change Archives - loveFibre :: colour to touch

the story of a scarf

I set out to make a scarf. An easy one – big needles, a ball of fancy fluffy yarn and a simple triangular scarf pattern from the web, where you just increase one stitch at the beginning of each row.

As it grew, I realised I hadn’t paid enough attention to the shape – with only a single ball of wool I should have been increasing at a much faster rate to end up with a shallow isosceles triangle that would be wide enough to go round my neck, instead of one like this…

I looked at the ball band and the yarn was 30% wool – I can felt into this, I thought.

So, I cut it up …

… chose some fleece …

… laid it out …

… wetted and soaped and rubbed it for a while. It looked promising …

… but what I actually ended up with was a ribbon of prefelt and a bit of felted knitting, loosely attached to each other in about three places. I think I was too lavish with the soap.

With nothing to lose I decided to sling the whole lot in the washing machine. I tied strips of calico round it at intervals to hold the felt and the knitting together, and put it in on a 60 degree quick wash with a pair of jeans.

The result was a nice uneven felted rope, joined firmly to the knitting wherever there was a calico strip. I snipped off the calico, added some wrapping highlights along the length with just a little lovely shiny embroidery thread, and here it is… a scarf, tousled rather than fluffy, and surprisingly warm.

The calico was quite well entangled and would happily have stayed where it was – another time I’d use a nice space dyed piece instead of white, or maybe sari ribbon or a yarn wrapping, and make it an integral part.

On another note, I’ve just joined an exciting new challenge – Today’s Title Is… – set up by Helen Suzanne of Heb-Art Journal. The challenge is to start from a given title and capture the first image it sparks off in the mind’s eye, in any visual medium. This week’s title is Blue Chair. Do visit to see all the wonderfully varied interpretations and maybe you’ll be tempted to join in too 🙂

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 April 2

My response to Sharon’s April TIF challenge is about craft as change, taking something raw and unformed but full of potential, and effecting a transformation through a making process. Something like ‘n things to do with a piece of fleece’ where n is currently undefined, but (though possibly infinite!) will be determined by how far I get by the end of the month. I’ll put it together as a series of journal pages.

I decided to start with fleece and it isn’t actually raw – it’s already been washed, carded and dyed – a lovely crushed raspberry pink merino, dyed with madder and logwood, which I bought last week from Fiery Felts at the Embroiderers’ Guild North West Regional Day.

So far I’ve done some small experiments with weaving, knitting, needlefelting, and hand stitching, and I’ve started doing some felting.

I wove some of the fleece with a wool mohair warp and some with a fleece warp – I did two of each so I could felt one.

Creative mayhem…

Ready to felt – thick and thin layers of pink fleece, adding colours to the pink, felting onto muslin, knitted and woven samples. More to come when these are done…

Blood, Sweat and T-shirts

I’m not very keen on reality tv, but I think I will watch this new series from the BBC, which takes six heedless young fashion followers for a taste of life in a clothes factory in India to “see how it changes their attitudes to cut-price clothing”. I hope along the way it will raise a lot of interesting and challenging questions.

I don’t know if this will be shown anywhere but in the UK, but for anyone who’s interested and can get it, Blood, Sweat and T-shirts is on BBC3, starting Tuesday 22 April at 9pm.

There’s more info at http://www.bbc.co.uk/thread/blood-sweat-tshirts/, which is part of a BBC web site I only just found – Thread – devoted to ethical fashion. The phrase ‘ethical fashion’ always seems to me a bit of a contradiction in terms – or maybe just a compromise, depending on how pragmatic you want to be. Wouldn’t truly sustainable dressing require a far more radical shift in attitudes? But since we have to begin where we are – it must surely be a movement (not a trend, I hope…) in the right direction.

TIF Challenge April 1

Sharon’s Take it Further Challenge for April is about change:

How do you see change?

I suppose I see it as essential to being. Everything that is alive changes all the time. The elements are constantly shaping the earth. Whether change is slow and subtle or dramatic and unexpected, it’s a given.

Part of change is growth. One of of my favourite Bible verses is about being transformed ‘from glory to glory’ (2 Cor 3:18). And part of it is decay. They are the warp and weft of life – inextricable, sometimes indistinguishable.

I’ve thought a bit about external change in my life as well. On a small scale I crave it – that is, I dislike monotony and have to work hard to focus on one thing for very long. I often rotate tasks for 15 or even five minutes at a time to create variety and stave off… not boredom, exactly… I don’t lose interest, but I get very restless. On a larger scale – we have been thinking for ages about a big change (moving house) but we are terrible at making decisions, so actually effecting a major change like that is such a challenge that inertia tends to prevail.

But I think the line of thought that will result in a TIF piece is that creative processes are change – the transformation of cloth and thread into embroidery; skeins of yarn woven or knitted to become fabric; the potent alchemy of dyeing; the turning of an idea or a vision into a tactile, shared object. And that as we create, we also change.

And my favourite change words – metamorphosis – variegate – refashion – worn – and begin…