Thursday, October 21, 2010

Jacket


This coat was the result of a wonderful workshop with Catherine O'Leary. My efforts were in vain during the lessons as none of the silk would adhere properly to the needle felted batts. So I ended up making a sample piece which I brought home and added to with more sample pieces. The resulting jacket is a work that I will wear myself. Peter even said it looked beautiful!! High praise from him!

Lessons with Catherine O'Leary




Fibre Forum in Geelong was a real blast. Had a whole week working with Catherine O'Leary - my favourite felt artist!! It was such a treat. We learned to do three dimensional felt sculptures.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Experimentation with Eco-Dyeing



It seems that the water, together with the time of year that leaves are collected and a hundred myriad of other possibilities affects the colour that you can get from indigeneous vegetation. So I have posted a couple of pictures to show what I have achieved to date!

India Flint workshop






Recently went to an India Flint workshop at Beautiful Silks in Fitzroy, Melbourne. It was a revelation! I am now experimenting with a friend using eco-dyeing techniques. We are having a wonderful time. Haven't been able to achieve any consistency yet with the colours but am working hard to achieve this!

Saturday, June 26, 2010

More dyeing experimentation






Here are the other dying experiment photos.

Playing with dye






Last week a friend and I played with some new dye techniques. We were trying to create interesting and appealing designs on tissue silk that we could then later use in hard nuno felting. I will take these pieces to Canberra on the weekend to use them in a workshop with Catherine O'Leary. I am really looking forward to learning some new skills! I have included some photos of our dyeing efforts.

We tried using silk paints on the tissue silk that need steam to set them. We tired both wet and dry tissue silk. The effects were interesting as the tissue silk is so fine. We found it very difficult to control the "bleed" effect of the dye on the silk.

Next we carved some block prints and brushed the block prints with Textcraft dual purpose paints and placed them on the tissue silk. This was easy to control, but the final look was very predictable due to the prints we had cut.

We also tried some Lumin Arte polished pigments mixed with fibre fixative which we painted onto the tissue silk. The effect was beautiful. But we found that the first heat seal did not prevent all the colour from leaching out of the silk when washed! They needed to be heat treated and then washed before being heat treated again. This seemed to set the colour more effectively. It will be interesting to see if these colours stand the felting process!!

Latest Designs for "Undercurrents" Exhibition





Our recent Fashion Parade and "Undercurrents' Exhibition for the Eurobodalla Fibre Textile Artists were both huge successes. The greatest ever number of people visited the exhibition and we had a full house for the fashion parade.

These pieces were displayed in the Exhibition. The first red piece is entitled "Electric Currents" and is a merino and nuno sleeveless jacket with stand-up collar that had free-hand machine embroidery on it in silver threads. Next are hand embroidered harem slippers. I create my own pattern and made the fabric from different pieces and hand-stitched the pieces together with gold embroidery. The piece is title "Bedroom Undercurrents". The blue sleeveless blouse is made from fine silk, hand-dyed in indigo dye, hand pleated and steamed, titled "Sea Currents". I cut the pattern whilst a friend of mine modeled the fabric - so it is truly an "original" piece. Lastly is a hand sewn shibori piece. The dye was removed from the fabric revealing the fine drawn stitching. Finished off with found objects and entitled "Surface Undercurrents". I hope you like them!

The fashion parade pieces will be put on this blog very soon.