Today was our first meeting for the year. We were a small group, because many of us are still on holidays. We didn't do very much today - it was a hot muggy day, ideal for lazing about, reading textile books. We had Isobel Hall's Embroidered Books and Janet Edmonds' From Print to Stitch. Plenty of inspiration there!
However, we haven't been idle since you last heard from us! Helen was working on an embroidery in shades of blue, but it's not ready for photography yet. I'm sure you'll see it soon! She also brought along her finished Sunflowers challenge from last year. It's a gorgeous piece of embroidery, filled with a stone to give it weight.
Isn't it luscious? It's like a field of sunflowers distilled down to the essence.
Maz made a piece of art cloth as a gift. She began by folding and twisting the fabric, holding it together with elastic bands for the first dye bath.
The first dye bath was yellow. Then she added some areas of stitching and bundled it up again as before.
Then the cloth was dyed with red with a little rubinole.
Then she screen printed squares, and stencilled, and drew marks on the cloth. She felt the dark screen-printed squares were too strong, so she did not heat set them for the full 10 minutes, but only half as long. Finally she dyed the cloth again, in a blue dye wash, to unify it. When she rinsed, some of the dark colour of the squares also washed out, as she'd hoped, revealing the marks underneath from the earlier dye runs.
Here's the finished cloth:
...and here's some detail shots.
Maz said, "This was my first attempt at a piece of cloth and the recipient liked it, so that was good." I bet she did!
Nola was working on a piece of cloth, one of her "paint rags", that she began drawing on some while ago. Here's what it looked like when she began today:
and here's how it looked when she stopped:
It had been painted with Setacolor paints and drawn on with black Sharpie pens and fabric pens. Today, she drew on it with the new Sharpie fabric pens called Stained. They are a little strange to use since they have a soft brush point, meant to be something like a paint brush. It's an odd choice for fabric pens. Nola wasn't very happy with them, since the black pen bled on fabric in the same way as the usual Sharpies can do, the pink and orange were fluro and the yellow is actually an acid green. After playing with the pens for a while, she changed over to colouring with Inktense pencils to add some flat colour, which she brushed with water. It will be interesting to see where she goes with this.
More in a fortnight!
