Tray dyeing

Tray dyeing, every time I say it I think of tray baking! Despite being in a bit of a funk at the moment (no idea why, I just can't seem to shake off this heavy, sad feeling) I have been doing one or two workshops down at my local sewing shop. On Monday I started a 6 week course called "Fabric Frolics" which will explore various ways of applying and removing colour to/from fabric.

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The first session covered tray dyeing and monoprinting. Unfortunately I didn't get to take any pics during the workshop but basically we prepared our dyes (3 different colours), soaked the fabric (cotton sheeting) in a solution of washing soda and then pleated the material and laid it into a shallow plastic tray, folding in the ends. (Next time I do it I'll post some photos) The dye was then trickled over the fabric as we pleased. After the dye was poured on we waited half an hour and then poured over a salt solution so that the fabric was sitting in it but not covered. As with the last time I did the dyeing we tok the fabric home to rinse, wash dry and iron.

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This is the result before it was ironed. You can see quite clearly where the fabric was pleated and how that has affected the distribution of the dye.

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Some areas did not take up any dye at all.

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There are some wonderful textures in some parts of the cloth. Now, of course I have about 2 metres of dyed cotton that I have to find a use for. My DH thinks it will make a good skirt. He may well be right but I'm not much of a skirt maker. I think it's more likely to sit in my stash for me to enjoy for a while. Maybe I'll overdye some of it?

Monoprinting

The second part of the workshop was monoprinting and stamping fabric. We mixed Procion Dye solutions with an alginate which is a seaweed derivitive (the water used to mix the dye contained urea to help the dyes stay workable for longer). We then smeared the dye compound onto a plastic sheet, made marks in any way we chose, placed the fabric down onto the dye and gently rubbe over the fabric with the back of the hand so that it picked up the pattern and gently pulled it away.

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This is oneof the last pieces I did and I simply drew into the dye medium.

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For the piece above I simply patted onto the dye to make a suction pattern and then made hand prints into it. I don't think the handprints show up very well.

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This piece was made by stamping into the dye medium with a rubber stamp to give the white areas. As with the other pieces this was done 4 times and the fabric was turned each time so that the whole piece became printed.

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Finally, this is the piece of fabric that I wiped my hands on and cleaned the stamps with.

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All of these pieces are shown before I washed the excess dye out which I did this afternoon. There is not, in fact, much difference in the final finish.

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I have been very lax with blogging just lately but I have been keeping up with visiting everyone else. I can't promise to be blogging too mcuh for the next few weeks but hopefully after that I'll get back into my stride, and then the "C" word will come along! Aaaaagh!

Take it Further Challenge September

The subject for the September TIF challenge was 'lists'. As you will see from the photo below I am a great list maker! I make shopping lists, which I either lose or leave at home; lists of which present came from who, if I can read the label before my DH throws all the wrappings out; to do lists, which I then forget to consult as I dash from one creative moment to another; exciting lists of things to buy at exhibitions, people whose work I don't want to miss, and then do because I've got toally distracted by all the other wonderful things on offer! Then there's the lists I make when my brain doesn't want to work for me, the lists that remind me to do the absolutely vital and carry forward the less vital to the next day.
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How to translate 'lists' into a piece of textile work? I started by scanning a selection of lists into Photoshop and then isolated just one list.

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The next step was to play around with some of the filters. Unfortunately I didn't write down which I used but I think they included cutout and spatter. While I was thinking about maybe printing this onto fabric and embellishing I was thinking about fabric with lines in it and remembered I had some rusted fabric that I had dyed.

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These lines were actually on the diagonal on the fabric as the cotton had been wrapped around hacksaw blades. This piece of fabric will give me 4 ATCs.

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So, here we have the first ATC on a theme of lists. I have used some of the annealed tin that Anna gave me last year and I've sewn on some fancy trim and yarn. the colours are slightly stronger in reality - slightly more orange. Hopefully I will get the other 3 ATCs made. I have already done some machine embroidery on one but it needs some beads added.

Holiday!

The picture above says it all. This is the window of a lovely bright gift shop on Fore Street in St Ives. I hope they don't mind me posting its pic here but it looked so lovely and fresh on a drizzly day. We had a mixture of average and lovely weather in true British fashion but nothing that stopped us enjoying our time in beautiful Cornwall.

This is the view from one of the windows in the bathroom! There's something about the atmosphere that reminds me of something but I can't put my finger on what . The view looks out towards Godrevy Lighthouse which my poor compact camera can't pick up.

I didn't get chance to get acquainted with these guys but they looked very happy in a cottage window watching the world go by.

Every time we go to Cornwall I can't wait to get onto the beach for some beachcombing. This is my hoard this year. I collected quite a few shells with holes in for stitching onto works in the future and tried to only take small pieces of pot with attractive marks on. Funnily enough we went over to the Scilly Isles on a day trip, a distance of 28 miles from Cornwall, and found identical pieces of pot on the beach there. So where had they come from? I have collected quite a lot of beach glass and I am getting tempted to get a tumbler or polisher to restore the shine they have when they're wet.

September Festival

We went down to St Ives for their September Festival which is 2 weeks of art, music, poetry and performance and we enjoyed some great music both around the town and in the theatre.
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Our first day saw these shanty singers entertaining outside the Sloop Inn, a very old and famous ale house in St Ives. The group were called Falmouth Shout which probably gives a clue to their home town.

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These (mostly) ladies calling themselves Samba Celtica were having a rare old time making as much noise as they could with percussion instruments - tunefully, of course.

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Saturday evening saw us in the local Guildhall Theatre watching the Bootleg Beatles, a Beatles tribute band. The place was packed and jumping! St Ives certainly knows how to party. We were all on our feet dancing and singing Beatles tracks at the tops of our voices!

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Every day throughout the fortnight there was a folk and poetry performance at lunchtime outside the Mariners Gallery. We managed to catch a couple and it was a novel way to enjoy some folk music.

Inspiration!

We went to the Isles of Scilly

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and found this ready made title on the beach! We had the perfect day for it and a flat calm sea for the ferry trip across. We were lucky enough to see several basking sharks coming quite close to the ship. I went armed with seasick pills as the boat has a reputation but didn't need them.
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You might know my DH would find a quirky shot!

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We had our coats on because it had been chilly, not to say freezing, on the boat! We soon warmed up in the glorious warm sunshine.

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Isn't this a beautiful and inspiring view across the bay? The sand really is that white (apart from the excess of seaweed washed up by the tide). I have been working with this photograph in Photoshop and hope it will inspire me into making a wall hanging to incorporate some of my beach finds.

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These beautiful Agapanthus are everywhere on Scilly and are grown commercially in fields. The climate is so mild that many sub-tropical species thrive. As you can see we had arrived too late to enjoy the blue of the flowers but the seed heads are very sculptural. We took a walk around the bay on St Mary's Island to a restaurant called Juliet's Garden and enjoyed a leisurely lunch looking out over the bay and the beautiful blue waters. I had a really spooky feeling of deja vu sitting in this terraced garden - very strange.

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We had to walk back to the quay in the distance! Phew! (Not quite as far as it looks). All in all we had four and a half hours on St Mary's and it was delightful, so peaceful!

What if? and webs

Remember this?

I didn't do a lot on holiday but I did do this

(excuse the colour change, I've tweaked it a bit). Hopefully the photo will enlarge enough for you to see what I have done with this crazy patch so far. My DH thinks it is finished but I feel it needs a little more stitchwork on it. So far I have ironed it onto vilene and I am going to couch yarns around the edge, echoing the colours I have used, to finish it off as I didn't leave enough to turn an edge (Duh!).

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I've been a bit quiet as you may have noticed since we came home. The usual routine and catching up on the net has been the cause and I've also been feeling a bit low. Nothing I can put my finger on and I'm sure it'll pass.

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My mood was lifted this morning though when I went to my art club. I don't normally like spiders, although I won't kill one if I can help it, but I do like to see cobwebs strung along a hedge glistening with dew.

This is just part of a hedge which as you can see was smothered in webs which were sparkling as the sun was breaking through the mist. Beautiful!

Happy Birthday Kid Brother! (Belated - blame Blogger)

This post should have gone up while I was away on 15th but I did something wrong and Blogger didn't get the message! Doh! Sorry bro but I couldn't resist!

He's going to kill me when he sees this but, Happy Birthday, Dave! As you can see there's not much of an age gap between my brother and me, just over a year. We used to fight like cat and dog as kids (as siblings do) and then he had to put up with me trailing along with him and his mates when they were trying to play snooker at home or go for a swim at the beach. Anyway, this little boy retires from the RAF this week after 40 years' (give or take a few months) service man and boy, or should that be boy and man?! He has been mentioned in despatches and received a Medal for Meritorious Service this year for his services to the RAF. My brother, and I love him to bits! Happy Birthday Dave! Hope it's a good one.

There will now be an Intermission..........

I will be noticeable by my absence for a while. The clue is in the photograph!

There will be some of this (below)

And some of this:-

And lots of this to look for :-

With any luck we may get some sunshine!

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See you in a couple of weeks :o))

I've been Schmapped!

If you look here you will see that my photo of Strasbourg Cathedral doors has been included in the latest internet tourist guide published by Flickr Schmap! I was told I was shortlisted a few weeks ago and did a little research to check out the validity of this site. Happily, as I am not in the business of making money from my photos and only take them for personal reasons, this is a bona fide site which shares flickr photos online and I am delighted that one of my photographs has been selected. Yay!

Blog Awards

What a lovely surprise! The lovely and talented Jean who blogs as Genie's Art World and also Genie's Photos has given me not one, but two awards! I am delighted and humbled to receive these awards, especially as they are both very sweet.

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I have to admit I am a bad blogger for not passing these awards on. I read so many wonderful and stimulating blogs, many of which are in my side bar. As I'm still under the weather I am going to say, if I visit your blog and leave a comment please accept this award from me and post it on your own blog. And Jean, thank you very much for these lovely awards. I hope you are feeling better today.

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Jude Hill who blogs as Spirit Cloth has a second blog called "What if..." . Just recently she has posed the question "what if we get crazy?" Her question, of course, relates to crazy quilting and how we may choose to work other than traditionally. Since I have already set up a piece of crazy quilting that has no rules other than the initial colour I have signed up to play along with her and many others to produce a piece, or pieces, of crazy quilting (or not quilted!). There is no time limit to this (just right for me) and absolutely no rules and Jude has offered to make a piece of crazy quilting for each participant. You won't be surprised that my first piece is the crazy quilting block I have started for the Take it Further challenge. While it will be worked with balance in mind I am sure that all the while I am working I will be asking myself "What if..." Hopefully over the next couple of weeks I will have plenty of progress to show. Just in case Jude looks in here this is a reminder of the piece I am working on....

All of the fabrics have been laid down with raw edges and were chosen simply because I liked them or to provide a foil to the pieces I liked. I did not worry about the size or the shape of the pieces, I just worked with what I had. I'm really looking forward to working on this. It's about 8 inches square. As usual I haven't given a thought to how I will finish it off. I'm sure "What if.." will play a part!

TAST

Please excuse me if I'm a bit terse today but I am not feeling too well and I'm not sure whether it's my usual problem or whether I've picked up a virus. Either way I had a couple of fainty turns yesterday and I feel washed out today so I shall be brief.

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I haven't a lot to show in the way of craftyness but I have been trying to catch up on my Take a Stitch stitches over on Stitching Fingers. The latest three are shown below and are pretty much self-explanatory. I bought the base cloth in a charity (op) shop a couple of weeks ago and thought its open weave would be ideal for doing these stitches on. Unfortunately it's a bit of a bright colour and doesn't photograph too well, it doesn't go with many colour either........

I really like featherstitch and I'm sure there are lots of other variations I could use.

I didn't know fly stitch at all before this exercise but I can see it has lots of possibilities. There is a lot more yellow in the original colours of these threads, blame my laptop.

I know I could exploit this stitch much more but I was tired when I did it so more work required.

I have been given 2 blog awards but I will post them later as I am off for a little snooze zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Ooh! I just have to say, thank goodness Gustav was bad enough but not the terrible disaster everyone was dreading. My thoughts are with all those who now have to deal with its aftermath.