Secret Garden

Once upon a time there was this

Polyester voile with paper lamination 2015

and this

New cotton/silk mix. Mandala sample 2017

and this

Vintage cotton sheeting. Pole wrapped shibori 2017

Brought together, would they draw you across a room?

And when you got closer, would you want to see more?

Might they tell you a story?

Or should they be left to go their separate ways, being too much of a muddle all together?

The only stitched element so far is the butterfly, an earlier idea that was rejected. I have not the faintest notion of how I might combine these varied objects with stitch. It is for now, just a muse .....

Magick

There are old magicks in this landscape

Hidden things

Buried secrets

Secret flows

accumulation

Things are building up, layer by layer

The wider view

Playing with a scrap of organza, 

A river perhaps

sampling

Although no stitching was done while away, since coming home I have spent some time with my Mesopotamia layered piece, this time a proper sample. Christine's advice was to pin the layers together, rather than tacking, as with every stitch you make, the organza and the layer(s) below make a little adjustment with each other. Pins can be moved to accommodate this. It was very fine advice.

So here: the base of hand dyed fabric, with its layer of marks; a layer of poly organza coloured with walnut and India ink if I remember; a snippet of the paper laminated piece with more floor plan imagery and a layer of seed stitch suggesting another building.

The next layer of seeding, at larger scale, with a thread which matches the colours on the fabric, both responds to what is below, and secures the coloured organza

Here using Emily Jo Gibbs' technique of stitching around the edge of the layer below 

finding shadows of floor plans, hidden beneath, or impromptu patterns from the combined layers.

Here stitching moves away from the absolute randomness of seeding, responding to what lies beneath, just as archaeology does, searching for treasure 

Sampling really does allow for experiment and experiencing the way the layers interact, how stitching can bring to the surface what lies below. 

My larger piece has more detail, though the seeding needs to extend further around the remains; I like the way they flicker in and out, depending on the colour in the hand dyed fabric below.

Once the sampling is done, I can think more clearly about how to develop this further. For now it is good to just consider

auditioning layers

These pictures are of a test piece, a sample, much recommended by Christine to try things out. So here I am trying out layering the organza again, having cut it with the soldering iron to get a shape which wraps round the existing stitching, as though an archaeological dig were being revealed; playing too with the layers of marks.

I also wanted to see what happens if a darker fragment is layered below. Here the shapes from a portion of the paper lamination I did using the floor plan stencil, on already darkened transparent. I have aligned the "walls" with the voided shapes already there.

There will be at least one more layer over this, but first the stitching to secure this layer. Already I can see that the thread I have been using just won’t to. It works to pick out the voided shapes because it contrasts with the underlying colour of the fabric. But if subsequent stitch layers are to work, I think the thread needs to tone with this colour. All quite experimental for me, I am still thinking my way through the stitching, at a larger scale than the first seeding, but of a similar ilk I think.

Today’s musical companions were the Bénédictines du Sacré Coeur de Montmartre.

Further pondering

So I think I’m done stitching, keeping it simple. I rather like this deep green silk as a potential frame for the image

I know I am annoyed at the wrinkles in the underlying calico - shoddy preparation. I can’t iron them out any further because that encourages more bubbling in the organza across the sky, the first layer which I couldn’t avoid when Mistyfusing down.

One notion, once the green silk is attached to the embroidery, would be to mount the whole on a box canvas of appropriate size, wrapping the silk round to the back. The key question now is - wide frame or narrow?

Contemplating layers

Which is a theme appropriate to working with transparents, which can evoke ...

Layers of landscape - the view from my bedroom in coloured organza cut with a soldering iron and fused to a base layer of calico. Two layers of machine stitching done, just the foreground to work out now. It is intimidating me!

Layers of history in the landscape,

Layers of habitation, evoked by fragile remains; wondering which of  the recent experiments might be useful ...

Layers of stitch to add colour and texture, perhaps that of excavated soil

And maybe reveal those layers of habitation

A bit of a test run, to see how the transparents I have been working with might evoke the levels that are concealed, revealed, during an archaeological dig. Still thinking how to do this. I may need to cut the voile into less regular shapes to create a sense of the unfolding of layer upon layer.

My stitching and thinking today accompanied by Low

And the Oni Wytars Ensemble being Byzantine. There’s variety for you

Assemblage

I very often have Mesopotamia in the back of my mind when exploring with Studio 11 experiments - currently in how transparent fabrics can ben coloured and the potential they hold. 

An assemblage is a group of objects brought together from a site which typify that site, or a particular period. 

This is an assemblage of things old and new which may help me say something about Mesopotamia and history with textiles.

Most recently I created a stencil which which I used with a lamination technique to apply paper to some organza I had coloured as part  of the transparent experiments we have been doing. The stencil was based the floor plans of several of the temple layouts at Eridu, the oldest of cities according to the Sumerians, where sweet water was discovered, site of the Abzu. The transparent is laid over some hand dyed fabric from an earlier class I took with Christine, sort of desert’ish. Though now I wonder if I should try something blue beneath it, for water. And whether I might not cut it up and use parts of it in different things, rather than as one piece.

The stenciling process - cutting out shapes from freezer paper and then ironing that paper onto the silk screen, has created all these negative shapes, which I shall keep and try to use in some other context.

I have been thinking about what skills were key to the development of civilisation in Mesopotamia, and one, of course, is weaving, without which we have neither baskets, nor linen shifts, nor tapestries. So I have been experimenting with the cordage technique, learnt on and Alice Fox workshop at Studio 11 using  grass from the  garden, fibres from yucca and phormium (New Zealand Flax), and some wool roving I bought, to create “thread” of sorts. The blue is the roving, twisted during a recent Studio 11 zoom session.

I like the way the colours work with this fabric, but the “thread” might also be useful with some of the other recent transparents experiments. Or perhaps I'll twist some more

The fabric is, again from an early workshop, using the wax resist technique to evoke the sort of patterns one finds in for example, pottery with scratched patterns, of rock carvings. Here assembled, to see how they might mingle with some linen thread I bought from “somewhere”. 

And here, another assembled group of transparents - fine voile coloured with acrylic inks, walnut ink and rust dyed  

They seem to fit together rather well

I at last have a stool workshop, so I can sit at my bench with music playing - Heligoland in this case (Massive Attack one day Pergolesi the next!) - look at the anemones by the fence, and muse. It is a great pleasure. I am tucked away down the side of the house, and have to duck past the well to get here. It somehow feels appropriate

transparents again

I am thinking around ideas of Mesopotamia, layers of time and habitation. 

These pieces of sheer, blogged about here might just begin to express this by using both layers of colour on the voile - here quite light in tone, and also layering the fabrics one over the other. 

So, having applied one layer of colour to the sheer poly voile, walnut ink and Quink on one, acrylic ink on the other, they have now been weighed down in trays with rusty bits

and wetted with either white vinegar and a splash of acrylic ink on the hummocks

Or walknut ink and tea, with trickles of Quink.

The same colorants as the first layer, with added rust textures hopefully, where the random bits of iron will oxidise with the tea/vinegar. 

I wonder what will happen. They are "cooking" overnight under a sheet of damp newsprint.

Transparents

We have been working with Christine on the next online Studio 11 workshop, this time looking at transparent fabrics and how to get colour onto them. Christine has uploaded several tutorials and we all meet via Zoom once a week for updates and discussions. In the absence of a real one, I am improvising a "design wall" by pinning bits together and suspending them from a picture in the sitting room, hence the ghostly radiator! Tis way I can get some idea of how the colours are, or are not visible from a distance.

The first section here are all coloured using transfer inks, which have a gloopy consistency. Once painted onto a paper support of some sort they can then be ironed onto synthetic fibres, here sheer polyester voile. These were my first attempts, just playing with the colours to see how they came out. Some of them will get another layer, investigating how the colours mix when layered onto the fabric. Some of the patterns were painted directly onto the paper, some are monoprints. I have painted a few more papers since, which are awaiting my next slow ironing session. You do have to move the hot iron very very veery slowly. Appropriate music helps -  ranging from Faure's Requiem to Leonard Cohen. I have eclectic tastes

Then I played with walnut ink and Quink, and acrylic inks, scrumpling the fabric into a plastic pot of appropriate size and allowing the thing to "mulch" for a bit before taking it out and allowing to dry. The textures are really interesting, even more so when the fabric is layered over itself. At the bottom I have layered a piece from each technique, hence the colour ghosting behind the dark fabric. The acrylic ink gives a slight stiffness to the voile, but that might be because I've not washed the fabric yet - a vigorous rinse in cold water to get the excess pigment out. I have given it a hot press to set/cure the inks. 

More walnut ink experiments, this time smoothed over a piece of plastic wetted with ink. The fabric was then pushed about so it bubbled up in places, the colour pools around the ripples in the fabric. I really like this, but it is very subtle, I need to experiment more.

And the same technique with acrylic inks, which cure and will stay on the fabric, unlike the walnut ink which is likely to wash out. They looked incredibly vibrant when still wet and on the plastic, more subdued once dry but I think I like that better

The more neutral colours have potential for my Mesopotamia theme and I have been working towards appropriate textures in my experiments. They might provide an interesting base for some paper lamination, which is the next technique to work with. 

I have such admiration for Christine for keeping Studio 11 going despite the difficulties of the past year, not just Covid, but her loss of her previous Studio and consequent stress and upheval. Our little creative community is still thriving under her generous tutelage, and lockdown has become the catalyst for her developing a series of online courses which can now be found on her website. 

We are very lucky.

More organza experiments

These are kind of working notes, learning how to use the iPad as a tool to record my thoughts, and get them into an order I can use in my City and Guilds without too much grief. so, here are notes to self with illustrations I hope!! Click for bigger pictures.

While I'm stitching, I'm also working out how to catch this tender fabric down without ruining the translucent quality of the textile. There's also the direction of the grain  to consider. Sometimes, with the black piece, I had to stitch down in both directions to prevent the organza pulling out. I used two strands of thread as that seemed to be about the right weight, and I wanted to concentrate on colour without the distractions of other textures. there's enough texture in the organza. There's also very little chance of hiding the start of the stitch with each thread, so I made a feature of it, crossing the stitches and finishing on the front with a French knot to secure the initial stitches.

I rather like the tails on the back.

05/12

Now I've moved to stitching on white backing fabric. I considered using a shiny rayon thread for texture, but decided that it was adding nothing, so changed to navy stranded cotton, two strands. The stranded cotton, with its easy texture and willingness to bend makes the stitching much quicker, and is, I think, fine in this context. The glisten of the organza likes the muted, not quite black of the stitches. As the stitching progressed it developed a changing rhythm depending on the lay of the fabric. As I layered more and more on the backing fabric the stitches had to evolve, becoming one long stitch, with a tying down thread across the centre at right angles - I think it's a proper stitch of some sort, must check. I had to do this as the varying layers and overlaps couldn't be tied down using my original ordered little stitches I started with. At the end I lengthened the pieces of organza and gave them a wavy pattern, to move right away from the neat texture of the first part. My daughter sees a tulip in this bit - I just see scrumptious colour, though this image is a bit more in the blue scale than the actual fabric

9/12/12
In stitching these rectangles at right angles , I tried to reflect the colours of the organza by mixing similar colours of thread on the needle. I started with the French knots at the corners, it seems delicate yet secure, especially as I make a very short stitch first, then work the French knot over that stitch. It stops the knot being pulled through to the back of the fabric and makes the organza more secure.


I hold the twisted thread tight against the fabric with my nail whilst pulling the thread through to the back, making sure the knot part stays tight around the needle and so, neat against the fabric



The French knots worked well, but for the last one I thought a little bright pink laid work cross, tied down in the centre with a single stitch was more appropriate (trust me, I'm not normally a pink person!), as there are 11 layers altogether! I also tried to keep my backside neat - if you'll pardon me!

I realise I've not shown you the finished organza on black

I tried for  landscapey effect, with haze on the horizon and birds swirling in the neon sky! It is, after all, only supposed to be a quick sample of fabric and stitching, but it's made me smile!

Oh, and the iPad bit? In the end I had to come back to the PC as I couldn't figure out how to position the images in the text via iPad. Must be a lack in my technical knowledge!!