Beads galore - chapt 6

This chapter looks at making collections of beads - found and created by various means.
I began by 'finding' small items that could be described as beads in that they could be threaded or attached in some way to create or embellish a surface.

6.1: Found items (clockwise spiral from top left) - bread ties, cut negatives, leaf and round sequins, plastic press studs, curtain hooks, collar extenders, small pegs, plastic paperclip, decorative metal paperclips

6.2: Metal found items (l ti r) - washers, key, eyelets, magnetic bag clasp backs

6.3: Vegetation found items (l to r) - gumnuts, bark pods

Paper pulp beads
Made some paper pulp from discarded computer paper printouts using a hand blender and used this to prepare some beads.

6.4: Paper pulp beads

These beads were formed around a knitting needle - round, rods, and some separately -  'gumnut' and flat button shapes.  I tried to emboss the surface of the button shapes using a ridged grip (for opening bottles) and a pasta scoop as shown in 6.5

6.5 Paper pulp buttons detail

I left these to dry then painted them with metallic acrylics, gilding and wrapped some in threads.

6.6 painted pulp beads

6.7 painted pulp beads - detail

Shrink plastic beads
Next, I painted some shrink plastic (3 types - matte translucent, white gloss, and clear) ready for beads.

6.7 Flow acrylics on shrink plastic (from top to bottom) - matte translucent, white gloss, and clear

These pieces are obviously before any shrinking; each piece is about 7cm by 20cm.  I've put a piece of white paper behind the painted clear plastic to illustrate the transparency.  I painted both sides and the reverse side is shown below in 6.8.

6.8 Painted shrink plastic (reverse side shown in 6.7)

 I cut various shapes and sizes from these including the shapes from chapter 4 and here then used a heat gun to shrink them down by about 50%.

6.9 Shapes cut from painted shrink plastic (pre-shrinking)

6.10 Shrink plastic shapes after shrinking

I found that retaining the shape of some that were quite intricately cut was difficult when the heat gun tended to blow them away - maybe use the oven next time.  However I particularly liked the clear plastic motifs (shown on black in 6.11 to highlight the holes precut in them).

6.11 More shrink plastic 'beads' after shrinking

Toggle beads
Some rolled beads were made using various polyester sheer fabrics - 2 layers bonded together with vliesofix webbing.

6.12a Fabric toggle beads

The ends the fabric strips were stuck down using the tip of an iron.  These are about 2 to 2.5cm long.

6.12b fabric togggle beads in detail

Some of these were further decorated by wrapping in embroidered kunin felt and heat gunned (6.13), by burning with a soldering iron tip (6.14) and by wrapping in fine wire, rolling in puff paint, heating and surface painting with metallic acrylics (6.15).

6.13 fabric beads decorated with burnt felt

6.14 soldered fabric beads

6.15 wire wrapped and painted fabric beads

Stitching and Threading
I recycled some wooden beads from an op-shop bag and used them to embellished some jute string crochet in 6.16, photographed on pot permanganate dyed cotton.

6.16 embellished jute crochet

The same beads were threaded with other seed beads to mimic the wave patterns of indigenous painting (6.17).

6.17 threaded beads on raffia lace background

6.18 painted shrink beads attached

6.19: Painted shrink beads in shape off gumnuts thread through jute twine and interlaced with 'leaf lace' background from chapt 2.

Loom Weaving
I used a small commercial bead loom for this part as I'd not had much luck in the past with keeping the warp threads taut enough in my 'homemade' box and string efforts.  I was still not looking forward to it and as expected it took me hours to complete even a small length.  On retrospect, it would have been much easier had I not used cheap beads that were subtly irregular in size - note to self,  false economy!

6.20: bead weaving

6.21 Weaving on loom with design

I used seed beads and drew a pattern up based on my little boomerang shape
So here is my weaving (approx 2cm wide by 13.5cm long) photographed on a couple of related backgrounds.

6.22

6.23

Silk paper suspensions - chapt 6

Working towards using silk paper in some resolved samples later on, I played around with suspending various 'treasures' within silk fibres, initially undyed tussah silk. My intention was to make the items appear to float on the surface, so the silk layers were very thin, particularly over the items themselves - not so apparent in the photos on a white background.

6.1: captured scrim and soft cocoons

6.2:eucalyptus leaves 

6.3 wool nepps

6.4: feathers

6.5: raffia strips

Then did a bit of dyeing of the fibres using acid dyes

6.6: dye added and 'squidged' through the fibres previous soaked in vinegar

6.7: Wrapped in clingfilm and steamed for 30 mins

6.8:dried dyed tussah silk

Used this dyed silk for more paper

6.9: trapped leaves and machined cords

6.10: torn photos of vegetation

6.11: sliced felt ball

Resolved knitting sample

The inspiration for my resolved sample came from a photo I took in the autumn out of my 'studio' window.  I can see one of the few deciduous trees in our garden from there, and in the autumn it was a gorgeous mass of red.

6.12

I aimed to create a sample that would give a sense of the colour arising from the volume/ bulk of leaves and variety of tone, using a multilayered 'fabric' of knitting elements.

6.13

I first knitted a piece with holes and elongated stitches (15 x 18cm) using plastic strips, then ironed it (6.13) and painted it with acrylics (6.14).

6.14

Small quantities of overlocked braided threads were prepared using combinations of red, green and fawn threads in needles and interlopers.  Some of these 'braids' were also created over a thicker core Perle thread (bottom left of 6.14).  A piece of knitting was made out of these threads.

6.15

6.16 (detail of 6.15)

Although the piece looked a bit like discarded seaweed there was a plan, really.  Since it was made with 3 longish disconnected 'fingers' of knitting, I could weave it out and in the plastic lattice.

6.17

 The piece lacked focus and green actually (although the photo does not do the actual colourings any justice either), so I treated some real leaves with polymer sealant and threaded them on to green perle 8 before attaching them by crochet chain stitching them in situ.

Et voila.... my resolved sample

6.18

6.19
( detail of 6.18)

Knitting samples galore

For chapter 6, I chose the knitting option A for my "constructed fabric" fun and played around with a few odd materials while trying to keep to my tree/ vegetation research theme.
Started with strips of muslin that I had dyed previously to get a handle on the size of knitting pins I'd need.

6.1

6.1 This was olive green but it hasn't come out in the photo.  Plain knitting, size 12 by 9cm. Roughly all the samples to follow are about 12x10cm at least.

6.2

 6.2 uses raffia, incorporating tiny gum nuts that were strung on green perle and knitted in along with the raffia - bit of a nightmare if truth be told since the raffia continually broke.  Detail is shown in 6.3

6.3

6.4

6.4 uses green jute gardening string, playing around here with holes and stretched elongated stitches.

6.5

6.5 is knitted up strips cut from black gardening matting (the kind that retards the growth of weeds through it, when in one piece, obviously).  I thought it amusing to tie bits of green hairy fibre through like weeds!

6.6

Since the matting was synthetic and looked a bit like Tyvek I ironed another piece of knitting to get this wonderfully lacey 2D piece.  Photo 6.6 shows the transparency of it held up to the light.

6.7

6.7 On the plastic-melting front I knitted up thin strips of transparent food bags then ironed the knitting to get a weblike structure that took acrylic paint well.

6.8

6.8 is a photo of a sample I did for a workshop I taught last year on contemporary lace structures, but I thought that it also fitted in here since it involves layers of painted melted knitted plastic bag strips then machine stitched with scrim and organza.  It's something I'll return to for the resolved sample in the next posting.

6.9

 I do prefer the finer knitting, so I went back to 2 ply crochet cotton in 6.9.  The top part of the sample uses the single yarn while for the lower half, I monkey chained the yarn before knitting.

6.10

 More laciness and holes in 6.10 (and detail in 6.11) using overlocked thread as the knitting yarn.  The bottom part is knitted from 3-5mm strips of organza with rolled overlocked edging which gives a nice shadowy effect I think.  The middle part uses a two thread wide overlock on the same organza, while the top uses the same wide overlock but no structure ie. threads only.  I particularly like the top part as the threads look like braids in their own right.

6.11

I felt that I could have made many samples with all the ideas I had on dyeing threads, completed knitting etc but stopped at this point to concentrate on my resolved sample which will appear in the next posting.