Workshops and experiments

Workshops and experiments… that seems to sum up our fortnight! Of course, this isn’t all that odd, especially the experiment part, but some weeks, we seem to have been particularly busy!

Bev attended a Textile Taster, a one day ATASDA NSW workshop, with Helen MacRitchie. You can see some of Helen’s work here http://www.northshorecrafts.org.au/38524c35-f5c9-4428-b704-26eb308539bf.html , on her blog here http://fibrenell.blogspot.com.au/ and on her Etsy shop here http://www.etsy.com/shop/ellenbank  She was teaching her students some basic techniques that she uses in her work.

Here are some samples Bev made in the class:

adjusted bobbin “whipstitch"

adjusted bobbin “whipstitch” with thick thread in the bobbin

 

stencil with moulding paste or similar products onto a grid fabric like plasterers’ tape, and allowed to dry

stencil with moulding paste or similar products onto a grid fabric like plasterers’ tape, and allowed to dry

Matte medium onto cloth, distorted

cooking muslin or scrim, cut, distorted and stitched

It looks like an interesting workshop!

 

Our Helen attended a workshop with Carolyn Sullivan earlier this year, but she’s only had a chance to show us her work from it. Carolyn is a well-known art quilter and embroiderer.

The theme of the workshops was Faces and here’s the face that Helen made.

Isn’t it quirky?

 Nola and Tricia have continued their experiments in dyeing. They were working with Drimarene K cold water fibre reactive dyes this time.

Nola originally dyed this cotton cloth pale pink in the waste bucket after dyeing. This time, she umbrella’d it on a chopstick, dipped the tip in black dye, and added rubinole and turquoise with a syringe.

It has a lot more wow factor than shows in this photo.

 
This cotton cloth was a long strip, which she folded in 60-degree triangles. The corners were dipped into rubinole and turquoise dye.

This silk scarf was concertina’d in four and syringe-dyed with blue, rubinole and turquoise.

 This silk yarn is gorgeous! She laid it down on Gladwrap and dyed it with a syringe, with rubinole, turquoise, blue and black dye.

 

This silk scarf by Tricia was folded in half and then into 60-degree triangles, and corner dyed in turquoise and black.

 She dyed this one by folding in a concertina lengthwise in three, and then into 60-degree triangles. Colours were drizzled on with a syringe.

 

This scarf was folded lengthwise in four and then into 60-degree triangles. The corners were dipped in rubinole, blue and turquoise.

 This piece is tissue silk, scrunched from the corner, tied with twine and syringe with dye. You can see the underlying layer with stripes going the other way. 

 Tissue silk dyes so beautifully. This one was twisted from the corners and lopped back on itself. It was dip-dyed black and light blue.

 Some of the dyeing that Tricia and Nola did was over-dyeing of pieces they'd dyed earlier. Some were over-dyed Drimarene K dyeing. This silk habotai scarf of Tricia’s had a bright yellow and turquoise wash. This time, she wrapped it around a pole and dyed it navy.

 Nola dyed this silk georgette scarf green with other colours by pouring. The green was quite intense but the other colours were just splotchy. This time she bunched and clamped it and dyed it dark blue.

The dark blue pulled the bright green back to dark green, leaving areas of the original green showing.
 

Other pieces were previously eco-dyed. Tricia and Nola say that the way dyes work over the colours of the eco-dyeing is always interesting, especially as it's so easy, with eco-dyeing, to get fabric the colour of old stockings. This silk georgette length was beige and then overdyed with rubinole dye by Tricia. It’s turned out such a rich colour with lots of texture.

Tricia blocked and clamped this one for eco-dyeing. This time, she over-dyed it with navy blue dye. Interestingly, the eco-dyed section went only slightly darker with the fibre reactive dye, but the blocked areas took some of the blue colour quite strongly.

 Similarly, this silk was tied and eco-dyed in wattle, so it was a lemon-beige colour. This time, it was twisted back on itself and dyed turquoise. The lemon beige took some of the colour, becoming pale greeny-brown, while the undyed areas remained turquoise.

The colour really pops on this one.
 

This silk georgette was eco-dyed beige originally. Tricia tied it around tongue depressors and dyed it red.

 Nola’s wool etamine scarf was originally twisted through a galvanised spring and eco-dyed in helichrysum petiolare, yielding a delicate pale yellow. She over-dyed it with a syringe in blue, turquoise and rubinole, which changed the whole colour but were strongest in the light areas of the eco-dyeing.

This one also looks way better that its photograph suggests.
 

This silk scarf was originally clamped with L-shaped blocks and dyed in a wattle flower pot, yielding a pale yellow-beige. Nola blocked it again with triangular blocks and dyed it with black.

Meanwhile, Bev has been experimenting with rust dyeing. This piece of cloth was dyed by wrapping an old rusty saw blade in cloth soaked in a vinegar solution.

It’s an amazing effect, isn’t it?

For this one, she used old drill bits…

…while this one used various washers, cogs and other workshop bits and pieces.

It's certainly got us all rummaging through the shed for interesting possibilities!

Helen was working on a stitched journal cover this week. Every year for the past few years, she’s made a new journal cover, since we did a challenge at ATASDA.

Her work is so beautiful and precise.

As usual on the second week of the month, we swapped postcards too. This one was made by Helen while she was travelling overseas recently. She used felt appliqué and embroidery on a cotton background. The edging is a fancy machine stitch.

 This postcard by Tricia uses some of her indigo-dyed fabric, emphasised by stitch. She bound the edges like a quilt.

Bev embroidered by hand on a monoprint for her postcard. It was edged with two widths of zigzag stitch.

 Carol’s postcard used couched yarns and metallic thread and was edged with machine buttonhole stitch.

 Nola’s postcard was made from laminated fabric on organza, laid over variegated organza ribbon, with a ribbon overlay. She edged her postcard with satin stitch.

 Maz’s postcard had a painted background, embellished with hand embroidery. She created a knife edge border.

 The group also chose colours for our next challenge, a Paint Chip Challenge. We each drew four colours, blind, from a paper bag, and the challenge is to make something larger than a postcard using those colours, using any technique, by 25 February 2013. Members could choose a fifth card and decide whether to keep it or keep the original, or swap among themselves. Stay tuned for interesting works!