Monday 29 July 2013

Lago Maggiore - complete and delivered.

I'm pleased to say that I have finished my quilt and have delivered it to Twisted Thread. I learnt a lot making this quilt, both in creating the top cloth and also in the finishing of the quilt. The quilt is all machine stitched, which is unusual for me.
 

If you are visiting Festival of Quilts at the NEC this year, which is on from the 8th-11th August, then look out for my quilt in the Contemporary Quilt category. I'm going on the Saturday, maybe see you there?

Monday 22 July 2013

Art, food and good company - a very nice day!

On Saturday, I went to Gina's open studio and it was great to see her work and the studio where all the creativity happens. I need/want a studio!  Here is Gina at her table of goodies and there was lots of lovely textile art on the walls which is out of shot. The pile of goodies building on the right hand side of the table is mine - I couldn't resist. Gina is 'open' next weekend too if you missed this one.


I was pleased to find that Anna Pye also had opened her studio just down the road and I came away from there with some cards, some inspiration for my landscape work and more studio envy. 

Another bonus was seeing the lovely landscapes around. I stopped the car a couple of times and took some photos that I hope will inspire some future work.


 
On my way to Gina's I called at Boots, looking to replace my favourite nail varnish, which doesn't seem to be produced anymore. When I saw the name of this one, I knew it was for me!
 
In Stitches nail varnish
 The day ended with very enjoyable al fresco meal with friends. A very nice day.

Thursday 18 July 2013

Breakdown Printing

Last weekend I did some breakdown printing. I didn't spend too much time creating the screen as, quite frankly, I had higher textiling priorities but I couldn't resist the opportunity to create a screen, for the screen to dry and be ready to print with all in the same day (gosh it's been warm!)


I printed on fabric which is a mixture of silk and cotton and has a nice drape. I quite fancy making an item of clothing with it but doubt that I have enough for a dress. Maybe I could make a top with some floppy sleeves?
 

If When, I make something I'll be back to show you!

PS You may have noticed that I have added buttons at the side of my blog to make it easier to follow me on Bloglovin' and Feedly. If you used Google Reader before, what have you replaced it with? I've just set myself up on both of these to see which I prefer.... I can't decide which one at the moment. Indecisive? Me?



Saturday 13 July 2013

Now you see it, now you don't. Discharging experiments.

In a previous post I mentioned that I had put a piece of my cloth in discharge solution to remove as much dye as possible and Wendy asked how I made the discharge solution. I was only able to give a brief answer at the time but promised a fuller answer in a forth coming blog post and here it is....the results of a couple of experiments.

I started with this piece of cloth which had several layers of dye and the piece was quite dark.

 
I cut of strip of fabric, folded it horizontally and then concertinered the fabric and clamped the square of perspex on it.
 
 
I left it in a Thiox (also call Spectralite) solution for only a couple of minutes and this was the result.


The shibori technique always creates different effects depending on where the fabric is in relation to the resist and the liquid solution. However, I may have got more even results if I had left it in the solution longer.

 
In another experiment I screwed up some of the fabric into a ball and held it together with elastic bands.
 
 
This time I left it in for about an hour and it is surprising just how much of the original colours and patterns are preserved. The thin lines of colour are where the elastic band created a resist. Is it just me or can anyone else see flowers in the piece?
 
 
My final experiment was to place a lose piece of the fabric in the discharge solution. In fact I did it twice leaving it in for 2-3 hours but it didn't seem to make much difference the second time around. It seems that once it's done it's stuff, it's done it's stuff.

 
 
You can actually see the original layers of print before the grids were added. Then there was the experiment with the commercial black fabric.
 
 
 
 Again, the crispness of the square varied depending on where the fabric was in the pile.


 
I think I might have got a better result if I had left it in longer or maybe had more fabric in the clamp, which would have caused the fabric to be more tightly clamped.

If you would like to experiment with this method of shibori or like me, you are looking to remove your mistakes then you can get Thiox (also called Spectralite) from George Weil. I used 2 tsps of Thiox, 2tsps of soda ash and enough steaming hot water to cover the fabric.

Given the darkness of both fabrics it did a good job of removing the colour. The effectiveness of the discharge does seem to depend on the colour and depth of colour on the original fabric. In my lake piece there were large areas that discharged completely back to white but other areas were left a mustardy yellow. If you try this out, I hope that you get some interesting results.