Recent Work in process for the installation next weekend.

Free Embroidery, The Dog and The Fish

 I spent Yesterday teaching my self how to free embroider on my ancient machine. I am very pleased this is the frst time I have used a sewing machine and not had to get my 12 year old boy to come and help me!
Anyway I have been developing some more ideas more by doing some free embroidery based round this design using solvy, I am going to felt this on to see how it goes.

Their dog, I like the idea of felt as the protector and the dog who is too, the piece when finished as a carpet or blanket will do the same

Gulping Fish using all sorts of found stuff silk and ink

A close up of a mixed media idea for the fish in the garden of the house we have been asked to do an artistic response to. Apparently no one knew there was even a pond in the garden when they first bought the house as it was so over grown. As they cleared away a load of trees and rubble this pond appeared covered in oil and rubbish. As they were clearing it this white fish rose to the surface to gulp air. It's now fully recovered and is actually a Tench, which are sort of a gold colour. Poor thing. It's about a18inches long and no one knows how it even got there as it's in the middle of town!
Anyway lots of ideas for all sorts of things have come from this story. More from the sketch book when it gets back.
I Went in to college to give my work in (My sketch book has now gone away for a week or too so I will mainly be doing my dissertation and posting things I should have posted before!) and discovered that my compost dyeing is going well. I will post the results next week. I have a load of eucalyptus leaves donated by my lovely cousin from Chichester to do yet more dying this time, hot bundles.

The Comfort of Home Coat

Started to make a coat for the transient nature of home installation and found I had not dyed enough wool so spent time dyeing another load in appropriate colours. I hope to at least get it laid out this Thursday.......

The colour palate of the house

This was the finished colour results I am so looking forward to making this thing I can't wait to get on with it!

But as usual stuff got in the way!

compost dyeing for 'Transient Home' Installation

state of the desk this week

This week has been mainly spent slaving over a hot computer untill eventually i couldn't take anymore and had to throw some paint around. it was fun and created a nice substrate for some screen printing. this is what I have been working on in photoshop to convert images in to things that can be transfered to a screen and images i want to use for printing on to silk to nuno on to felt

image taken from tile

image taken from bottle of wine 

The cloth after being wrapped and left in a warm place for 3 weeks

prefelt unwrapped before the leaves have been removed

       
I wraped this round tin cans you can see the lines that the can has left on the felt. It will be interesting to see how it comes out after being felted.

I took some leaves from the clients garden to Dye the fabric for my installation and wrapped them about 3 weeks ago and this is the result. i am really pleased with them and have wrapped another 4m of cloth. I took loads of photos as I unwrapped it as the leaves are still so beautiful. I have pressed most of them and intend to use them in future work.

As we unwrapped the piece.

these make great images in them selves, no doubt I will be using these in a college too......

Scotland - adventures in Dyeing with Lichen

 We went up to stay in Scotland, to stay with friends. The journey was beautiful lots of mist. I love it when things emerge from gloom. The mountains were spectacular loved the lines in this shot with the turbine and the lines where the trees have been removed, not so much the pylon. We stayed near Aviemore and while we were there struggling with the beast to make the cottage warm we thought we'd play with the local lichen and see what happend.............

the kitchen in the cottage and 'the beast'

Down the hill from the cottage towards the osprey nest

same photo two minues later!

Great colours

We went to collect lots of lichen

All the lichen in the pan threw in the pan we had no
ammonia at the tme but thought it was worth a go anyway

Simmered it for an hour or two threw  bit of pre flet in and some muslin

Unfortunately we didn't identify this mushroom before we did  this but knew it wasn't anything deadly
We did a bit of shibori tying and threw some prefelt and a bit of
cotton muslin in and then simmered for a couple of hours

Bracket fungus - just not worth the bother!
 But you never know until you try!

The results! Mushroom and milk mordant shibori prefelt

onion skin shiboried wth copper penny resits and vinegar
simmered for about 2 hours

Cherry leaf and onion skin not really worked 

Bracket fungus - no

Bull dog clips randomly done vinegar and onion skins

Shibori Mushroom with bull dog clips  - think it had a bit of amonia in there too

Lichen sewn in a circle to for ma little bag soaked in amonia solution then steamed over onion skins

Onion skins bull dog clips and vinegar simmered with the lichen above

Devore Screen Printing on Fabric

Learned how to Scean print Devore the other day a technique using nasty chemicles it was fun. I thought it could be a good technique use with my structure. Credit where credit is due. The workshop was held by Kay at Harrogate College Fashion Dept.

photo sensative liquid is painted on the screen then printed images are laid over them before being exposed to the light

where the light is blockedout the image remains, the liquid is them washed off

Fabric, poly cotton, Azita and velvet are layed on the table ready to be screen printed with the devore mix.

All the fabrics came from Waleys in Bradford the devore paste eats the cellulose fibres but not the protien.

making sure all the fabric is taped down flat

The screen butted up to the resist on the edge of the printing table

explaining that the opposite person must keep a hold of the frame against the resist

flooding the screen

4 times excluding the flooding of the screen

even pressure the whole time 

moving the screen to the next fabric very carefully

paste left on azita

Polly Cotton

Velvet

Wash your Screen carefully

Printed fabric

Where the printfluid has dried on the screen and hasn't been able to go through

hanging up to dry

Iron fabric, reverse side for velvet untill it goes brown NOT
Black....Emma, Doh!

Rinse out

Finished devore