Teach yourself textiles - slashing and burning

Textiles I

I had a quiet weekend and have an appointment free week ahead so I am determined to fit in a few more exercises in my quest for textile knowledge.  Firstly, after watching a video from Fay Maxwell  about fabric slashing, I though I must have a go. (Thanks Lesley) Firstly I built up layers of fabric scraps on a piece of calico topped with a relatively plain piece of fine cotton.  I then straight stitched the layers together like this.

then taking a sharp pair of scissors started slashing the layers between the rows of stitches.

I only snipped through the back in a couple of places!

Slashing is only the beginning - the next thing is to wash the whole thing as violently as you can.  I was unprepared to devote  a whole wash cycle to this and unsure of colour fastness I hand washed it, but gave it a good scrubbing with my wooden lemon squeezer!!!  (Note to self - look for a old fashioned washboard) I then indulged in a fast spin, as it was very thick and then popped it on a rad to dry.

The green top fabric frayed so much I had to trim the threads, but the result is very tactile.  I am now deciding whether to add any stitching.

Natural Break

I did have to interrupt my stitching to cook a meal yesterday and when I popped into the garden for some rosemary a flurry of birds flew up from the cotoneaster which still has a lot of berries.  I had disturbed about twenty waxwings.  Luckily they didn't fly far and sat in a neighbouring tree while I rushed in for the camera.  The sky was dark and it was starting to rain.  There was even a loud clap of thunder, so no time to set up the large zoom and tripod which would have been better in this light.

A bit of cropping on this picture just renders enough detail for those of you familiar with this winter visitor to identify its characteristic profile with its tuft of feathers on its head.  I haven't seen waxwings and I am delighted to be able to add them to my weekly bird count which I submit to BTO Garden Birdwatch.

Textiles II

I have done the slashing, so here is the burning, although melting would be a better description. 

A selection of beads I made by melting anything meltable with my new heat gun.

 

 

Not sure what I am going to do with them - rather scratchy for  a necklace - but they are strung up at a window at the moment. 

Mr T was notable unimpressed by my experiments, but I know you'll be interested (I hope)

Jill

No fools here

That's another month done - goodess me, time does fly especially when you are enjoying yourself.

I seem to have had a busy month and last week I seemed to be rushing about from place to place.  But I did manage to get April's pages done, although at the moment they are looking a bit plain. The background is decorated with a spiral lino cut I whizzed off this week.  I'm into spirals at the moment, but more about that another time.  I also spent a day with my friend Sally at her studio at Digswell where she ran a workshop on monoprinting techniques using the heavy etching press - great fun, but really, we only had time to familiarize ourselves with the basic techniques as printmaking is quite a laborious procedure, but with so much potential.  Not sure that it is my method at the moment, more to share from that another time too.

However the excitement of the week has been the first posting day for the Postman's Knock group.

Twelve of us who have blogging connections have entered a 'deal' to send a postcard every fortnight to one of the members of the group on their chosen them.  The first posting date was yesterday, so quite a lot of us received our first postcards this morning.  You can view them here.

My chosed  theme is Windows and here is my card from Penny

Perfectly conveying her Spanish theme.  I haven't heard whether mine has arrived at its destination yet.  fingers crossed that it arrives safely.

Do have a look at the other postcards, I feel I am in such talented company.

Jill

Another week

I have had a really busy week again, but I have manage to fit in an hour or two for practising my free machine embroidery skills. By drawing with my needle, I have stitched two butterflies.

I first painted them onto pelmet weight vilene using Koh-i-nor watercolours.  The top one here, based on a Peacock butterfly, I covered with a piece of 'shot' polyester organza to give it it some shimmer. I then machine stitched using a straight stitch varying the top and bottom threads, often tightening the top tension to bring up the bottom thread to break the colour.

Here I have scanned the two pieces.  I added a bit of hand stitching to the Peacock one.

This is the reverse side which is also quite nice, but the colour is less intense without the painted background.

Here I have photographed them with a packet of machine needles for scale.  Since taking the picture I have cut out the peacock one, using a fine soldering iron which has sealed the edge of the polyester organza.  I am experimenting with making it into a small book. 

 I'll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile I have done a few tasks in the garden, cutting the the grass always makes such a difference, even if nothing else is done.  I was pleased to see this frog in our little pond guarding her great pile of spawn.  As I was shooting into the sun I used the integral flash to add a little detail and sparkle to her eye.

I was also pleased with this shot of the water iris and its reflection, not looking quite real.

I seem to have yet another busy week coming up, but hopefully I'll manage to fit in a bit of creativity.  I think another week of sunshine is too much to hope for,  but a few more days of fine weather would go down well.

I hope you are having a great weekend, and have a good week.

This week I have...

As so many of you have been  so encouraging in my 'Teach Yourself Textiles" venture I thought I would keep you up to date.  However I am pooped.  Yesterday I helped Mr T spring clean the green house, which involved empying it out, scrubbing it down, and then refilling again.  Mr T did most of the initial work, but I was involved in driving off to Homebase for supplies,  the scrubbing part and putting everything back!  Today I have been switching our e mail address, contacting etsy, paypal, and so on, as well as friends and other contacts. It  has taken hours, so I have nearly had enough of comouters for today.  I did manage a short break hanging out our laundered gardening clothes from yesterday and a quick tidy up on one of the small flower beds. So this is what I have been doing textile wise this week.

On the left are a couple of pieces of couched threads from Pam Watts' book. catching the threads down with sheer fabric and then top stitching and on the right some experiments I did ironing plastic sweet wrappers between sheets of baking parchment - great fun!

These two pages record my last workshop session with Marian Murphy. We concentrated on free embroidery using a zig-zag stitch.  She showed us lots of effects and textures which can be achieved.  We also zig-zaged onto butter muslin which gives a drawn fabric.  This is great fun. The muslin must be stretched in a hoop first and a wide zig-zag is used to make a grid.  The stitch pulls the muslin threads together. You can then 'darn' over the squares giving them texture.  

We also zig-zagged over lengths of knitting cotton and other yarns to create cords,  Marian then showed us how we could join these to make braid and mesh.

Going back to the Kim Thittichai book 'experimental textiles' I took one of her design ideas and played around with it. The theme was Spirals.  I was rather taken with the shapes of spiral galaxies and anticyclone cloud formations. I also stitched a couple of samples

This is black voile on black felt machine stitched with a silver thread on the bobbin and a tight top tension to bring up the silver thread with beads added. 

This one is my favourite french knots on felt.

Not sure what I will do this week - rest?  But I'll let you know.

Have a good week,  and let us hope the news is more hopeful for all of those living through times of revolution and disaster.

Jill

Sketchbook analysis

Lesley at Printed Material has posted some of her sketch book pages as one of her friends has asked how people use theirs.  I have stacks of them as I always have a book by my chair and a few pens and pencils. So I picked half a dozen that were easily accessable - one dates back 15 years - and looked for common subjects running through out. 
Firstly a draw a lot of faces.  There are a lot of them, often done from the television. Occassionally I can even recognise a TV personality, here are a selection with a few close ups.

My favourite drawing tool is a waterproof 0.1 or 0.3 drawing pen.

Another common subject in all my books are cats.  Several of these are of Tess - cat before Marvin, she was a pretty little Siamese cross.

Here is Tess in Karisma colour pencils, sadly no longer available.

I am also fond of drawing flowers and often buy an inexpensive bunch to draw if there are none in the garden.

When you can't find any other subjects there are always body parts - your own hands and feet I mean.  They are always available!

When all else fails I just let my imagination run riot.

These drawing very rarely lead to anything ... but I'm sure they must say something about me.  Perhaps I am just at the bottom of a hole with all my art work trying to get out!

Jill

Stepping out

Thank you for being so supportive in my journey into new territory trying to develop my design skills. As many of you asked me to keep you informed of how I was doing, I thought I would share my first chapter.  Of course this could be just a new 'fad' too, but  hopefully I can keep coming back to the path even if I stray.  I have lots of vague ideas in my head for pieces of work, but I don't know how to 'realise' them, so I am hoping that a bit of formal skill acquisition will help me on my way.

Firstly I drew up a 'mind map' and wrote down all the things I could think of relating to design and specifically textiles. I did refer to a few internet sites and found Kim Thittichai's book 'Experimental textiles' useful. Clicking on the images should bring them up larger if you're interested.

Out of this exercise I decided the two main areas I need to develop are my ability to extrapolate a design out of my initial ideas and secondly, my ability to translate that design into something workable. For example I have lots of photographs that I think could become interesting textile pieces, but it is getting from the photograph to the textile that I need to develop. 

My workshop with Marian Murphy at Art Van Go has got me started. I have had two sessions so far and this has mainly been about techniques, but Marian does suggest design ideas as we go along.  Having been inspired by her books of designs I got myself an A3 and a A5 Pink Pig sketch book to keep my work in.  I especially like the cartridge paper that these books are made of as it will take a bit of punishment which my Art Journals give testimony to.

Here are my samples that I made during her class.

 Above, just playing with free stitching and tension with the use of a mirror tile to create a little symmetric motif ...

...and some much more exciting techniques we covered the second session, including reverse applique.

I also decided to go back to basics and in my A5 book did a few exercises with the colour wheel.  When I was doing water colours I purchased a set from Michael Wilcox who wrote a book entitled ' Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green' so it was fun to look at his theory again.  Of blue and yellow can make green, but he is talking about the fact that traditional water colour paints are not pure pigments and you get violet blues and orangey yellow and so on ... it was a good exercise to tune up my colour sensitivity.

Above is the free embroidery face I stitched after my first workshop. 

Marian told me how to stretch it over a piece of card so here it is with another page of a colour mixing exercise.

I am sure you are all familiar with the follow colour concepts...

...however triad harmonies, split complementaries and mutual complemetaries were new to me (Thanks to Kim Thittichai's book.

Below I have followed up one of Marian Murphy's techniques of stitching channel in a sheer fabric over a plain one and threading different coloured cords through the channels.

I am going to snip the channels and pull out loops of cord and embellish with some beads and stitching.

I think this could become a purse.

There are also lots of techniques to try out from 'Beginner's Guide to Machine Embroidery' by Pam Watts so I have probably got lots to keep me going for a week or two. I am hoping to go on a printing workshop run by my friend Sally, so I can use that opportunity to develop some designs rather than just going and having a ''play' ... it is all rather exciting.

I even managed a short walk with my new shoe orthotics today and heard a sky lark here, on Sharpenhoe Clappers (photographed here in December a few years ago)

Thank you all again for your lovely support, I really do appreciated your comments.