Some recent experiments

I've been at another of Christine's workshop, this time working over fabrics from the previous session. We had a show and tell, three pieces from each of us that we liked, and three that we didn't know what to do with or didn't like for some reason. One piece i worked over was the red/orange floral squares. I'm loving the going in and out ness of the resulting cloth. The trick will be to integrate the edges. If they don't integrate, they can always be used elsewhere. All of the other bits of fabric have done something, As the layers develop, interesting, unexpected things start to happen and I begin to see stuff that I might be able to work with, figures emerging, swimming in fiery waves, themes unconsciously followed, like the tree of life/ankh cloth, which I'll post later, with its little primitive dancing men, the way linen and silk take up the colour differently from the reworked sheet cotton, ideas about where there is some kind of potential. We'll see! I'm quite excited!

For now they are all in the washing machine, never sure what's going to appear when they come out the other side

Oh, and the very vivid one is from the previous tray dying session that I've failed to post because I've been so busy!

I've also done my Christmas trip to Cecil, to give her the quilt. I'll post about that later too

Preparations

Tomorrow, I'm going to my next workshop at Studio 11. Colourfun, once a month for the coming year. What pleasures to come!

The first session is resist dying, which was what I did for the mini quilt workshop, so I've been preparing.

pre-stitched/tied pieces waiting for tomorrow

I've done

cotton stitched in wavy lines, with points pulled up to make spiderswebs

the wavy lines all drawn up into exotic looking ruches

Silk wound round a plastic tube, then bound with, in the one case, fine cotton, in the other, rough thick twine. I'm interested in how the different binders affect the pattern; whether the texture of the twine will appear in the resist.

 More cotton, a strip this time, folded into triangles, concertina style, then stitched right through at the borders with, perhaps, the arms of a snowflake pattern. The stitching then drawn up on two sides, and on the snowflake arms, for texture. I'm hoping the stitches on the long edge will resist right through and leave a little ant trail at the folds end make the final arms of the snowflake. Alternatively, there'll be a jumble of textures, reading as nothing!

Then there's the old linen tea towel, probably Ganna's; folded, again concertina style, (linenfold) then folded again and wrapped, not too tight, with a rubber band

Lastly, some leaves, perhaps, or maybe little fish ...

stitched into the single layer of fabric, drawn up tight and tied off, with a little spin round the nubbin for added texture

 then I pleated (as best I could) the fabric across it's width, leaving the little nubbins sticking out. We'll see.

Where are the ideas coming from? From Janice Gunner's Shibori for Textile Artists. It is full of so many interesting things. You may remember the video I posted on Shibori a while back. It's the Japanese art of tying  binding, pleating and otherwise adding resists to cloth with thread, clamps and "stuff". Having absorbed plenty from Christine's last workshop, I really wanted to have some ready prepared cloth as well as doing some more folding and clamping tomorrow, with the other bits of cloth I've not shown you!

I wonder what pictures I'll be posting on Tuesday!

craft blogging

I'm sure I have commented on this before, but there are such riches to be found amongst those sharing bits of their lives by blogging. Recently I have been watching several things being created, bit by bit.
There is Judy's Manitoulin Circle Project, which always holds within each post a deep sense of art and craft in action and in community.
Gina with her great textile creations and current, sketchbook project - really inspiring, in an "if only I could manufacture enough time" way!
Susan's lovely Lavender post, dye and stitch in soft harmony,
Penny's Celtic Crow, along with the numerous book inspirations in her side bar,
Karen's lovely piece of peaceful circles
And always Jude's amazing and fascinating work, words and pictures. I keep promising myself some time spent following one of her on line courses, but don't feel myself skilful enough yet to take advantage!

All of these good souls take time, not only to create things that are lovely, but add that extra time to photograph, think about and share their processes with anyone who wants to watch and maybe join in. I am learning so much from them, not least that you can only create if you - well - create, which seems obvious but  I tend to spend too much time reading and not enough doing. The beauty of  blogging of this quality is that you get to see the doing and the thinking behind it, along with the time it takes to create. Real lessons from real life in how, really, to follow the dream.