Shoes, scarves and screens

What a diverse collection of work came along to Fibrecircle this week!

 First, the shoes…Carol brought along these fabulous shoes that she’d created.

So simple and so effective! I like it that they are not symmetrical – similar but not the same. That works so much better than perfect symmetry, like machine design, would have done.

Bev, Nola and Tricia have all been dyeing with plant materials.

For this one, Bev used a bobby pin to poke fabric through the holes of beads, and dyed it with leaves from the gum tree in her parents’ garden.

The point of using a bobby pin is that it’s soft-tipped, so you don’t pierce the fabric. This method is way faster than tying beads individually, although the results are softer than ties.

 The next two cloths were dyed with the same gum leaves, but quite a lot of copper sulphate was added.

 

This one was tied with wood blocks as a resist. Isn’t it interesting that the colour is so different? It's noticeably more yellow.

 Her second bath was Eucalyptus cinerea. This one had no mordant, just dyed in the cinerea.

These two were dyed twice, the second time with some of the gum leaves in the bath, to change the colour. Again, no mordant was used.

 

These two were dyed in the same dye bath of cinerea, but the first was wrapped around a pipe of unknown metal. This obviously acted as a mordant, changing the colour of the bath.

 



This second one had beads tied into the cloth as a resist.

Tricia and Nola have been dyeing wool etamine and silk scarves. Their first pot was wattle flowers from Acacia longifolia, Sydney Golden Wattle. The flowers were stripped from the leaves and only the mature flowers were used. They hoped that doing this would result in a clearer yellow than they’d previously achieved with wattle flowers.

This silk scarf of Nola's was folded and clamped with L-shaped wooden blocks. This is the colour that was produced by the wattle. It’s not quite beige but it’s definitely on the dull side of yellow.

However, wool yarn gave a much more interesting colour.

This is a more obvious yellow. The yarn was rolled around two tongue depressors, which were folded back on themselves and tied at each end, not on the yarn.

The second pot consisted of “assorted gum leaves” from Harris Markets. These were grey rounded leaves that they thought might be E. cinerea,  suggesting an orange or red dye bath might result. The pot was boiled for an hour and a half and alum was added, with a further 1/2 hour boiling. The dye bath began as yellow and the mordant was added when it turned orange.

This silk scarf was folded lengthwise in four, and then as a concertina to match a large diamond block. Smaller diamond blocks were clamped on, before being dyed in the gum leaves pot.

The cloth outside the small blocks was dyed while the cloth under them wasn’t, giving this delicate line pattern.

This wool etamine length had seven rows of small beads tied into each end in an offset pattern, intended to yield diamond-patterned dots, and was dyed in the cinerea pot.

This is how the wool yarn dyed in the gum leaves.

The white 2-ply wool yarn was plaited onto two tongue depressors, which were folded together and tied at each end, without tying on the yarn. Yummy! Several members were happy to take this one home, if Nola didn't want it!

The third pot was made with shavings of Samoan hardwood, from Nola’s husband’s workshop. They were left to steep in water for several days before being boiled. No mordant was added, because the bath was so dark and it seemed likely to contain a high level of tannin.

This scarf was originally dyed yellow-orange with ironbark leaves. It was folded into triangles and clamped with triangle blocks held with tongue depressors to prevent string marks.

This is the same 2-ply white wool yarn as was used previously. In this bath, it’s a deep chocolate brown.

The next two silk scarves were dyed twice. This scarf was dyed fawn in a pot of wattle flowers and leaves. Then it had teardrop-shaped wooden beads tied into the ends, and crochet cotton was wrapped firmly around the beads along their length. The cloth was also thread wrapped for 1/2in, about 8in from each end.

You can clearly see the fine lines from the fine crochet cotton, making a pattern in the original fawn colour.

This silk scarf was originally dyed pale yellow with Helichrysum petiolare. It was wrapped around two large washers and dyed in the wattle bath but it didn’t seem to be very successful, so it was placed in the Samoan hardwood pot while it was still wet.

The result is an interesting three-coloured scarf, with shades of yellow, beige and brown.

 Tricia’s first one was wool etamine, folded in a complicated design and clamped with blocks, and dyed in the gum leaf bath.

It really has a patchwork look, doesn’t it?

This silk scarf was folded lengthwise and clamped with L-shaped blocks. It was dyed with the Samoan hardwood.

The blocks give a very strong graphic pattern, don't they?

 

This one was knotted before dyeing in the Samoan hardwood.

Tricia says she may redye this one.

This one had cinerea leaves clamped inside the folds and was dyed in the Samoan hardwood bath.

The colours are absolutely gorgeous.

 This scarf was dyed twice. First, it was folded in four lengthwise and then in 60-degree triangles, and dyed in the Samoan hardwood bath. Once it was dry, it was refolded into three lengthwise and again at 60-degrees, and dyed in a red onion skin and alum bath.

The first pattern is much lighter, perhaps because of the lack of mordant in the Samoan hardwood pot. It's almost a shadow of the other pattern.

This silk scarf was also dyed twice. It was pole-wrapped lengthwise and dyed in the cinerea bath. After it had dried, Tricia folded it lengthwise, pole-wrapped it again diagonally and dyed it in red onion skins and alum.

This silk scarf was concertina’d into six lengthwise and then clamped with a square block. The wattle bath didn’t seem to be doing much, so she moved it, wet, into a pot of shavings of Samoan hardwood.

Here's a close-up:

Just like Nola’s one, moving the scarf from one pot to another resulted in an interesting blend of colours.

This silk scarf was clamped with blocks and dyed in the Samoan hardwood pot. Then it was twisted repeatedly until it turned back onto itself and tied, and dyed in the red onion skins, a few days later.

The colours on this are incredible, ranging from cream through brown to purple.

These scarves that have been dyed a second time seem to yield really interesting patterns. It seems as if, sometimes, the original dye acts as a resist to the second dye. We’ve noticed this happening when natural dyeing is redyed with fibre reactive dyes, so it’s interesting to see it happening here. I wonder if it relates to whether the dye is substantive or adjective? Substantive dyes don’t require a mordant to keep the colour in the cloth. Most Australian eucalypts produce a substantive dye from their leaves and bark, probably because they contain high levels of tannin. Other substantive dyes come from indigo, turmeric and lichens. However, most other plant varieties are adjective – they need the addition of a mordant to make the colour fast. Of course, we are using tap water, which, according to Sydney Water information for this area, contains chlorine and fluoride, and trace levels of Trihalomethanes, aluminium, ammonia, copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, silica, sodium and calcium, which may also have an impact.

 Maz was working on her piece for the Beyond the Surface exhibition in QLD next month. It consists of four small works on the theme of Seasons, based on the techniques she learned in a recent workshop with Effie Mitrofanis.  This one is autumn…

…and this one is summer.

Bev was working on cards for sale at an upcoming exhibition of the Calligraphy Society.

If you’d like one of these cards or to have a look at the works, the exhibition, The Marriage of Art and Lettering, will run from 28 Sep – 6 Oct at the See St Gallery, Meadowbank TAFE, See St, Meadowbank, NSW.

 Tricia was going on with her Tunisian crochet.

You've seen this one before!

Nola was cutting paper stencils for her silk screens, to use in discharging some of her dyed fabrics next week.

She showed us some fabric she’d discharged using the same method. It began like this:

..but after printing with the discharge paste and silk screen and the paper stencil it looked like this:

And this one:

..changed to this:

Certainly makes the fabric looks very different, doesn’t it? Hard to believe it’s the same fabric. I'm sure we'll be seeing more of this technique.

Busy busy...second postcard swap

Fibrecircle has been quite busy lately but unfortunately, while that means we've done some fun things, no-one has had time to blog about them! At our second meeting in March, we swapped our monthly postcards. This time, we had several swappers - Carol even made two! This one is Beverley's.

Does it remind you of anything? Yes, it's made from one of the samples she did for her Language of Thread challenge work. For both pieces, she was inspired by a technique she saw in a Quilting Arts magazine, of stamping the same image onto different fabrics and then combining them together. She tried stamping with several different media on various fabrics, to get the best effect. Once the two fabrics were combined together, she embellished the stamped image on the postcard with machine stitching. The images on the final work also had quite strong hand stitching. It's a difficult piece to photograph because both the fabric and thread have a sheen to them. The back looks like a postcard, but it has a beautiful hand-drawn element as well, which wasn't photographed at the time. The edges were straight stitched and then satin-stitched with a slightly longer than usual stitch.

Nola decided to use a piece of fabric she'd previously painted as the background to her postcard. It looked rather spring-like so she decided to embroider a butterfly.

The image was a copyright-free image from a Dover Press sampler. She resized and printed the image onto water soluble paper, and used it as a guide for the main stitching. The background fabric was layered with thin cotton batting before stitching. Once she was happy with the stitching, she washed out the paper and added finer details to the image. Then she painted the stitched card with Setacolor paints. The card was a bit floppy so she lined the backing fabric with fusible Vilene. She folded in all raw edges and hand-stitched a buttonhole stitch around the edges.

Maz hand stitched her card on a machine embellished foundation.  She turned the front edges to the back and covered them with a backing piece. The card was stiffened with fusible Vilene.

Helen's elegant card was made by stitching free-standing shapes, joined with fusible web and edged with satin stitch. These were joined to each other and the card background with some beads. The edges were satin stitched. 

                       

Carol made two postcards to swap.  Both used paper serviettes as the basis but in different ways. The first postcard  had the serviette adhered to the backing and overlaid with a mesh fabric. Motifs from the serviette were adhered over the top.

The second postcard used a serviette with the same motifs. The serviette was adhered to the background and this was cut apart and reshuffled. The pieces were stitched back together using a single machine stitch. The motifs were attached to a backing, so they sat higher than the surface, giving a sense of depth. Both cards were stiffened with card and the edges were stitched with a machine buttonhole stitch.

These were a good advertisement for our next meeting, when we plan to swap serviettes with interesting motifs and have a play day with them.

Carol was busy sorting loose beads and stringing them. However, this is just her "loose beads" box - it seems she has a lot more other beads at home!

Helen brought along her canvas embroidery piece that she's been working on for some time.

It really is a lovely thing. She was talking about making it into a three-sided vessel, if she can work out the technical challenges.

Maz was stitching on her Lost Treasures challenge piece. It's a lost treasure because she began it in a workshop some time back, and found it again recently.

The background fabric has stamped images of carafes like the stitched one.

Tricia was continuing her Tunisian crochet.

It's a gorgeous scarf, with a selection of different yarns in deep jewel tones. She also brought along another scarf she'd made:

It's so light and soft, I think we all wanted to steal it!

Helen brought along this treasure to show us:

Nola was playing with books. She's making a book cover for Lost Treasures, but she also pulled out her Round Robin book pages that we made two years ago. Her theme was Sailing to Byzantium, so she was sketching various Byzantine motifs that might work on her book page.

Next time, we'll have the revealing of Lost Treasures!

Abstracting from photos

Our second March meeting was a small one. I think perhaps the topic scared some people away! We did some drawing exercises, working from photos to create abstract images. Only three of us did the exercises and one is too embarrassed by her work to share it. I think we all know how that feels.


Nola drew up an activity sheet, with some thoughts about abstraction and some drawing tasks. The tasks were pretty easy ones, since drawing is so scary for many people. There was no central organisation: people just worked on whichever exercises interested them.

Here’s one way of thinking about Abstract vs Non-Objective shapes:
Abstract shapes share a relationship with a realistic object. A shape can be various levels of abstractions, from almost representational through to barely representational at all. Non-objective shapes have no connection to a representative shape, though they may be inspired by a shape, colour or mood. We’re working with abstracting – i.e. we began with a photo of something specific.

Before you start drawing, you could consider some basic design elements.
• Decide whether you are working in portrait or landscape. You don’t have to use the same orientation as your photo or even the same orientation each time.
• Choose a focal point for your design. High on the page, low on the page; central or offset.
• What movement might you want in your drawing? Horizontal movement is calm and restful, vertical movement suggests growth and change.
• How will balance feature in your design? Balance has a strong influence on the mood of a composition. Designs with symmetrical balance or repeated similar shapes, colours, tones, lines are stable, calm, even rigid, and can organise many busy elements. Informal or asymmetrical balanced designs have dissimilar shapes, with unequal visual weight, which can feel casual or natural, or even unsettled. Circular or radial balance from the centre of a composition feels stable, while the same kind of balance from an offset point feels informal or unsettling. “Crystallographic” balance uses all-over pattern without a focal point, with equal emphasis over the whole composition, and a balance between positive and negative space.

Shape exercises:
1. Draw or trace outlines of shapes from your photo, without any interior details.
• Isolate one shape and doodle it into something else, by adding more exterior lines
• Isolate one shape and repeat it in a pattern. Make your pattern dense. Draw it again with a less dense layout.
• Mirror your shape.(If you don’t have confidence in your drawing skills and you don’t want to fold your paper, you can do this by holding the paper up to the window and tracing it onto the back of your sheet, tracing this copy onto another sheet and then tracing from that one onto the front side of your paper.)
• Rotate the shape
• Draw the shape as a circular repeat
2. Look at where the light falls on the main shapes in your photo. Draw contour lines to show the brightest areas and the darkest areas. (Can’t see it? Try squinting – it often helps to see tonal values. It’s also easier to see on a black and white image.) Make sure your contours are whole shapes, not just lines. Erase any lines that are not shapes. Play with your contour shapes – pattern them, colour them, interlock them.
3. Look at the negative space in your photo. Draw or trace these shapes a couple of times
• Pattern the shapes with doodles.
• Colour the negative space. One colour? Adjacent colours on the colour wheel? Will your shapes have an outline (which brings back the object more)?
• Use the same shape, without a strong outline, and add outlines in successive colours or tones to make contours in the negative shapes. Try different shaped outlines – ones that mimic the shape, ones that accentuate it, ones that are unrelated to the shape.
4. Use the dominant lines in your photo to make geometric shapes
• Look at where the strongest lines are on your image. Draw these on a piece of paper.
• Turn the lines into geometric planes.
• Add colour to the planes
5. Silhouettes – use the shapes from an image as silhouettes against a different background. Doodle a patterned background or use one of your earlier pages. Make your silhouette dark to contrast with a lighter, more open background. Try a light silhouette against a denser, darker patterned background.
Scale:
1. Focus on a small part of your image. Draw it in large scale, taking up the whole page. Don’t worry too much if your shape isn’t exact.
• Add pattern elements within the shapes.
• Experiment with different patterns – swirling and geometric, patterns that mimic the overall shape, patterns that contrast, small patterns and larger ones.
2. Use the shapes of your image and miniaturise them.
• Repeat the shapes in a regular pattern.
• Repeat the shapes in an irregular pattern.
• Experiment with closer and further apart spacing.
Colour:
1. Using some of your earlier shapes, work with unexpected colours. Try to establish a specific mood – excited, sombre, spooky…
2. Try shading colours from one to another.
3. Use different tones of a hue to suggest depth, but in a different way to the shades in your photo.

Nola worked from this photo:

The obvious element was the flower shape.

First she drew the outline and doodled it into a butterfly.

“This was really a warm-up exercise, just to get my head into a drawing place.”

Then, with two L-shaped scraps of paper, she isolated a small part of the photo...

… and drew the main design lines. Then she extended the design lines beyond the original shape (marked with a rectangle) and added some internal lines and pattern.

This one took elements from this image and rotated them around a central point. It still looks very flower-like, though. Interesting twist happening...

This one was from the contoured activity, using the original base shape, but the image was quite small and it was too hard to work with.

"I can see this has possibilities,  drawn larger and with the original lines removed."
This one uses the negative shapes around the original flower shape.

"They all look like weird bats! But interesting shapes..."

“This one was colouring contour lines and it’s pretty uninteresting. None of my drawings will set the world on fire, but it was a fun exercise and gave me some interesting things to think about.” Maz's drawing to follow...
Show and tell:
Meanwhile our members have been abstracting in other ways.
Maz took a class in screen printing with Marie-Therese Wisniozski and she brought her class work to show us. Her first prints were made using a circle, which was torn apart and used as positive and negative screen stencils.

"These were really to get us used to the process of printing."
Each student had taken along a prepared stencil. Maz’s was based on a garbage bin design she had done previously. Isn't it fascinating how the most mundane things give really interesting patterns? She pulled repeat screens, putting two colours, blue and green, in the well and allowing them to mix as she pulled the print.

In this print, she printed the screen area in black several times, and allowed it to dry. Then she positioned a simple stencil on the screen over the top and pulled prints with several colours in the well, allowing them to blend.

This screen used torn pieces of masking tape as the stencil. The lower sample was printed several times with the same screen and different colours.

This sample used multiple layers of screens – first without a stencil, then with positive and negative versions of the same few stencils. Some printing inks were opaque, so they were unaffected by the colours underneath, while others were transparent and changed according to the colour previously printed.

Isn’t it wonderful? Maz really recommends Marie-Therese as a tutor! You can see how she built up the complexity of the tasks, until, by the end, the students were making really complex pieces of printed cloth.

Meanwhile, Beverley took a dyeing workshop - pictures please, Beverley? (Since our official photographer was too busy admiring them!) Tricia was working with pattern of a different kind with her beautiful crochet scarf.

Can you see the way the colour of the variegated yarn works perfectly with the design?

Our next meeting will be delayed by Fibre Forum at Orange. Expect to see the results of wonderful workshops here, after April 19.