Pages

Tuesday 29 November 2011

200th post - busy, busy , busy

After a bit of melt-down at the weekend due to too many half finished projects, too much craft-related mess, and general concern about Christmas plans, I managed to get my head together to do a major tidy up and get some project finished.  So here they are.

P1070832

Indigo dyed, shibori-tied velvet, with silk hand-pulled flowers and hand-rolled organdie leaves, so an online swap.

P1070842

10 x 10 journal for the Contemporary Quilt Group challenge.  disperse-dyed macho overlaid on viscose dyed with Procion MX.  Button from the Karen Ruane course, painted with dye and then attached ( haven't quite got the hang of photo editing on the new computer yet).

P1070843

Button detail.

P1070834

Hand-rolled organdie leaves, attached to one of the brooches / buttons from the Karen Ruane course.  One of the participants on the Morley course is a milliner, and showed us how to make these leaves.  i like the idea of having a set of these to add or remove from the brooch as you wish.

P1070835

Close up of the leaves.

As this is my 200th post, I am going to have a giveaway of one of these that are all now brooches.  I can also include some white or green leaves if you wish, but I'll need to get on  and make some.

P1070764

Leave a comment, with which one you would like and why, and I will do a draw next Monday to see who gets one.

Saturday 26 November 2011

Did you guess?

 Pole dyeing and table runner 007 Pole dyeing and table runner 008

Pole dyed cotton sheeting, with good definition of the wrapping cord on the cloth.  As a bonus, you also get lovely, dyed cords to play with.

Pole dyeing and table runner 013Pole dyeing and table runner 011

The lower piece is cotton organdy, which is actually a more vivid green than this photo depicts.  It stays curiously crunchy when dry, despite vigorous washing and rinsing .   I might give this to one of my Morley mates who is a milliner and who uses a lot of organdy.

This is my 199th post – amazing.

Thursday 24 November 2011

Wednesday 23 November 2011

I’ve actually made something from the dyed fabric

Pole dyeing and table runner 005

Machine pieced, insert circles, using the technique from “ Pieced Curves So simple” by Dale Fleming.  Machine quilted using two threads through one needle to get a really heavy quilted line,  This one is going in the final online swap of the year

Tuesday 22 November 2011

The art of looking

I made it to “The Art of Mapping”, well worth a look if you are in London.  I liked the work of Nigel Peake
image
which reminded me in a way of some of the mark making in “ The London Jungle Book”
image
It was also great to see the iconic “Great Bear” on loan from the London Transport Museum.
image
and an intriguing work by Grayson Perry ( am I a philistine for wondering if some spelling mistakes were deliberate, or are they part of the art work?)
Then off to look at some intriguing fabric in Dover Street Market, above my budget, but no cost to look.
Peter Pilotto, gorgeous silk
Photo0045 Photo0046
Comme des Garcons, origami shirt
Photo0048

Thursday 17 November 2011

Notan morphing

  Papercut 002  An exercise in Notan papercutting, quickly lost focus,

Papercut 004Papercut 001

and morphed into this ( approximately A4) papercut.

Papercut 003

More than likely influenced by recently read  blog posts from here, here and here.  Not a lost few hours, but hopefully will be useful for Morley.

Tuesday 15 November 2011

More dyeing

  Tray dyeing 2 and kitchen image 003

White viscose, resist with rubber bands, 5 minutes in the indigo vat.

Tray dyeing 2 and kitchen image 004

Tight twist, tray dyed with twice the concentrations of last week’s dyes

 Tray dyeing 2 and kitchen image 006

White cotton, loosely pleated, tray dyed with twice the concentrations of last week’s dyes

Tray dyeing 2 and kitchen image 005Tray dyeing 2 and kitchen image 008

Close ups – where did that orange thread come from?

Thursday 10 November 2011

The Art of Mapping

image 

I love maps, so I hope to get to this exhibition at The Air Gallery, Dover Street, London(14- 26 November ).  A long term project has been to do some sort of quilted / stitched  map along the lines of these artists

Emily Fischer of Haptic Lab

image

Shellie Holden

image

Leah Evans

image

Tuesday 8 November 2011

Design briefs – feels more like twisted knickers

I have two current design briefs, one for the Morley course and one for my local quilting group.  They are respectively, “The Olympics” and “ My local area”.  As I was unsuccessful in the bid for any Olympics tickets, and the only immediate impact on our family I see is total traffic chaos on the days of the cycling events, I’m not wildly enthusiastic about this topic.

I’m considering the architecture of the Olympics, as each one seems to bring a surge of new building.  I wish this design, Ron Arad,  was being implemented for London.

image

More inspirational is “ my local area” and I’m veering between The Sackler Crossing at Kew Gardens, by John Pawson ( lots of inspiration in these sinuous curves)

image

and the madness   of The Great River Race, an annual rowed race on the Thames that for the past few years has finished in Twickenham.

River Race 2010 033 River Race 2010 003River Race 2010 041River Race 2010 002

Saturday 5 November 2011

Dyed and gone to heaven

 Tray dyeing 1 001

Tray-dyeing at Morley this week, so lots of guddly mess with precision application of  the Procion MX dyes.  The piece above is cotton, dyed with a mixture of blues, lemon yellow and a tiny bit of black.  Beautiful painterly effects with some detail shown below.

Tray dyeing 1 002

Trying to get a purple was not successful, and resulted in an overpowering magenta.  Not shown here yet, as I think I’ll try overdyeing it.

Friday 4 November 2011

Toggles

toggles 003

Indigo shibori dyed muslin, screen printed on top.  Rolled in to a log, then stitched at the ends.  Laborious and strangely relaxing..

Wednesday 2 November 2011