Textiles class round up – weeks 7 – 10

Oops, I haven’t been very good at updating everyone in what went on in Textiles class! I actually missed week 8 because I was on my hols on Mull, so there’s only 3 weeks to update really. I’ll combine it all into one because it was really just two projects.

Despite my previous lack of success I decided to shibori again. This time using a different technique where you stitch circles and then pull the threads tight before dyeing the fabric. I decided to dip dye the fabric two different colours, bright orange and bright pink. Not sure this one will be for me…

Once dried and undone it seems I didn’t pull all the threads tight enough, but quite a few worked nicely.  I had decided on a tropical, hummingbird theme so I drew a quick hummingbird and cut out a couple of stencils. Pretty amazed how well the drawing turned out actually! Becky our tutor mixed up an amazing dark green dye for me to screen print with.

I was inspired by these Ruby throated hummingbirds, but obviously had to go a bit more basic on details for screen printing so missed out the white bits.

Photo ATRPhoto, flickr creative commons

I did still have some pink foil left over though so I used the special glue and the heat press to add this for their throats.

Here it is all finished! I actually quite like the raw edges, it could be a scarf, or a wall hanging… And I think I know someone who would like it!

The last piece I made was another bit of dyed fabric. It was twisted into a rope and then tightly wound around something – a broom handle would be ideal but we used a bit of card covered in brown tape! Then stripes of dye are painted thickly on and allowed to soak through. I used colours inspired by the beach we explored on Mull. Then it us left to dry before being unwound. The results were pretty stunning. I did rinse it and there was a lot of fading but it is still gorgeous! Not sure what to do with this yet.

Acorns and stitches – Textiles week 6

I think I enjoyed my homework from Textiles class a bit too much… I had to make myself an acorn stamp to add the acorns to my falling oak leaf cushion from weeks 4 and 5.  The stamp was super simple to make – I just drew the acorn, used a scalpel to prick through onto some sticky backed foam and then joined the dots to cut it out.  The foam was pretty thin so I did three and stuck them one on top of the other onto a wooden block.  Then using my special “don’t mix the paint properly” technique I used a brush to add the paint to the foam and stamped away!

I think I got a little carried away at this point…

There’s not much left to do on it now, I might add some foil to a few of the acorns, and I’m thinking about embroidering some leaf veins on a few of the leaves.  Handily, week 6 was all about learning some embroidery stitches – I think you can tell I’ve never done it before:

 

I’ll have to get a bit better though because I’m planning that my next project will involve some embroidery… You can see what crazy ideas I’m having at my Pinterest board!

 

Printed Project – Textiles weeks 4 and 5

I think I mentioned last time that I needed to come up with a project for the mid point of the textiles class.  I ummed and aahed about what to print on my cushion cover, mainly thinking that if I went for oak leaves and acorns it would be a bit obvious.  As many of you know oak trees are a real thing in our household – we even party chose your our wedding venue because there was a 600 year old oak tree in the grounds.

But, due to a lack of other sensible ideas, I did go for the falling oak leaf design.  I spent all of last week cutting a monster stencil, and only got one layer printed right at the end.  I decided that I was going for autumnal tones so I kind of didn’t mix my inks properly to get a variable colour. I was pretty pleased with it.

This week, I reused the now dry monster stencil and off set it so that the leaves were in different place.  I also used the left over ink from last week and added some brown and pink, again not mixing properly.  I reckon adding to the previous ink makes sure it tones well, a good trick if you aren’t good at colour matching!

Then I cut a couple more single leaves so I could add them on in random places.  Everyone was very keen on me leaving it at one point because it looked like the Green Man! That wasn’t the look I was after so I kept printing.

Just a bit more work to do now, I am planning on adding some acorns so I need to make an acorn stamp….

Screen printing – textiles week 3

I feel I am somewhat lacking in inspiration at the moment.  It probably comes from doing two six day weeks on the trot at work, I’m not cut out for it.  On arriving in the textiles studio last week we were told we needed to come up with a quick stencil design to practice screen printing with.  My first attempt went in the bin, the tutors suggested a random pattern design, but I prefer representational designs…. In the end I just ripped a few bits of paper to represent the sea (and I even got that idea from tutor Aeron) and shoved in a little seagull with my craft knife at the top.  This is then taped to the screen, turned over, the fabric goes underneath and you add ink to the top and squeegee it down over the stencil.

My stencil

I was pretty pleased with how it turned out actually.

I have a great view don’t I?

Once these were printed and drying we experimented with adding foil and flocking to our projects.  You make a stencil, brush over some special glue and put a piece of foil face up or a piece of flocking face down onto it.  Then it goes into the scary heat press. Three of us watched it nervously… Once cool, peel off the backing and voila! Again I couldn’t just go for random shapes:

Foil and flocking

We only got the pink foil to practice with, but I love the effect – I need to find a way to add it into my mid-point project.  The glue smudged on the flocking, so my bat is a bit muddy looking.  I don’t really like it much. Quickly, before we had to tidy up, I decided to add a sun to my sea scene. I LOVE how it turned out.

The sun is pink…

Now I just have to think of a design to do for my mid point project which we are starting next week.  I know I want to use screen printing, and foil, but I don’t know what to do – there are too many ideas swirling around my head.  Today is my first day off for a while, so I need to get deciding, and maybe even start cutting out my stencil.

 

 

 

That’s Shibori – Textiles week 2

This week we were trying out the Japanese dyeing technique of Shibori.  Our tutor Aeron warned us that it was quite a tricky technique but showed us two ways to try it.  You can either pinch pieces of fabric up and sew tightly around them or you can fold the fabric in a concertina and then sew pieces through it.  The idea is that these stitched parts will remain undyed.  When the stitching is done you can dye the fabric.  I tried out submerging it fully and dipping is different colours.

Shibori in progress

All that I needed to do was to wait for it to dry and then unpick the stitches… These are in the same order as the ones above so you can see how they turned out.

Unpicked, unfolded and ironed

One of the folded ones (bottom right) really didn’t work at all.  The other looks good towards the bottom but not enough dye got into the folds higher up in my opinion.  The “pinched” ones worked better, particularly the pink one.  The navy one had a plan to middle of it – ignore the random dots down the right hand side, inspired by the night sky. If you can guess which constellation it is please comment below!

Guess the constellation!

If you want to see what can be done by people that actually have some skill in this look here.

We are all thinking about what we might make as a finsihed piece at the mid point of the class.  Somehow I don’t think I’ll be using shibori, but it was fun to try.

 

 

 

String printing – textiles week 1

So, I battled the world’s worst cold (who has a cold for a week? Honestly?) to get to my Textiles class and I am so glad I did.  There are 12 of us, all ladies, and it was mega exciting to be in a proper studio!  I will try and sneak a picture one week.  To get started our tutor Erin showed us a super simple printing technique.  We wrapped some wool around a wooden block and wiggled the strings about a bit to make a pattern.  Then we used leftover ink from the “proper” students to print with.  We practiced on paper but next week we’ll be on the fabric.  We used Dylon dyes and some other thicker pigment dyes.  It was amazing to see all the different patterns, colour combinations and ideas from one simple idea when used by 12 different people.

My first ones looked like a crazy pink zebra.  I also made some patterns and most excitingly, we covered a couple of pieces in Dylon dye and then dipped the block in bleach to print – can you believe the amazing green colour that came out on the brown page? I think the last one looks like a migraine on a page but the tutor quite liked it…

L-R – Top row: 1 Dylon dyes and bleach printing,2-4 printing with Dylon dyes

L-R – Second row: 1 Dylon dyes and bleach printing, 2-4 printing with pigment dyes.

My favourites! I think I will be using these colours again. These are currently livening up the wall of the Han Cave and I am looking forward to next week already.

Back to School

I am so excited, because I am going back to school – sort of. Back in September I signed up for a 10 week textiles evening class at our local college, but not enough people wanted to go so it got cancelled. I was disappointed but last week they called to say they had enough people on the list so class will be starting on Tuesday!

I was one of those children who loved school because I just liked learning new stuff, I was quite academic so didn’t really get much out of creative classes. Not that we had many, we did art of course but because I couldn’t draw, paint or sculpt I thought it wasn’t for me. In the last six years I have realised I am a creative person and I’m not afraid of trying new things. After all learning to sew or knit is only following instructions isn’t it? What’s the worst that can happen?

The course is going to cover lots of things I haven’t done before like dyeing and embroidery so I hope these will add really nicely to the things I already do. It will be nice to meet other people who are into these things too. Of course I’ll be sharing all the experiments here too, so watch this space!

Dinosaur fun!

I have been having a lot of fun at work this morning (on my lunch break right now!) using mod rock! I’d never used this before, not being arty, but discovered some in the back of a cupboard during a clear out.  My colleagues developed a Dinosaur themed birthday party for the reserve that ends with a dino dig for the children, so we thought we’d add to our props by making some big old bones….