Catching Up!

After many weeks buzzing to and fro from Henley life is beginning to find a slightly kinder pace. I had two lovely workshops this month, then our visit to the London Poppies, by way of some of the more extraordinary buildings in London

the building in front reminds me of the library I worked from for many many years, the one behind is simply surreal when you're close up. 

The poppies we found very moving, each one a human being lost to all.

The garden is looking autumnal

and these two were singing their hearts out atop our tatty spruce

At last I have time to sit and stitch for a bit.

Some knot practice for another piece I'm working on

Those orange knots are too small, the thread being so much finer than the blue knots half way down the sweep.

Revealed

Another Studio 11 session and here are my results

Layers of colour - a fat quarter of each

More layers of colour - each related to the other

Such pleasure to be had with cloth and a dyepot and an excellent tutor.

web woven

spiralling from the centre

Progress

Eventually this whole piece will be detached from the surface I'm stitching against. The initial shape is created with a couched double line of thread onto a pad formed of: folded calico, the line drawing of the design and finally that old favourite, tacky backed plastic. The plastic gives a smooth protective surface, allowing the needle to slide under the threads of the lace to create the next row; part embroidery, part knitting, part crochet, on a tiny scale! 

Intense work, but satisfying

Autumn

falling leaves

some cradled for a while

and needlelace

from a Saturday workshop with Kay Dennis and her husband Michael, using Stef Francis fine perle. They had a very cunning setup with a digital camcorder (I guess), projector and screen. This meant you could see the demo in detail, vital for such fine work. Do click on the oak leaf in her gallery - she works the needle lace in white, then delicately paints the result in autumnal hues. 

She taught us mushrooms two years ago.

Experimental shibori

For my next session with Christine I'm preparing these little bits of silk. I've layered three pieces of lightweight silk together with big tacking stitches, folded them concertina style, then stitched a generous running stitch wave down the centre longways

Next I stitched from the innermost point of each curve, out to the edge through individual layers of the folds.

I will draw all the stitches up and tie them off before dropping in the dye pot.

I want to learn two things; firstly how to prepare a small amount of dye for a little project like this - and I'm well aware that this will make the colour unpredictable. Then I want to see how the colour takes in each silk. I did some dyeing in the summer last year and found that silks seem to be warmer in tone than cottons from the same dye bath; I wonder if that is because they are very thirsty, take up colour quickly and so get a higher proportion of any redness, as I'm sure Christine said that red takes first.

Also, of course, I want to see what effects come from the stitching - I hope to get three small pieces of silk that are closely related, because they have all taken the same pattern. The folds will create repetition so the long wave should echo across. The smaller stitching from centre to edge might create an effect of wings, as they will be in pairs nestled between the curves.

We'll have to wait until the 8th of November to see what happens, next class on the 7th :-)

Decision making

Sorry, I am very absent at the moment. Still trailing to and fro from the south coast to the interior, clearing Cecil's home. It means spending a lot of my non work time driving too fast on motorways, and has been occupying time since the end of July when we moved her here.

But aha! on Friday, the pleasure of a Studio 11 day to just do creative. My plan this year includes broadening my technical skills, and Friday was the first chance to start. I brought along a breakdown printed piece that I did in my first year there, a lovely process - here shown by Claire Benn of Committed to Cloth. I used two processes, half of the piece of fabric in each. Friday's plan was to dye some fabrics in a family of colours to use with this to create a quilt, or at least that's the plan for now, these things can change. The point of the exercise was to use a systematic process to take two colours and, using measured quantities of dye and fabric, move through tints as well as moving from one colour to another. It follows the same principles as the colour exercises that we did in City and Guilds, learning how colour works. 

So back to Connie and Harry's sheets, one of which provided me with the requisite four meters of fabric. Divide into four pieces. The colours used are scarlet and either plain turquoises or turquoise touched with golden yellow. Using four parts, one part and a quarter part of each colour, dye the fabric starting with the first colour. I went for the scarlet, so have three shades of this. You can see these at the bottom of each picture.

Then I did test patches, using the delightful method of mixing dyes in with print paste, squishy, scraped on with a credit card to create the blocks! That's what the patches are in the top bits of fabric, the same idea as we used with Michel Garcia though there we were trialing mordants. In the one above, you've got the red to turquoise transition on the left, red to green on the right. I've left out the unmixed red in each as they are at the bottom. 

This one looks very similar, but I've swapped the colours round at the top, to try that green against the left hand fabric.

What I will do next time, is to tear each of my red squares in four and do the same exercise with the second colour, getting mixes of both colour and tint.

The decision is about the colours to use. I love the way the muddy red and greens look, and they do compliment the right hand fabric, but perhaps not the left? This will determine what colour my second dip is. I will end up with 16 fat quarters, one of each colour.

Another view in artificial light.

I love the faint whiff of chemistry lesson about this process, and I love the interesting colours achieved. My fabrics, which are supposed to be a completely even tone, are slightly mottled, which I rather enjoy - it has more character than flat colour.

I'm also preparing a shibori, but more of that later, if I have time!