Sneak peek

Here's a sneak peek at my latest textile piece

 And here's another part of it

It doesn't look much in these photos and I haven't shown you all of it.  There's a lot more machining to do.  And hand stitching!  And cords!

I've set a 2-3 week finished deadline so you will get to see the whole thing by the end of August.

Hopefully!

Thanks for being here today
Bernice

 

Summer School 1

The theme of this year's Summer School at Littleheath Barn Studio is Buildings.  If you've read Getting Ready you will know I was struggling with choosing between in canalside redbrick buildings and the beautiful architecture of Venice.

I chose Venice.

We started with making marks on fabric.  I used stencils, thermofax screens, procion dye and white acrylic paint.

I also tried marking making with hot wax.

And drew with charcoal procion dye. I also used a screen for breakdown printing.

All the above photos were taken whilst the fabric was wet.

My usual complaint when I've washed out my dyed fabric is that it is all too bright or too dark.  Not this time!

Very washed out!

One side

The other side

When I get back to the second set of two days of the Summer School I think I may make more marks on the two very pale cloths with fabric paint.

I also need to decide what I am making with these fabrics.  I don't want to make hangings and if I make a book it needs to be different from all the others I've made lately.

Watch this space!

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

A Companion Piece

Last month I told you about a new hanging I am making using fabrics I printed and dyed on the Text, Texture, Tile workshop.

With the fabric I had left over, I cut strips and randomly sewed them together.

I cut the assembled pieces into narrower pieces and laid them out.

Instead of having all the pieces running vertically as in the previous hanging, I tried putting some horizontally.

I tried the pieces in different places and then bgan to sew the strips together.

The bottom half of the hanging assembled, with added narrow blue strips.

I carried on assembling the pieces together.  I really like this with it's strange edges but I think it will probably need to squared off.

I cropped the photograph to see what it would look like.

I have bonded the uncropped version onto acrylic felt and a backing fabric ready to sew.  I'll share the sewing expereince in another post.

See you soon.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

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.

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

Moving ideas on

Last time I showed you the small collages I made using gel plate monoprints. I tried them out in small concertina book.

As I mentioned I now need to decide what to make.  This is still being percolated in my brain but in the meantime I thought I would dye some fabric with procion dye using the colours in the monoprints as inspiration.  I put equal amounts of old linen, cotton poplin, silk, silk viscose rib and scrim in two trays.

I used Magenta, Merlot, Dark Blue and Charcoal Procion dyes.

In this tray I used Golden Yellow, a Scarlet & Lemon mix and some Charcoal.

Rinsed and on the drying rack

Dry and ready for use.

Now to concentrate on what to make and then to make 12 samples.    It's all go here!

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

Ice Ice Baby!

On Monday I went to a workshop at Littleheath Barn with Liske and Claire.

In the morning we set up our ice dyeing and in the afternoon we did a colour run.  I am going to take each activity that I did and show it through to the finished fabric which took 24 hours rather than show the set up altogether and then the all the finished fabric.

I did three different lots of ice dyeing.

In the lower pot I put two lots of twisted cloth.

As I hadn't soda-washed the fabric I sprinkled some soda on and put a lyaer of ice.  I sprinkled turquoise, charcoal and rust procion dyes over the top and left them to 'cure'.

One of the fabrics I had carefully ironed into the concertina pleast before twisting and the other one I just folded and twisted.

In the second pot I fold two pieces of fabric - one into triangles which was held together with elastic bands and one folded into squares.

I did the same sequences as before - soda, ice, dyes - using indigo, charcoal and lime.  As there was a lot of room left in the pot I scrunched up another piece of fabric and put charcoal, rust and dark brown dye powder.

The crumpled fabric.

Folded into triangles.

Folded into squares.

The last ice dyeing was done in a tray with three different fabrics crumpled up.  I used the turquoise, rust and charcoal again.

Here the ice has started to melt.

And this is what I ended up with.

The afternoon's colour run featured the turquoise and the rust.  Each colour was made up with water and then the fabrics were dyed in plastic bags.

The dye was added neat at each end and the ones in the middle had different amounts of each colour.

20 hours later I took them out of the bags to rinse.  They should have been in a bit longer but I was going away to another workshop - more about that next week.

And here's the finished dye run.  When I had finished making up the bags with one piece of fabric in each I put a second piece of fabric and as there was so much dye left the second piece is a lighter colour.

There was some dye left over from this exercise so I tried some 'furrow' dyeing.  The fabric was folded and put into the pot and dye dripped onto the fabric.

So now I have a range of dyed fabrics that go together.  I have no idea what I shall make with them but it was fun doing it.

Thanks for stopping by
Bernice