work. And partly the associations and meanings that come with it, personal, historical and cultural nuances that enrich each tiny snippet beyond its visual and tactile qualities.