Layers of Text

I spent two days this week attending the Summer School at Littleheath Barn called Layers of Text.

Liske's aim was that we would print less metres of fabric but have several layers on the fabric we did print.

I had written Captivity, Freedom, Identity on one screen with flour paste and Dancing in Fetters on a second screen also with flour paste.

When the flour paste was dry I scraped thickened Procion dye through the screen which breaks down the flour paste.  A different take on breakdown printing.

The piece above was printed onto Organdie with a piece of muslin underneath.  The image went through the Organdie and coloured the muslin below. 

 

 

I scraped flour paste over a piece of calico and wrote into the flour paste.  When this was dry the calico was screwed up to make the flour paste crackle.  I scraped thickened dye over the fabric.  With the small piece at the bottom I tried using Masking Fluid to write with using a brush before putting the dye over it.

 

 

The top fabric is Organdie and the bottom piece is muslin.  I used a Thermofax screen and a mixture of two colours of thickened dye.

 

 

I wrote on this piece of calico with a Copic Wide pen with what I had hoped contained a permanent ink.  I used thickened dye to write the rust and ochre words and a Thermofax screen for the chains.  However when I washed the fabric the black ink leached out leaving blue writing.

Not that it's a problem!  I can make the piece again on non-soda soaked calico and use fabric paints with the Copic pen.  That's if I decide I need to do it again.

In the meantime, this last piece matches the other fabrics I printed rather well, so I will cut them up and piece them together.

Watch this space!

Thanks for being here today
Bernice

In progress

Lately I have been working on a new piece in my Dancing in Fetters series.  It is very different from my usual style.

It had been suggested to me that I use metal chain for this piece.  However I found that this would be too heavy to hang on a wall.  I bought this plastic chain which I thought would be easy to paint with acrylic paint.  How wrong I was!

However after several coats of paint - I lost count of how many - I was eventually satisfied that they looked suitably rusty.

I am using my Nonet poem again.  Each strand of chain has the number of links that matches the number of syllables in the line of poetry.

 

 

Much to my husband's bemusement - and that of the Evri delivery guy - I bought a piece of driftwood off Etsy.

The inspiration for having a piece of wood was this photo I took in Tasmania

It seemed to me that it was easier to buy the driftwood than try to distress a new piece of wood.

I wrote the lines of the poem on strips of fabric.

And wove the strips through the links.

I pinned the strip chains and then stitched them.

I heated some copper shim to discolour it and cut it into tags.  I printed the words of each line on the tags.

 I've yet to attach the tags to the chain.

The last thing will be to attach the finished piece to the driftwood.

Then on to the third piece in the series which will much less mixed-media and much more textile!

Thanks for being here today
Bernice

Rust & Decay

Later in the year I am attending a workshop called The Poetry of Decay at The Bramble Patch.  I have no idea what photographic inspiration I will need for that but during our trip to Suffolk and Essex I took the opportunity to take lots of photographs of rust and decay.  107 actually.  However rest assured I'm not sharing all of them here.

There were lots of chains and decaying boats - so here are a few of the photos without explanation.

Rust

Decay

 

And my favourite - can you guess why?

And if you want to indulge yourself in rust and decay here's my Pinterest board.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice