texture Archives - Page 2 of 3 - loveFibre

TIF Challenge January 3

I spent some time this weekend sampling and exploring my ideas – I was planning to stop with the visual journal and not make a textile piece but one is emerging anyway. Here I’ve tried out some ways of representing the darkness. (The idea I’m starting from is admiration of people who’ve “confronted their particular darkness by allowing something bright and fierce and tender and courageous to grow in their lives”.)

I found that hemp yarn, though difficult to knit with, leaves behind lovely curls and tendrils when you unravel the knitting.

I decided to weave a base fabric of colour and brightness, and I think I’ll use an overlay of painted scrim or plastic netting for the element of darkness. Painted with acrylic or ink it keeps a shape and can be shades of black and grey – I want it to net itself over the coloured fabric like some dark, strangling thing – it should have an ugliness yet the overall effect be one of beauty. I’d like to use the plastic netting because it has intrinsic destructive qualities in the environment, the way it literally overwhelms living creatures. But I think the scale of it is too big. I have smaller nets but they’re more stiff and difficult to distort and I want the darkness to gather in some parts and be stretched thin in others. I should play around with that a bit more, but time is short….

This is the beginnings of my fabric. The warp is wire, and I plan to use the ends to form tendrils of colour growing out from the centre, through the netted darkness, an affirmation.

happy new year

I wish you all a very creative, fruitful and happy 2008.

We had a lovely time over Christmas with both our daughters staying and other family members visiting – it went in a whirl, and then suddenly everyone went home and everything went quiet – and a little empty. Stitch therapy and inner hugs being needed, I added another few hundred seeding stitches to this while catching up with The Archers. I have done some knitting too – experimenting with tension and learning that sometimes it’s the instructions that may be a little crazy and not me! Having failed dismally to achieve the required gauge for a modular waistcoat – four needle sizes down and it’s still too big as well as feeling something like a small knitted board (at this point I gave up), I discovered the excellent Yarndex which says that Noro Silk Garden (the yarn I’m using and the one specified in the pattern) knits at 18 stitches per 4 inches on US size 7 needles – whereas the pattern says 27 stitches per 3.5 inches on US size 8 … oh oh oh – still I think I learned a lot more from all this than if it had worked! I’ll get there … I also tried knitting up some hemp yarn I bought at the Knitting and Stitching Show, using different needle sizes in the same piece – it’s messy to use because little bits fly off it in all directions – I ended up with a lapful of hemp confetti and a dusty cough, but after washing it, I think it has potential. I’m going to see what happens if I paint it.

photos from Aveiro

I finally managed to upload my photos of Portugal to Flickr. We had a lovely time in Aveiro staying with Palexa and she took us to some beautiful places. Some of the photos are mine and some are by Alan. I tend to focus on details and he on vistas but occasionally it’s the other way round… Looking at them makes me want to be there again! Such wonderful sun and light. Thanks Palexa for lending us your camera 🙂

first assignment is sent!

We got back from Portugal late on Saturday, and I spent Sunday packing up my first assignment to post for OCA Textiles 1Â – it took ages to label everything and write an evaluation of each project completed so far. The writing is much harder than the art work! I don’t think I’m keeping enough information in my logbook – which is partly this blog – I need to review the books I’ve been reading and get better at annotating my samples as I go along.

These are the last couple of pieces I did to explore texture in stitch. In the first one I was trying out different ways of stitching with tension adjustments to create contrasts of texture. It looks a bit like an allotment, though that was unintentional -Â it’s interesting how the work sometimes goes in a direction all of its own.

texture with machine stitch

The other sample is intended to show proportions of colour and texture using different yarns, and is based on a drawing I did using a feather and Brusho inks. I like the way the colours turned out but it’s not very feathery!

wrapping colours
texture with yarns

Although my camera wasn’t working, I managed to take a few pictures in Portugal on my friend’s camera (where they still are). I’ll upload some of them as soon as I get them.

A lot of work seems to have mounted up while I was away so I’m playing catch up before plunging back into the quilting. I’ve got a couple of packages of silk to paint and dye – so I hope the sun will still be shining in a couple of days’ time!

stitch samples

I’ve been working on the next stage of OCA Textiles 1, which is using stitch to make marks, lines and textures. I’ve been trying both machine and hand stitching – I’m always in such a hurry I tend to think ‘machine’ first, and I’d forgotten what a pleasure it is to sit and stitch by hand. Especially with La Traviata on the CD player and the sun shining 🙂

revisiting some of my pencil marks and lines in stitch

a machine stitched sample based on something linear from my sketchbook

playing with hand stitches to create texture

I got some Koh-I-Noor watercolours from Art Van Go on Tuesday, plus a new tiny sketchbook for my handbag, and a Aquash paint brush with a water compartment. I christened them all with a sketch of my little dog, Tansy the Tibbie, asleep on her favourite chair. The brush is quite hard to hold as the handle’s so fat with the water reservoir.