Happy Squares

In May I went to a Shibori indigo dyeing day at Littleheath Barn with Liske and Claire.

Some of the cotton samples I made:

I booked to go on another workshop with Liske called Happy Squares and I thought it would be good to take my indigo dyed cloth with me.   I used Thermofax screens with pearlised white paint to knock back the blue using a nautical theme.

I decided I would make 4 squares and tore up the fabric into 6.5" squares.  I laid out the squares and auditioned bits until I was happy.  These photos are a bit blurry as I was taking them with my phone.  (My camera is away being repaired!)

I ironed the words on as they had been printed on bondawebbed canvas and I stitched the other pieces on.

Back home I decided to cut out another 8 squares and now I have my camera back I have taken some photos.

At Littleheath Barn I was able to have some words typed out and printed onto fabric.  I had some of the fabric left over which already had bondaweb on it so I used a permanent pen and wrote words on the scraps and ironed them on.

There's still lots of hand stitching and machining to do before I can assemble all these squares into a book.  Hopefully it will get finished - unlike two other versions of this that I have still in progress.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Glimpses of Jesus 35

Glimpses of Jesus in the Old Testament is a year long bible study written by Simon Clay of Jubilee Church Solihull.   You can join in at any time.

Today's post is about Jesse, the father of David in Isaiah 11.

I took a photograph of some artwork I did many years ago using crumpled and painted tissue paper based on the Tree of Jesse.  In Publisher I put the Isaiah 11:1 verse on top and printed it out and stuck the whole page into my journal.

Do have a look back through the posts on the Glimpses of Jesus blog where you will find links to other people's art and poetry.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice
 

ExTex 5 update

Last weekend was our third session together on the Experimental Textiles course.

Between sessions I had done some Session 2 homework.  I experimented with the stamps I had made on my gelli plate.  They didn't really work out how I pictured them but they are still usable.

Then I layered the papers up and used the sewing machine to make faux chenille. The first piece was stitched in straight lines and then cut.

For the second piece I used an enlarged version of the stamp I had made.

I made myself a new pair of stamps and randomly stamped on a piece of lining paper with acrylic paint and then dyed the background.

Session 3
The weekend started with us talking about the homework we had all done and then there were short presentations about artists we liked and their use of colour.  My chosen artist was JMW Turner.  I liked that he experimented with colours and tried to use the same colours in watercolours as well as oils.   This article from the Tate was really useful for my research.

In the afternoon we looked at colour theory and mixed our own  colours onto a chart.

On Sunday we were able to have individual 'tutorials' with Kim if we wished and to spend the day playing with printing, dyeing and stitch.

I printed with the stamp I made that looks like yacht masts and sails.  I used a long piece of brown packaging paper and a limited colour palette.  I dyed the paper with some red and yellow procion dye.

It's 45 cms long and I am rather proud of it.  I have had it printed full size at Staples so that I still have the original design as I am going to chop the original into pieces in order to sew into them.

I also printed on some hymn book pages and maps.

printed on deli paper

printed on hymn book paper

printed on map paper

Since the weekend I have done some more colour theory in my workbook.

I've torn up bits of my printed papers and started sewing into them - which is what I should have done for last session's homework rather than the faux chenille.

And collaged some torn up hymn book page onto the deli paper print and begun stitching.

It will be interesting to see how these finish up.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice