Nunofelted shibori silk

Last month I blogged about a shibori workshop that I'd attended and had quite a few pieces of fabric at the end of it.  One of those was a black piece of silk georgette that I had put marble resists into then discharged the dye.  The resulting discharged silk was lovely in itself but I felt that I probably would never do anything with it as silk.

I decided to nuno felt that piece with black wool batts so that I could make it into a bag .....of course.

I managed to get very little distortion of the silk during the process to allow the pattern still to be evident:

I ended up having enough felt to make two bags:

The one on the left is a casual sling / messenger type bag with an adjustable webbing strap.

The other is larger and a bit smarter with purchased handles and a solid base with little purse feet.  The larger one also has a zipped pocket inside and both have magnetic closures.

For those of you in the area, you'll find me next in the Wheel 'n'Weft Christmas sale, Thornleigh community Centre, Thornleigh (29-31 Oct).

Some monoprinting fun

I brought out my piece from summer school this week (while I was looking for something else of course) and thought that I would make something of or at least with it.  Two minutes later I decided it would stay as it was "for later consideration", just couldn't cut it up etc.  However I was inspired enough to get the fabric paints out again and print some more.

I found some A4 ish pieces of fabric that I'd dyed a terrible puce yellow for some reason and thought they'd be ideal for a makeover.
I got quite into it and was fairly pleased with the prints so I turned them into smallish bags that I thought would sell at my next sale.

I did some free embroidery on each design to echo the print designs, backed on to interfacing then wadding.
The bags are closed with flexiframes - you used to only get these in 3.5inch widths but I've now discovered 4.5inch ones that you can at least get your hand through, wonderful - the things that excite me!!

The cording means they can be hung, or put a lobster clasp through the loops at the side and you can attach it to your belt, handbag. 

Alchemy!

I think this was a very useful exercise if only to find out which metallic threads my machine liked and which ones it absolutely hated (those I've relegated to the next free for all at ATASDA social day bearing a "health warning"!).
The metallics I used are in the photo below (in the same arrangement as used in the samples):

The middle pale blue in the second row...aargh...Madeira no.15 if any of you fare better with it free machining without producing birds' nests underfoot let me know.


9.1

 

9.2



9.1 and 9.2 the samples of machining those metallics with red and blue thread, respectively, in the bobbin.

Some of the differences in overall colour are more obvious than others.

The next exercise was to pick one metallic and stitch samples using different colours of bobbin thread.  I picked the very gold metallic (middle of bottom row) and used 4 colours from my research eg. shades of coral and green.


9.3

 9.3 shows the back of the work and the bobbin colours.

9.4

9.4 shows the front.  Each metallic/bobbin thread is sewn in 4 directions to test for any colour changes with light reflection.

Disappearing Shibori

I spent today at a wonderful workshop run by ATASDA NSW in  Sydney with Barbara Schey, renowned shibori textile artist.  Barbara is part of a great exhibition "Scarf"on at the moment by the World shibori Network Australia in the Barometer Gallery, Paddington, in Sydney.  For those of you in the area I thoroughly recommend visiting before it closes on 3 October.
Barbara was showing us some techniques for creating shibori patterns by discharging dye from black fabric.  She has some amazing blocks and clamps largely homemade as is typical of her thrifty self and she was typically generous in letting us loose on them to experiment.  There was no end to our samples as she'd  kindly brought along further cotton fabric supplies for us to purchase and Sylvia of silksational was also on hand with silk - dangerous temptation!

Barbara has a great laboursaving device for binding fabric on to a pole to create arashi designs.

I wrapped plain black cotton homespun using it and discharged the dye using bleach and vinegar to produce this piece of fabric. 

I love the herringbone pattern myself. Barbara's husband had 'run up' that piece of hardware for her, of course.  I can't see mine doing that somehow - buys me great textile works of art but not constructively good with a hammer!

Shaped wooden blocks were clamped around the folded cotton voile, wrapped in string and then treated with bleach and vinegar to produce these patterns:

It's always interesting to see the different colours that the different black fabrics can be discharged to.
As well as discharging cotton and other plant based fabrics we looked at silk, using TUD and vinegar to discharge the colour.

I played around with black silk georgette, using marbles and elastic bands as resists to produce this piece of fabric - a bit more organic than I expected but definitely has possibilities.

There was so much more we learned about but ran out of experimenting time, like degumming and melting back lame that I left buzzing with ideas - so many plans, so little time.......

Twisting and turning

After spending most of a day playing with wire, I felt like this little chap!
I think I need to keep a safe distance between me and a reel of wire for a bit now!
A quick summary of the types of coils or purls I did manage to produce that were presentable.

8.1



8.1 shows at the top of the photo, some purchased tubular cord and some of the metallic wire from gauge 20 up to 28.  I made quite a few lengths of purl as in the centre then had fun recoiling these lengths over purl cores.  "Beads" like those at the bottom were produced.

8.2

8.2 I looked at covering the wire before coiling.  At the top is garden wire bought covered in green plastic coating then coiled.  The second one is gold wire covered in red cotton embroidery floss then coiled.
In the middle I pushed the length of wire inside cotton tubular knitting yarn then coiled.  A length of this coil was then recoiled to produce the shorter fawn coloured purl under that.
The gold coil is the purchased gold cord at the top wired and coiled like the knitting yarn above it.
The bottom one is coiled wire which has been beaded with white seed beads before coiling.