We spent the weekend with family on the east coast and as October slips away and November sneaks in, the autumn leaves and colours are giving way to cool winds and rain. Good weather for stitching…on lichen piece 4. Inspired by one of my husband’s photos, at the top of this image, I am mainly workin with stranded cotton on a piece of soft organic cotton painted with dyes.
I’m using cretan stitch for its effectiveness in recreating the lichen shapes that occur in colonies. The texture comes from overlaying thicker perle threads and some shinier rayons.
By this afternoon I had progressed this far and took the opportunity to photograph outside in a spell of sunshine. I’m really pleased with how the sun has created enough shadows on the piece to be very suggestive of lichen colonies. It’s a bit wrinkly out of its hoop, but you get the idea.
Tonight I will stretch lichen 3 over a piece of card. The lichen collection are building into a little gallery. And I have plenty more ideas, thanks to some wonderful photographs I have found or been sent. (Thank you ,Jane.)
I’m collecting images for a sketchbook-this one is for the section illustrating “Shape”. Or perhaps for “Colour”. I found it on Sunday and it is straight from the camera, no manipulation. The tiny berry is my favourite element.
There were more printing experiments today, as well as steaming yesterday’s pieces. I should have known there would be hitches-the cloth I used for the first attempt was a found scrap and judging by how pale the finished print is, I think it must be a polycotton mix. The image on the second piece is much stronger and as the cloth is visibly different I must conclude that it was a cotton and the dyes have fixed to it better.
I made another print on a lovely piece of silk organza and was quite pleased , until I moved it from the garage to the house to dry. The wind caught the wet silk and twisted it round itself, the dyed surfaces sticking together…….I have pulled it apart but the image is not exactly crisp now. I’ll photograph it after it is steamed and dried.
I realised too that the board I am working on is not quite flat and the contact between the screen and the printing surface is not great. I need to sort that out before I do anything much else, but it will have to wait until next week now. I feel the need to be stitching again.
I couldn’t resist adding the next line of Joni Mitchell’s song after yesterday’s post, and it also happens to be true. Partly external noise from a range of late night revellers-heck it was a Tuesday-and partly, because I was awake and listening to noisy young men going who knows where, I was thinking about the order of applying the different coloured dyes to a silk screen. Like you do.
I had spent the morning setting up a printing area in the garage so I could finally use my birthday present silk screen and accessories. It was the warm weather that encouraged me to make a start, knowing I could work in the open, dry any fabric on the washing line and use the outside tap to rinse the screen etc. It’s a real Heath Robinson affair, but I can’t believe how much fun I had or where the afternoon went.
My screen is generously sized, so for the first attempt I masked off half of it with paper tape. It still measured about 12 x 18 inches. That’s it above, with a range of masking objects stuck to it after the first print-washers, newsprint, a maple leaf. And below left, the first print, made with a golden yellow dye.
Without cleaning the screen, I moved it right and made the second print by adding red and blue printing paste to the screen and squeegeeing them through, creating the greens and purples as the two new colours mixed with the yellow. I had quite a lot of the paste left at this point so made another image before I cleared the screen.
I love the way the dye haloes around the objects on the screen.
The final step yesterday was to investigate what would result if I pulled another colour over the clean, blank screen , to tint those voids. I can’t quite remember what I did but the sample on the right below is what the yellow print turned into.
I’m still waiting for the prints to finish drying before I steam them, and then decide how to colour the remaining white voids. I’m hoping that I will have worked it out before I try to sleep tonight-either that or I will buy me a bottle of wine…oh it sure is hard to leave you…enough of that. I shall have to go and play the song. On real vinyl. I have had it since it was released in 1972…….
Crazy warm winds blowing straight from west Africa- it feels like summer here. Central heating is off again, the river is looking wonderful and I’ve been working outdoors. In a t-shirt. Pictures tomorrow. Not of the t- shirt.
When I was young-or rather, in that in between stage when you are neither child nor adult, I was intrigued by radio waves. I had a little portable radio that I listened to after I was supposed to be asleep, trying to find the pirate radio stations or radio Luxembourg playing pop music, or any of those wonderful stations broadcasting in languages I could not understand, from places I could only locate on a radio dial, not a map.
Sometimes there would be mysterious Morse code, occasionally American baseball, being aired for the American Forces air bases. I wondered just how these songs and conversations could get beneath my bed covers, to make the little radio I was hiding work, bringing fragments and motes of the wider world to my underwhelming Midland suburb.
More recently I have been intrigued by how the garden I have made here from a bare site , carefully planted with my choice of plants, has also become home to arrivals I have had no part in. Weeds, obviously, arriving by air or in pots of compost from other places, seed blown annuals, brambles left by thoughtless birds, and lichen. Lichen is like botanical radio waves. Always there, all around, just waiting for a receiver. It grows on my trees, on the stones around the pond, on the window sills.
I am looking for it now and in looking, finding it. Everywhere. From a Flickr contact I have found some incredible images but also an art site, the work of Kevin Mark Bernstein whose work is all inspired by nature. My newest stitched piece is an attempt to suggest the way lichens colonise a surface. Tyvek painted and heated, machined to linen scrim and then individual lichen dots in French knots, cottons and silks and rayons.
I understand how lichens might move to new areas. But radio waves? No-that’s still magic. And so is this.
I finished the first lichen inspired piece begun here, and I have started a “Lichen ” sketchbook to record my findings about this fascinating plant life.
There is a wonderful website of lichen information here and one of the facts I learned today was that the reproductive spores are produced in disc-like structures called apothecia. There are two main variations of these-ones that appear to be like wine gums and others with a pale margin described as being like jam tarts. That’s my favourite fact of the day.
Botanically speaking my embroidery sample depicts the disc-like fruiting bodies known as lecanorine apothecia- the jam tart shaped variation. Whoever knew they could be so pretty? In reality, this sample is mostly bullion stitch and pattern darning on painted linen scrim.
Just played with watercolour this morning- it seemed appropriate for a windmill in the fens. The colour of those sails popped up on Emma’s lovely blog today too.
We spent the weekend in Cambridge, catching up with the children and their significant others, eating out, exploring outdoor spaces. This is on Sunday morning at Wicken Fen-the last working windpump in the Fens. I love the way the sails imitate the sky colours; I love the burnt out colour in the reeds.
The reeds whisper all the time-tales of eels and little birds and vanished people. I love the subtlety of this landscape. And these guys too.
Thanks to Celia for the title-I really liked her comment. A little more stitching has happened-a mixture of machine stitching, pattern darning to melt the edges of the chiffon into the openweave and a little couching.
And thanks to Celia too where indirectly I found this lovely blog.
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- before ironing
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- after ironing
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- stitched to chiffon and openweave
We have had just enough rain over the last couple of days to make my vegetable plot workable-it has been very dry here for several weeks. The soil is heavy clay and we joke that there are about 4 days in any year when it is a pleasure to work. Today was one of them, and I spent it with a spade, a fork and 23 bags of horse manure. I know how to have a good time in the sunshine.
The first lichen piece is nearly stitched-I need to give some thought to how to present it, but I have been working on a second piece too. Following our session with Tyvek at Moonrakers on Saturday, I thought, What If I make some Tyvek lichen? I painted the tyvek with acrylic and silk paints, used felt as a ground, added some painted bondaweb and then machine stitched licheny shapes before ironing. The bondaweb has controlled the amount of shrinkage and the resulting piece of fabric was like a thin leather-quite intriguing.
I trimmed around the stitching and have machined it to a piece of cotton openweave fabric that I had placed snippets of silk/metal chiffon and silk waste threads on. I will hand stitch into it and review how it looks, but I’m quite liking it.
We spent a delightful day on Sunday at Barrington Court in Somerset, a lovely Tudor pile rescued from dereliction in the 1920’s. The gardens were then laid out in the “themed room” manner of Gertrude Jekyll, with a white garden and a glorious “hot” garden. Despite the date, roses were blooming enthusiastically and the borders were still full of colour, as you can see. It was like inhaling the last of the summer’s warmth and beauty.
Saturday saw the first of the meetings of the Textile Group we are launching in mid Wiltshire. We have found a great venue in Devizes and plan to meet on the first Saturday of each month, to try out techniques, share skills, bring ideas and projects,talk textiles, drink coffee, set ourselves challenges and may work towards an exhibition.
Our first session was led by Anna and we played with Tyvek. Yes I know you all know how to use it, but it was new for me and great fun to start exploring it. I’m thinking more lichen….
It was such an enjoyable morning, the time flew by, we left full of ideas and set ourselves a challenge of Grids for the next meeting. You can see what we got up to here and if you are within strike of Devizes, and want to join us, leave a message/comment-we would love to welcome more people.
You wait ages for a bus and then two come along at the same time. Or so it is said. It was not long after I blogged at you about lichen yesterday that my husband passed me the new issue of the National Trust magazine where there was a beautifully illustrated article about…lichen.
I had already fallen in love with the image of dots Jude created here and the middle picture reminded me of it. I have been working on the first of my lichen pieces this afternoon, using a piece of openweave linen scrim and silk paints to create areas of colour. This evening I will start stitching it-bullion knots and laidwork and maybe darning.
I like the way the linen is sheer enough to see through, and I like the image left on my sketchbook page after I had finished painting the cloth.
I am planning a textile piece or maybe a set of samples on a theme of lichen, following a series of coincidences that happened over the last few days. It seems sometimes events conspire together to point in a particular direction-signposts to a new pathway.
The first occurrence was on Sunday when we were out walking the chalk downs around Avebury, not far from home. As we were admiring the entrance to West Kennet long barrow, above, my eye was drawn to the yellow lichen growing on the stones.
And a few miles further on we passed the site of some of England’s rarest lichens and promised ourselves a detour to see them on our next walking trip.
These coincidences were compounded on Tuesday when I was listening to a news report about how lichens are being used in a study by Imperial College, London to monitor air quality and public participation was invited. I downloaded the booklet on identifying lichens, about which I know almost nothing except that I have always found them fascinating to look at, and admired the wonderful close-ups of some of the species. Of course, I was then reminded that lichen has been used a dye plant since time immemorial. I think there is a trend away from collecting lichens for this purpose because of the threats to various species from air pollution and from over collecting.
I guess there is a whole unresearched strand for me there, but in the meantime I settled on painting a bit of silk velvet in a licheny sort of way. As you can see, I still haven’t sorted out the dye blends and the fixing-the blueish areas started life as greens-but there are some usefully lichen coloured areas.
I have been enjoyably busy for the last week, occupied with my watercolour paints, with magazine cuttings, with learning new things, with taking shedloads of photos to capture the autumn light and colours. I have been feeling guilty about my lack of textile posting, but today I have concluded that I will post about what has captured my butterfly brain at the moment, and hope you will come along for the ride. It might just be fun. But it will definitely be me.
Exceptional weather here-just about to come to an end, but we were blessed for our Sunday walk. Hope you like these.
All being well, we launch our textile group this Saturday. And now we have a blog for it too. You might recognise the style… : )
It has been quite a long time since I set needle to fabric, for various reasons. I have spent the last week suffering from what I can only describe as flu-like symptoms-aching, very tired, sore throat, headache-you know the deal. Mercifully today I am beginning to feel more like myself and the energy has started to return, helped by some glorious September sunshine. I must get out and take some photographs before it starts to fade.
I made the little textile postcard last week-loads of fun. I flung cotton and silk velvet at some pellon, overlaid wool threads and knitting ribbons, stitched it all down, laid on some machine embroidery and then gessoed over all of it. Layers of silk and acrylic paint followed, some machine and hand stitching and a few beads for even more fun.
The actual point of the card-apart from the fun, was to take to a meeting of a prospective new textile group in the area where I live. We have already had one meeting and last Saturday met up at a venue in Devizes to see if it was suitable as a venue for monthly meetings. It was, so more details will follow when I have shared them with the other people in the group. It promises to be inspiring.
Today was a shopping in Bath day. I am so lucky to live a 10 minute train ride away from this city-the shopping is great, the surroundings stunning. I bought the batting for the bed head piece I posted about yesterday, picked up a missing issue of Quilting Arts with an article by Jackie Dogdaisychains in it:- Hi Jackie -and thanks for the link to the Harris tweed programmes-and visited the current exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery, which is the work of the English artist Kurt Jackson.
Kurt Jackson was born in 1961 and specialises in painting rivers and natural landscapes, in a fluid and dynamic style that captures the essence of waterways and rainy days brilliantly. He uses a range of different media and has made several river series. The current one in Bath is Part Two of his Avon series, from Bath to Avonmouth. Part one, from the river source to Bath was staged a couple of years ago, although I missed it.
I know a couple of people who read this blog are from the east of England and they may like these Kurt Jackson images of Wicken fen, where Silverpebble heard a nightingale earlier this year. They have a delicious, textural quality.
I was particularly taken with his small mixed media works-watercolour paper, collaged and gessoed newsprint and exquisite botanical painting in acrylic. I couldn’t photograph anything I’m afraid, so that is why this post is so link heavy. Sorry-just ignore them if you’ve a mind too. I loved this exhibition so much I shall be going back for a second look and may just try a couple of sketches for you.
Recently we visited the vibrant little town of Bishop’s Castle, in Shropshire, as part of our holiday. We have been there before whilst walking the Shropshire Hills. On that occasion we stayed in a medieval burgage house, built in the 15th century, and it was the higgledy-piggledy charms of that house that lured us back (as well as the two small breweries!)
Bishop’s Castle has escaped the town planning chaos so prevalent in England during the last part of the twentieth century, and survives as an independent minded, spirited little town, acting as both the centre of a dispersed farming community and a thriving artistic population. The High Street has almost no national chain shops-just a wide variety of local outlets, including an excellent textile store and a fine craft bookshop.
It was in the textile shop- Textile Techniques, that I bought the piece of cotton and silk ikat fabric shown here. For the longest time I have been contemplating making a textile hanging for the head of our bed. We have no headboard and I wanted to make something to function as one. Several ideas have occurred to me over the last couple of years, but when I saw this fabric I knew I had found the fabric I was looking for.
It is made on the island of Bali in small home workshops, and has a shimmer to the surface from where the silk threads are woven over the cotton ones. It is a true ikat-the threads being bound and dyed before weaving, not printed.
There were several designs to choose from-it was very difficult- and there are more on the website. I also notice that amongst the unique items listed, there is some exquisite silk ikat from Uzbek weavers living in Afghanistan. I really, really want a length of it-but it is expensive and I don’t really have a project for it. Yet.
I also bought some beautiful indigo stitched fabric from south west China-but I will save that for another post. The sharp eyed amongst you may have noticed some random Flickr pictures on the site too. They are part of my new adventure, which I will also post about soon. A new voyage into unknown waters,although the charts are familiar, to keep the nautical theme going.
I’m home, relaxed, happy and ready for an autumn creative phase-I hope. And I will be round to visit you all soon-had a couple of sneaky peaks at what is going on, but I have been a bit of a lurker. Forgive my silence-I will start chatting again soon.
I had to share this with you-one of the highlights of my holiday. We visited the Acton Scott historic farm-UK readers may have seen the Victorian Farm on the BBC earlier this year which was made here. One of the rare breed Tamworth pigs had recently had a litter of seven piglets. They are two days old and so cute-like puppies. If you have a mind to and a moment, I have uploaded a short ,grunty, snuffly video to Flickr, here. Enjoy.
I am going to recharge the batteries, view new horizons, spend time with friends and family. Catch you all in September.
The garden is giving up its produce quite enthusiastically at the moment, and I need to spend hours dealing with beans and herbs, courgettes and tomatoes, not to mention the boxes of shallots and onions. Today’s gifts were red tomatoes, now turned into chutney and a large bundle of parsley, still at the deeply verdant stage. I chopped it quite finely and then packed it into ice cube trays,topping it with water before putting it to freeze. It is a good way to preserve both the colour and the flavour. When the parsley cubes are set, they will be unmoulded and packed into bags, ready to add to casseroles and stews later on this season.
There are signs too that the summer is slipping away. The robins have started their winter songs, claiming territories, defending the newly acquired patches. Apples are starting to fall, sweet corn is ripening. Next week the children go back to school. I will be walking in the Shropshire Hills- the blue remembered hills of A.E. Houseman’s poem “a Shropshire Lad.”
What are those blue remembered hills
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went,
And cannot come again.
I am embroidering a blue daisy garden on the piece of dyed linen, to remember this summer. It will not come again.
When I was a child, I liked to take things apart to find out how they worked. Nominally. I liked to take them apart but only superficially understood, in most cases, how they worked. I think I lacked the real drive to understand properly and the ready source of someone to explain them to me in a way that was interesting and understandable. I used to like to put them back together too, but I always had a bit left over, or just couldn’t quite manage to get them back in exactly the same way.
When I stopped working 3 years ago, I started spinning wool. It was a technology I could understand. The wheel is a simple, effective machine for transforming fleece into a thread and I can knit. A couple of weeks ago we visited a country fair where there were a few alpacas. It reminded me that at home I had some alpaca fleece from my first forays into spinning and I have been spinning it in the garden over the last week or so.
Spinning is a pleasant summer activity. I sit in the shade in the garden, under the honeysuckle and the debris from spinning is kept safely out of the house. Alpaca fibre is lovely to work with. There is no grease (lanolin) as in sheep’s wool but it is usually dusty and there are always bits of seed and other debris better left in the garden than on the carpet. Also, as it is hair rather than wool, the tendency for the carpet to start to look as if we own a ginger cat or dog is avoided.
The steps are simple. Acquire fleece-this is e-Bay’s finest.
Use sharp toothed wool carders-mine were made on the Shetland islands and were well used when I was given them- and transform the fleece into soft “batts”.
Spin the fleece into a long single thread and then ply 2 of these threads together to make a yarn.
I have a delightfully named gadget called a niddy noddy that I wind the thread onto to make hanks. I wash them by hand in a mild liquid detergent, dry them on the washing line and then twist them to keep them tidy. When I have a willing pair of hands to hold the hank, I make balls of wool ready for knitting.
Don’t hold your breath for a garment. There’s about 6 ounces of wool here, so a long way to go and hours of carding and spinning before I can begin to knit and then there is time needed to complete the actual knitting. I feel this is definitely slow cloth. And it feels so meditative to sit and spin, the combination of using hands and feet together creating a sense of unity and calm. I recommend it for the dog days of August.
And finally, thank you for your good wishes -they are much appreciated. Can I share my lovely birthday flowers from my daughter with you? I wish I could share the perfume too.
The light has a special quality today. Colours are singing in the sunlight, shadows of leaves are dancing . I am learning to see, to notice. This is my garden bouquet for my birthday. I’ve had a lovely day.
Unwrapped linen. No white circles but purple peaks in a blue sea. Shibori oceans and islands. Or perhaps mountains.
The dye experiments were repeated this morning, under the watchful gaze of my furry friend. I was tempted to over-dye the pale piece from last time, but liked its pallid charm. I spent an enjoyable evening session yesterday binding another little piece of linen and this is how it looked just before I put it in the steamer, tied and dyed. The dye powder content has been adjusted and although there will be some colour loss when it is washed, if there is a great deal I will know there is a problem with the fixing.
The squirrel has worked out how to remove the peanuts from the bird feeder. She is right beside the lounge window, 4 inches from the glass. I am so enjoying her visits.
Yesterday we walked for miles. It was a good day for be out and about-sunny in spells, a gentle breeze, not too hot. Hereabouts there are true blue wild flowers in bloom, like the chicory below, and clouds of butterflies, some of which were also blue. But too swift for me to photograph.
Today being Monday, I thought I should have a Monday Blues day, using the chicory to inspire my first attempts at dyeing. I’m using the same kind of Procion dyes I played with at Carole Waller’s . I have been following the various dot inspired pieces around the web with interest and thought “what if I use dots as a starting point , and for good measure try a shibori technique I read about in Francoise Tellier-Loumagne’s book “The art of embroidery”.
I marked out a grid of 16 dots on a piece of white linen, put a pin through the fabric at each dot and wrapped a cotton thread around each pin to make a little -well, nipple. I have no real idea how much dye powder to use and guessed at a quantity and duly painted the cloth. It looked a little pale so I dribbled more dye over. I left the piece to dry and then steamed it .
I was expecting 16 little white rings on a blue cloth. Instead I got….
….which looks pale and interesting. No actual rings, but some interesting patterns. Even some chicory blooms, with a little imagination. Too little dye, too little fixed, but a start. I wonder if the instruction about being suitable for printing but not for dyeing might be relevant too. He he. Might sit here this evening and bind another piece of cloth….
It has been a wonderful family summer-both our children and their significant others have spent time at our house and we have celebrated their milestone events with them, culminating last weekend with a once in a lifetime Passing Out parade at Sandhurst.
Much time has been spent out of doors, gathering the harvest, and the garage is now full of onions, shallots, garlic and potatoes drying and ripening. I have been lucky to get my gifts from the good earth before the rain has really set in. And it has. I must have suspected, when I spent so many hours tilling and toiling earlier this spring, that the summer weather would not last, and that the early crops would probably be a good investment in time.
It looks as if I shall be spending more time indoors for a while, so I have taken the chance to have a tidy up here, to put a few things away, to plump up the blog cushions, as it were. Throughout August I am going to be working on ideas in my sketchbook, with the idea of making samples in fabric. I want to do some screen printing, so I shall be thinking through themes and processes on that front and I intend to start reviewing some of the things I started in my C & G course, especially the beauty of Central Asian Textiles. And I want to look for the colourful things around here before the light starts to fade away for another summer and share some of my images of this summer with you.
The above picture is of an artichoke gone to flower. Mine seems to be rather more ornamental that culinary-it is a thing of great beauty,albeit spiny, but I can’t stand the smell! The vase of flowers containing it is now on the patio table in the rain, where I can see it but not smell it.
My blogging recently has been poor-I am trying to keep up to date with all the lovely things that are happening out there in Blogland and trying to be a good blog visitor, but my own has been neglected. I blame the needs of the vegetable garden and a certain lack of creative direction, but I feel sure things will right themselves soon. Thank you all for still popping by-it’s always a pleasure to see you here.
During the final session of my course last week, I completed 3 pieces of work-a backing for the silk velvet scarf, a piece of printed and painted silk organza and a piece of painted silk velvet.
I had spent some time thinking about the print motif I wanted to use on the organza and had drawn a pomegranate design with 3 elements to it which Carole had made up into a photo screen for printing. I had an idea I wanted to make a tree of life design, had sketched out various trial attempts, but I can categorically state that my pomegranate design did not work with the painting I did on the organza and I have filed the experience under “learned a lot, move on.”
Painting on organza is a lovely experience but I need to spend far more time trying out brush strokes and colour blends before attempting something ambitious on a fabric as expensive as silk organza. I am feeling frugal at present and whilst I want to experiment more with the techniques, it seems to be a pricey fabric just to play with.
The same could be said for working on silk velvet-but silk velvet is such a gorgeously tactile medium. Carole gave me about half a yard of silk velvet and suggested I just used up the colours I had mixed for the organza piece. I used both the thickened dyes I had printed with and thin ones and created the pattern as I worked, loosely using the idea of a nine patch grid with variations (spots and dots !) for half of the design, and painting the other half of the piece in plain red.
The colour palette is not one I normally use-I tend to shy away from bright colours and whilst I was painting the silk velvet , I wondered just exactly what I was doing, ruining this piece of white silk velvet with red and lime and black dye.
A few days later when I collected the now washed and dried velvet, I just loved it. The black had softened to a grey, the lime was a golden green. I have made it into a cushion, with the grid design on one side and the plain red on the other. It is fabulously huggable. I used a feather pad for inside the cushion, so it is squashy and feels like…well, the nose of a very fine horse. One of my favourite textures.
Carole has been a generous and inspiring teacher and there is to be another course in September. I may take it, but I have other things I want to do too, so I am undecided at the moment.
The highly talented Carole Waller and her partner, Gary Wood, an innovative potter, are currently holding their summer exhibition at the studio where my textile painting and dyeing course is being held. Last Thursday my good friend and neighbour VP and I visited it. May I commend VP’s wonderful photographs and post to you? I forgot my camera and VP has a fine way with words.
