Fabric Printing - Gridlock II

I have finally finished 'Gridlock II' - just need to add the hanging device. It measures roughly 80 X 90 cm and at first glance it's not obvious that there is any stitching.

 

 

 

But as you can see from the detailed photographs  that I have done quite a bit of stitching.

 

I like the overall effect and it has inspired me to work in a similar manner on my purple gridy piece. I plan to discharge a strip of the fabric and stitch on it but this time I would graduate the colours of my thread so they were darker in colour at the bottom and lighter in colour at the top, which would echo the gradation in colour in the dyed fabric. Watch out for Gridlock III!

Printed skirt

Just to prove it wasn't a one-off when I made the cushions, I have used my printed printed fabric to make something else useful and this time I made a skirt from this KWIK SEW Pattern.

Each summer I get skirt envy when I see people in pretty floral skirts but whenever I try them on they never seem to look quite right on me. So I thought I would make a skirt with a more geometric design to see if this would be more 'me'. It's a wrap around skirt and I used the same techniques as I used for my Gridlock  piece except I over printed with turquoise grids. To create the contrast edge around the skirt, I overprinted the edging fabric with solid turquoise. However, as you can see from the photograph the contrast between the fabrics is small. So much so that I'm wondering whether I should over dye the whole skirt with turquoise.

If you were thinking that it's a bit late to be making a summer skirt, you'd be wrong, rather I'm ahead of schedule for next year! Still not sure whether a patterned skirt is me but maybe I just need time to get used to it. 

Different ways of working

I was looking forward to the Olympics coming to London but I have enjoyed it even more than I thought I would. I have never watched so much television. As I work in London, I was dreading the impact on the transport system but fortunately the problems didn't materialise. The Olympics may not have delayed my trains but they have delayed this post!

Here is another of my gridy pieces - still work in progress.

You may have seen in a previous post that I had printed with white screen inks and then dyed the cloth green. I tried to discharge the cloth but it had very little impact. There were sections of the cloth that were quite interesting and others that were a little ropey. I didn't have much to lose so decided to over print the cloth with more grids.

By chance I came across some notes on how to mix aubergine and thought that colour could work well with the light green cloth. I started with darker colour at the bottom of the cloth and lightened the dye paste as I worked up the cloth. The aubergine began to look quite pink near the top.

Here is a close-up of some of the darker areas and it's surprising how adding the darker colour has highlighted the earlier screen ink printing.  

Here is a close-up of the lighter areas. I really like the how you can see the layers of printing coming through.

When I go back to printing in September, I think I will try and make the very bottom of the piece darker still and I quite like the idea of introducing some gold too. But we'll see.

I plan to work on these gridy pieces until they are complete ....whatever that means....but not to start on any new gridy pieces. It has been a bit of an experiment to work this way. My usual method of working is to have a goal, a picture in mind of what I want to achieve and to work back from that. Obviously this requires a clear picture in the first place and it can be frustrating when you don't have one. With this method of working I have printed and responded to the results. This brings it's own challenges, of course. If you don't have a vision of what you are trying to achieve then how do you know what to do next? On the other hand you can't be disappointed that it doesn't meet your vision.

I'm sure that both methods of working have their merits and I feel that I have benefited from working outside my comfort zone. Perhaps in the future I could incorporate both into a piece? I certainly feel I am more likely to now. How do you work?

Taking Textiles Further May 12

I recently attended the 'Taking textiles Further' weekend, which is tutored by Janet Edmonds. It was the 3rd and final weekend on grids and also of the academic year. The weekend's theme was 3D.   

One of our starting points was to use the paper grids from our previous weekend. I had a particularly large grid which I threaded with some of my gridy fabric to secure into a 3D structure. The aim isn't to create a finished piece but rather to explore design ideas. It may inspire a 3D piece but equally a drawing from the 3D piece which could inspire a 2D design. 

The aim with this second piece (below) was to create a gridy piece held together with wire, which could be manipulated into a 3D piece. I wasn't sure where this was going. You may be able to see fragments of paper grid at the bottom of the piece and my learning point is to be more daring....try putting things together to see what happens. What have I got to lose? Who knows what ideas might come from it?

I manipulated the piece into a 3D form a drew a section of it. The drawing below was drawn with a 2B and 4B pencil wound together.  

A more conventional drawing method here but how else would I have come up with these shapes? 

I think that one of these pencil drawings could be a starting point for the next stage of my gridy cloth. More food for thought.

Developing the gridy cloth

In my last post I showed the early stages of development of my gridy cloth. I wanted to treat the two sections of the cloth differently and to over print on the front of one section and the back of the other. So I cut the cloth in two.... On the first and larger piece, I used my larger grid to print on the back of the cloth. This is the cloth after the printing was completed. The difference it made on the other side of the cloth was minimal.

Overall I think this is an improvement and if the cloth was more soft and drapey I would be tempted to make a simple top. As it is, I'm not sure what I'll do with it but ideally it will turn into something I will be inspired to stitch. I might try discharging a section of it and then stitch on the discharged section. Before I do take the discharge paste to the piece I plan to experiment with different strengths of discharge paste  and I have dyed some cloth in preparation.

On the second and smaller piece I over printed with the larger gridy thermofax on the front on the fabric. Again I think that has improved the piece but it definitely needs something added on top. I'm not sure what yet. All of this makes me question why I do the printing. What do I hope to achieve?

In reality I probably won't be do anything else to these pieces until I am back at Committed to Cloth in July. That should give me plenty of time to refine my ideas or perhaps to forget about it entirely. We'll see which one it is.

At the end of a printing session, I like to use up any spare dye paste on odd bits of cloth. I don't usually put much thought into how I use it and often over print on pieces that I am less than pleased with. I created one on my favourite pieces of cloth this way. 

This printing session was no exception and I'd already overprinted the cloth a couple of times previously and then I printed with my large gridy thermofax on top.  I can't remember whether I was in a hurry or whether I was being rebellious but I didn't pin the cloth down prior to printing and it resulted in a broken image.

 

I'm still trying to decide whether this has resulted in a mess or something that has potential.  Probably a mess but nothing's lost as it's cloth I wasn't fond of and dye paste I didn't need.

One piece of fabric - different outcomes

Using a large piece of fabric and one of my paper designs as inspiration I set about printing with my gridy thermofax. I created a number of layers of colour in the hope of creating 'complex' cloth.  It didn't quite turn out as I imagined but then working with paper and acrylics is different to working with fabric and dyes. I am (slowly) training myself to think of my inspiration or design as a starting point rather than something that can and should be replicated.

I go to the Committed to Cloth studio 8 or 9 times a year. They have a wonderful studio and it is always good to get advice and guidance from Lesley Morgan and Claire Benn. I also really value the input and inspiration I get from the others in the group. Here is Lesley with my gridy piece, my paper inspiration and the back of another piece of cloth. 

I received two very useful pieces of feedback from the group. Firstly, it was all the same scale and it could benefit from introducing a different scale. Secondly, the size of the paper is very different to the size of the cloth paper and yet the grids were roughly the same size. No wonder the effect was different! Pinning up your work, stepping back and getting feedback from others is hugely beneficial.

I decided to cut off a section of the fabric to see what would happen if I over printed the piece with discharge paste and I quite liked the outcome on the sample.

So I set about printing with discharge paste and at the same time changing the scale. I tore up paper to use as a mask on my screen and to create new grids. I discharged one side of the fabric more than the other to give the piece some 'structure'. Or at least that was the idea.

The piece looks better in the photograph than in reality and the left hand side looked was too discharged and similar in colour. I just hadn't achieved the variation of colour I had on the sample. But I've learnt from this and I know what I would do differently next time. Here is what the back looked liked, which from a distance looked better but it was very definitely the back and would need more work if I was going to use this side.

Although the torn paper stencil had worked, I wished that I had used the same grid but increased the scale. I think one of the reasons that I liked the back was that the torn paper design wasn't quite so noticeable.

As I hadn't (yet!) created the masterpiece I was hoping for, it gave me the freedom to do something more drastic and I cut the piece in two and gave each piece a separate treatment. More on that in the another post.

Working with Grids

At the end of  a previous post is the image I used to create a gridy thermofax screen and I thought I'd use this post to show you the results of some of my experiments with it. 

I used the thermofax to print sheer screen inks onto white cotton. Never easy to see nor easy to photograph but hopefully you get the idea. 



This was quite a small piece of cloth which I scrumpled up into a little pot and poured on yellow and blue procion dye. I wanted to see how the dye would react with the screen inks.

As you can see the grids are still visible and the cloth has quite a high proportion of green where the yellow and blue dye mixed. The dye created a transparent layer of colour on top of the grids and I guess the degree of crumpling determined the extent to which the grids were coloured. There was no trace of the grids on the back of the cloth at all.

I also took a larger piece of fabric and scraped green dye paste on the top with an old credit card. It is more of an appley green than the picture suggests and is just work in progress. What will happen if I over print and then discharge? What would happen if I used more opaque inks? What would happen if I used coloured screen inks? So many ideas, so little time.

I also used the screen to print with discharge paste onto a ropey piece of fabric that had seen the tail end of all sorts of dye. Although it's not going to win any prizes for dyeing, the technique does show some potential, I think.

I have also been printing on some larger pieces of cloth, trying to create interesting cloth which I could potentially stitch into. There's still lots of work to do on that and I'll share some of those with you in another post.

Whispers 2 - Round 1

Those of you have read my previous posts will know that I was part of the Chinese Whispers Group and in February we held an exhibition of our work. We have have now started the second 'round' of Chinese Whispers but in a slightly different format to the first one.

As before we are all creating our first piece of work based on any theme and using any technique, only this time the original pieces will be larger. Another difference is that we are going to show each other our first pieces with only the subsequent pieces being kept secret and in fact we have already shown each other our work-in-progress. Except for Sue who has shown her finished piece!  The other 4 members of the group will create a piece of work inspired by the original larger pieces. These 'inspired-by' pieces will be roughly 1/4 of the size of the original pieces. My first piece (above) is/will be 26X40 inches and so the other members of the group will create a piece which is  40 X 61/2 inches portrait, which I think is a challenging size but  I don't need to worry as I don't need to do this one!

The photograph above shows work-in-progress, with pin heads visible if you look closely. Here is a close-up of a section of the piece before very much stitching has been done.

I have used the grid thermofax that I mentioned in my previous post to create my piece. I started with black fabric and used discharge paste to remove the colour to a greater or lesser extent. I over dyed a small strip of fabric with rust orange and created a horizon line and layered the fabric adding wadding and a backing cloth and added additional detail with stitch.

My initial plan was to add the seeding stitches to the biggest black areas but I have now decided that it would be better to have the seeding stitches in all the black areas. Let me just remind you that this piece is 40 X 26 inches....that's a lot of stitching but it has to be done. I know that I won't be happy unless I sew all the black sections. The deadline is the end of the May!  The thought of all the stitching still to do, fills me with dread. Strange really as I enjoy handstitching, so isn't it a good thing that there's lots more to do?  

Tomorrow I am off to see the 62 Group exhibition at  the Gallery of Costume, Platt Hall in Manchester with my good friend Helen. I'm looking forward to a catch-up, the exhibition and looking around the museum which I think will be interesting in it's own right. No prizes for guessing what my next post will be about.

Taking Textiles Further Feb 12

My City & Guilds courses were tutored by Janet Edmonds and I completed the Diploma in the summer of 2011. In order to continue developing my design skills, I signed up for Janet's 'Taking Textiles Further' course at Missenden Abbey.

In the February class we created grids by wrapping threads around frames and dipping these into paper pulp. Once the paper pulp was dry, we sprayed ink through these and other grids.

I must admit that I wasn't looking forward to the spraying as I'd tried it before and hadn't enjoyed it but this time I liked the results. All my spraying was done using only 2 colours, black brusho and a copper acrylic spray and I was really pleased at how many colour variants this produced and using only two spray bottles certainly made it a simpler process

As well as the sprayed paper, I also liked some of the paper grids I had created and I think that these could offer possibilities for inspiring a piece of textile work but more more thought required about that.

These were my favourite pieces of sprayed paper and I like the inclusion of the 'tube'. Perhaps this could be included in a piece of work?

We also combined papers together and drew sections of them in charcoal. Here's a partial view of my charcoal drawing:

I wanted to create a simple thermofax that I could use for printing on cloth, so I used black ink to spray through the grid (no over spraying). I selected a portion of the image to create my thermofax which looked something like this:

I think that this thermofax is going to be one of the most useful that I have created so far and because I am  still trying to get my blog posts to catch-up with my work - I can tell that I have already used it on a number of pieces of cloth but more on that in other posts....