techniques Archives - Page 2 of 5 - loveFibre

drawing breath

Life always gets away from me in the summer when time away (lovely as it is) means twice as much work to fit into the weeks afterwards – and it’s not long before we set off again, this time heading down to Cornwall. In between, a little space to draw breath and share what I’m up to.

Our visit to Tiree was momentous, to say the least. Alan’s on sabbatical next year and we’ve decided to seize the day and do something we’ve been thinking about for years – to live and work in a small community on a remote and windswept island. So we went there looking for a home – and found one! We’re now jubilant and terrified in about equal measure. The move won’t be till November but there’s going to be plenty to do before then. We have two daughters starting uni this autumn too, one moving from Cornwall to Liverpool, and one just moving round the corner in Birmingham, but both will need help with their stuff. I’ll need to work hard to keep time for art among all this excitement!

While we were on Tiree I at last joined in with the World Beach Project.

And I did a bit more sampling of gathered fabrics while I was away. The ones in the middle will end up being dyed, I think.

I got fascinated by the effect of visible stitching…

and tying…

Tomorrow I’m going to a short workshop with the intriguing title “Kendal Green meets Shibori Dyeing”. I think I’ve mentioned before that Kendal’s town motto is Pannus mihi Panis – “Cloth is my Bread”; and the arts centre is having a festival to celebrate the town’s heritage with lots of textile events. Kendal Green is an old dye colour mentioned in Shakespeare, but I think we’re going to use a modern version! It should be fun, anyway. I’m just wondering if I can take my gathered samples along and throw them in too!

And these are some pics of Tiree I’ve put on Flickr, colours of sea and sky, rust and sand, light and water.

1. Gunna Sound, 2. rocks at Caoles, 3. light and waves, 4. Balevullin, 5. light, waves and seaweed, 6. fences at Balevullin, 7. cows on the beach at Balevullin, 8. rust and lichen, 9. Crossapol beach, 10. oystercatchers, 11. rusty machinery on Crossapol beach, 12. sunset, 13. clear sea, Gunna Sound, 14. rusty metal at Hynish, 15. Crossapol beach, 16. Balevullin

TIF Challenge May 2

Well I didn’t turn into a pumpkin! I got my May TIF Challenge piece done yesterday (just) but too late for taking photos.

I decided to create something that included some of the techniques I love most, and to try to express how I often feel as if I’m exploding in all directions – there’s such an onslaught of possibilities it seems impossible to choose between them.

For the background I used a piece of indigo-dyed shibori I made at a workshop taught by Nell Dale. I applied scrim that I’d dyed and torn, and some little bits and bobs – hand stitching, machine stitching, felt, knitting, dyeing, batik, printing, and layered fabrics. I also love textiles with writing, so I added the phrase that Neki of A Moveable Feast picked out from my thoughts on the challenge question – ‘naming is not defining – it is choosing’.

But choosing means saying no as well as yes. I long to learn to focus enough to practise, in every sense of the word. I enjoy exploring so many things but I also value skill and mastery, and to attain those things one must make choices and leave some roads untravelled. For now, as a student, I’m constantly trying out new paths and revisiting old ones, but I also hope that on the way I’ll discover which directions take me “further up and further in”… that I will learn my name.

Links to the beautiful and thought-provoking work being done for Sharon’s Take it Further Challenge can be found on her blog In a Minute Ago, the Flickr group, and the Take it Further Challenge blog.

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.

April TIF Challenge 3

Well, I ran out of time before I ran out of ideas, so I’m going to carry on playing with April’s Take it Further Challenge during May. I think it has some connections into May’s challenge as well so who knows where it will lead?

This, anyway, is where I’ve got to.

The piece at the top left is partly felted. The little balls of yarn are naturally dyed as well – I got them at Soay Studio on the Isle of Harris (that’s the only link I could find, but I’ll go and hunt out a photo in a minute). I’m going to do big woolly embroidery stitches into the pre-felt and then finish felting it.

Next to that is a piece with some other coloured fleece added; and then my woven samples – I overdid the felting, so they’re very hard and small! Below them is a grid with thin strips of the pink roving in one direction and colours laid across it – I want to try this again on a bigger scale.

Bottom right are the samples of knitted fleece after felting – I like the coloured one in stocking stitch and this is another technique I’d like to explore – it was very easy to bring in additional colours exactly where I wanted to.

The middle piece at the bottom is very thin and webby and the piece on the right is the one I nuno felted into muslin. It was quite a dense muslin, and having seen the lovely lacy textures of Monika’s nuno felt, I’d like to experiment with some different fabrics to see how the effects vary.

The piece underneath the nuno felt is ‘just’ plain felt. Warm, soft, comforting – and pink – it has so much in common with the fleece it came from and yet it’s not the same at all. I plan to chop it up into pieces and sandwich each between different translucent layers, to quilt into the layers and watch the subtle changes that will emerge, and the differences between them.

I just love the amazing, endless variety of textures and patterns and colours that we can make with textiles, and their physical, tactile presence.

And this is the gateway into the delightful dyer’s garden at Soay Studio on Harris, which we visited in August 2006.

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 :-).