WEFT exhibition

I've been having a bit of a textiley time recently. I treated myself to a trip to the spring knitting and stitching show at Olympia last weekend, from which I returned with some fabric and stitch treasures - organza, silk, threads - you know what happens when temptation strikes. Then today, because it was the penultimate day, I went to the World Eco Fibre Textile show at the Brunei Gallery. It was quite marvelous, with textiles of all sorts to thrill and inspire; so much in fact, that I don't know what to include and what to leave out! I made the mistake of not photographing the little information board for each of the pieces I took pictures of, and only had my mobile phone so the quality isn't that great, but here are some highlights. I've included links where I can so you can follow up the artists if you're interested to do so.

There were some wonderful silk embroideries from Suzhou, and three delightful "embroidery ladies" who were showing the way these astonishing embroidered picture were created. The silk thread that is used for the stitching is so fine that it looks like spiders web and they use it to stitch images that, even from quite close up, look more like finely done paintings than something stitched. I had to resort to the short sighted trick of taking my glasses off and peering so close that my nose almost touched the pictures (being careful to not even breathe!) to see the stitching.
This is Winding, by Zou Yingzi, a work based on her own photograph,

then the beautifully named Sorrow of the Lotus, a triptych hung as three scrolls, the detail gives you some idea of the fineness of the stitching, but actually the phone camera couldn't begin to capture it. She is the lady in the red scarf below; you can also see another of her embroideries in the background of the picture, and the image of a panda that she was working on while we watched.


 

Traditional backstrap loom

Ikat weaving

There was some beautiful Ikat weaving from Malaysia - I loved the comment on the information board

 "when the Iban traditional weaver creates her piece of pua-kumbuku or warp ikat textile, it is the belief that she is divinely inspired through dreams to create the motifs. Her weavings are like woven dreams created out of the cotton threads, spun from the cotton that she grows".

You can read more about this tradition, one of learning from the goddesses of weaving here.

These pieces were all in the first room; you then wandered under a canopy of sheer embroidered fabric, and down the stairs, lined with more fabrics - this time batiks from Indonesia and at the bottom, some lovely mulberry fibre hangings and indigo shibori. Particularly delightful was the rippling texture of the stitched shibori, but sadly, can't remember where it was from

Then into the lower room, which was hung with all manner of delights. I made very few notes here, just sat and gazed, wandered about and gazed some more, slipped in between slivers of dyed silk wafting in the draft of my moving, marveled at the variety of textures in a pair of wall hangings and generally felt that I wished I had the strength and time to spend all day just looking! There really was so much to explore, wondering how this pattern was created, what dyes were used for that colour, delighting in the subtlety of shading in the eco and rust dyed silks that shimmered at the slightest movement of air. it was impossible to capture the delicacy, the sheen, the transparency of some of the textiles on show, in fact, pointless to even try; the beauty was in being there, moving in and out, to and fro, from one piece of cloth to the next, comparing, contrasting, absorbing as much as possible.

Shroud of Ancient Echoes 2 - Susan Fell McLean
detail

I loved "Shroud of Ancient Echoes by Susan Fell McLean, such an evocative name for a beautiful piece of cloth tie dyed, patterned, stitched and patched. You can read a bit more about this here. It was hung to the right of a beautiful pieced silk shawl by Olivia Batchelder, which I just longed to stroke, it was so lovely, both in its colours and textures.













This lovely indigo shibori hanging Tree of Life was produced by artists from the Aranya Natural Dye Unit, an enterprise that provides a way for physically challenged young people from a tea estate in Kerala. Unable to work on the tea estate, they create beautiful pieces of shibori dyed textile that are made into scarves that you can by online here

I loved the complex textures and colours in these two hangings, but again didn't make a note of who and where.

Summer Lotus

There were yet more shining silk embroideries on this level. Summer Lotus, buy Liang Zuefang - you can see her working on the exquisite piece here, watch the way the thread just floats on the air as she draws it from the bundle to start a fresh colour.

Also her monochrome piece, Lotus Rhyme, which can be viewed from both sides and is a marvel of delicacy of stitch. Again, I had to get right up close to it to even see the stitches, the thread so fine that it disappears the minute you move more than a few inches from the piece.

Lotus Rhyme

Lotus Rhyme - detail

 Finally Sun and Moon - mixed media pieces using bark cloth by Ramsay Ong of Malaysia

 Some delicious shibori tied dimples of red and orange and indigo
















a view of some of the many pieces of woven, embroidered and dyed cloth from around the world

and two lovely simple hanging that were the first things I saw as I entered the exhibition, delicately coloured, with simple repeating patterns, the beauty all in the combination of colours and textures.

All in all, a really enjoyable day out, I was really glad I found time to go.

stitching

I've had a post about my textile adventures in draft for I don't know how long, but I seem to be too busy, or too tired to get it finished and posted! It's all about the bits of dyeing I've been doing, but I've done so much more since I drafted it that I can't face the updates!! However, in the realm of stitch I had another lovely workshop with the Embroiderer's Guild last weekend. This time with Wendy Dolan, who's work I really admire. It was a workshop in using architectural details as a source for stitching. We were instructed to bring some simple images to work from and a variety of toning fabrics and threads.

I took along a variety of photos, or rather prints of photos. Once we'd been shown some of Wendy's work and understood the way the embroidery was to be achieved, I selected this image - which I took back in the days of wet film photography - or at least, before I could afford digital. It is from a brief and much needed break in Oxford in the late winter of 2001.

The image is a window in Christ Church College, one of the many beautiful buildings that grace Oxford. I walked past it several times on my way to the Botanic Gardens, a glorious place for peaceful contemplation. I loved the way the stems and branches of the climbers seemed so intertwined with the building's character that they appeared to be somehow part of it, rather than an addition from Nature's bounty.

I had selected a variety of salvaged fabrics from one of my many rummages through remnant bins in various shops over the years. They were all soft furnishing fabrics, and I selected ones that seemed to chime with the idea of old buildings. A mixture of natural and synthetic fibers and various textures, as I recall they came from a lovely little shop called Fabric Design in Matlock Bath. I visit them each year as we break our journey to the Lakes, and always come away with a bag of remnant goodies!

The workshop was fascinating - it's always a pleasure to see an expert at work; makes one realise how much faffing about and stopping and starting is involved when you don't know what you are doing. The technique involved tracing off the main lines of the image; using the tracing to arrange small blocks of fabric roughly under the tracing paper and onto the foundation fabric, positioning the bits with regard to the image, but in a loose, abstract fashion. We then transfered the traced lines, in reverse onto some stitch and tear or heavyweight vilene, placed that on the back of the design (having stitched all the bits down first) and stitched the first draft, as it were, from the back. The the bobbin thread outlined the design. then we turned the fabric over and began to work  up the design from the front. All very scary to a beginner, but seeing Wendy's finished embroideries showed what can be achieved.

This is my resulting embroidery so far - all machine stitched and not yet finished to my satisfaction, but a brave effort! I'm conscious that it all looks a bit crooked, especially when I see it like this, rather than in the flesh, but it pleases me and I'm very aware that I am a very beginner when it comes to machine embroidery. I shall probably stitch more, but not too much more as I don't want to overwork it. I'll certainly try another one now I understand the way it is done.

In the meantime, I'm also making a sketch book cover using some of the fabrics from my Studio11 experiments. We have a sketchbook project for City and Guilds this summer so I bought a sketchbook specifically for this - it seems fitting for it to have a cover made from fabrics dyed and embroidered by me. I'm half way through, and will post the finished results, hopefully before Monday when I go for my next class.