Colour families

Last week I went to a three day workshop called Colour Families and Mark Making led by Leslie Morgan from Committed to Cloth.  She rarely teaches outside of her own studio so we were extremely fortunate that she agreed to teach at Littleheath Barn Studio.

A colour family is where you take two colours of procion dyes and mix them them together using a matrix.  Can you guess what colour I used?

Actually it was't turquoise on the first day!  I used Golden Yellow and Scarlet in equal parts to make an Orange (top left) and mixed this with black (bottom right).  Each colour that you mix is scraped on to soda-soaked cotton to keep a record of the colours.

This is the fabric washed out, ironed, cut up and stuck into my sketchbook.

During the first two days I concentrated on the Golden Yellow/Scarlet mix to black, then turquoise and then a turquoise/black mix.   The first one is a paler version of the family above.  To achieve this I added 4 teaspoons of print paste to each pot of the colours.

A new family using Scarlet/Golden Yellow and Turquoise.

And lastly in this series, Golden Yellow/Scarlet with a mix of 2 parts Turquoise and 1 part Black.

I used the colours in the pots to scrape onto larger pieces of cotton fabric.  This was the first family I made.  The photo was taken after it was washed out and ironed.

This was done with the last family shown above.  This is what the colours looked like whilst the dye was wet.

This is the same fabric washed and ironed.

The next two photos show two pieces I also scraped dye onto and printed on.  I used larger pieces of fabric and cut each of them in two.  Half I washed and ironed and you can see below after two days of 'batching'*.  The other half of each piece has been left to batch for longer to see if it makes any difference to the colour if you leave it soak in longer.

I'll tell you about day 3 next time.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

*Batching is a process where you leave dry dyed fabric rolled up in plastic for several days to allow the dye to sink into the fabric.

Starting a new textile piece

I still have lots of fabric left from the time I was at Leah Higgin's studio for Breakdown Your Palette.  I used some of it for a wall hanging about a walk along the Stratford Canal.  I have wondered what to do with the rest of it and then I spotted this painting by Paul Klee.  It's called Highways and Byways.

I'm obviously going to be drawn to the colours - you know how fond I am of turquoise and orange.

However it gave me an idea for using the fabrics I have.  I didn't have any rust coloured plain fabric that matched my fabrics but Liske at Littleheath Barn Studio kindly sold me some that she had dyed especially for me.  I tore 3 pieces of it to piece with some of the brakdown printed fabric.

 

 

I had some pieces already stitched together from the previous hanging to give you an idea of what I am planning.

I've sewn those leftover pieces together and added some more.  This will be the central strip.

I'll keep you up to date with how this grows.

In addition I am taking part in a fundraising event that Liske is running called Pieces of Positivity.  After a donation to Cancer Research she sends out a piece of drop cloth - that's the fabric that covers the table in the studio and picks up any paint and stencilling etc as we all work there.  My piece looked like this:

 

 

I have cut it down to size and bonded it to a backing fabric.   Liske is going to make the pieces we all make into bunting to put around the studio.

It looks enormous in the photo but it's actually only 15x20 cms.  I'm going to handstitch it and then see what else it needs.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Text Sketchbook

At the beginning of December I introduced you to my Text Sketchbook and I thought it would be good to update you on how it's going.

When I went back to it I was unimpressed.  I had wanted the pages to be neutral.  But there's a big difference between neutral and dull.  So I've started doing what I said at the end of that post which is to add orange.

The sketchbook is really thick now and doesn't photograph well. But you can see what I have done!  I've used some of the painted papers I made during the demo videos for Simply Create.

My theme in this sketchbook is walk.  I have returned as ever to walks along the Stratford Canal and included photos from the walks.  Plus I have added words from the Robert Frost poem: The Road Not Taken which I have used in previous work.

And something we all need to do - play!

I hope you have enjoyed looking through my sketchbook.  Lots more to do in it - but it's a marathon not a sprint!  A walk not a run!!!

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Text, Texture, Textiles 2

This week saw our second Art Textiles Group day.  Much of the day was spent using fabric rather than sketchbook work.  Although we did end the day in our sketchbooks.   If you missed it, my post on our first day is here.

At a studio day I had dyed some fabrics, written on the fabric with dye and used a thermofax screen.  I had washed the fabrics so I was able to continue at this week's session working on top of these dyed fabrics.

I used Formusol which is a type of bleach to write onto the fabric.  You can begin to see the bleach working on this.

 When it was dry I ironed it and you can see how it took the colour out.

It didn't work so well on this piece because there wasn't a solid block of colour

In the afternoon we played at using different tools to apply dye to fabric.  We first put masking tape across to make different areas.  We removed the masking tape and left it to dry.  This is it washed and ironed.

I also overdyed some previously breakdown printed fabric

I painted a couple of pages in my sketchbook with dye and wrote on them with the Formusol.

I have no idea where all this going but it's fun playing.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Abstract Calligraphy

What a fabulous day we spent with Simon Sonsino at Littleheath Barn.  He showed us various techniques through the day and after each demonstration it was our turn.  Here are my efforts.

 

Just have to work out how to reproduce the abstract calligraphy on fabric now.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Dis-ast-er daa-rling!

Can you tell I'm a Strictly fan?  I wasn't dancing I was preparing a screen for breakdown printing.  And I mixed the dye too wet and then tried adding more manutex powder.

Which didn't really work.  I ended up with some very thin dye on my screens.  Then I added the shells.

The shells were an experiment.  I know how flat things work on a breakdown screen, but who knows what the shells might do.

Lots of the dye leaked through the screen.  Then I left the shells on for too long so that when I came to pull them off they pulled up the dried dye which was paper thin.

It looked like this when I'd pulled off the shells.

So all in all - a dis-ast-er!

Although to be fair the shells looked quite cool.

So what happened when I tried printing the screen, I hear you ask!

Well!

Not very well really!   This was using print paste.  The coral sand was a bit random and then I tried the robins egg blue over the top.  This is while it was still wet.  I wasn't holding out much hope for what it would look like when washed.

I mixed up some dye with the print paste and printed through the screen on the left and used a thermofax screen on the right.

 I used the thermofax screen over the blue.

 Lastly I scraped the dye onto the silk noil using an old credit card.

Thirty six hours later I washed the fabrics out.  And most of the blue had disappeared as I had thought it might.

However they are in a similar colour palette to the silk noil I had already painted at a previous session.

I need to add some more blue to these fabrics or to another piece of fabric and then I'll be set to make something.  Or start again!

I'll let you know.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice