Go GB

August marks the last of the 4 yellow journal quilts. After the events at the Olympics, it had to be Team GB. I was very negative before the start, expecting the spectacle to be totally dominated by the large sponsors, who seem to me to be at odds with sport and healthy living. However, I but was hooked the whole way through.


I always struggle with Bondaweb and lettering, so set myself a challenge this month of trying to get it right first time – and I did.

Commercial fabrics, gold super-hero symbols from here, applied with bondaweb, and then machine-appliqued for security. Machine quilting with variegated thread, and micro stippling in the symbols. It is a bit wavy as the border is satin stitch, but I am hoping that it will flatten once I have blocked it again.

Stitching Olympics

The Olympic cycling races came within short cycling distance of my home.


Great colours, and atmosphere, and the peloton passed in a whoosh. I watched the rest on TV, but I had to do some stitching while doing so. The result is this, which will be wrapped around a pebble as a souvenir.





That was really too long to spend in front of a screen with nothing to show for it but a few memories.

The sails are printed

From here to a printed length this week. Five separate paper stencils, 5 different mixes of Procion P dye, carried on to the cloth with Manutex paste, ( I can't find an internet link about this method) lots of measuring, and it does approach the initial design.

Detail



Detail, showing scale of image



Full length of cloth, showing dye testing on the bottom selvedge



The advantages of this method are: it doesn't need huge amounts of water; the dyes are very true to their final colours during the printing process; mixing the colours is very straightforward and subtle variations are easily achieved; the overlay of colours is subtle; the hand of the fabric isn't changed.

The disadvantage is that the dyes have to be fixed with steam, which is fine in the studio which has a bullet steamer, but is a bit more unwieldy at home.

Lots of learning in this exercise about working with paper stencils, overlaying colour, measuring up a repeat, managing a long length of fabric. More to come hopefully as I have now cut a set of these shapes at 200% of the original size.

Papercuts, moving ahead

No printing this week, but lots of planning, for my new photoscreen and for a design for a piece of cloth on the theme of the Olympics. The cut shapes have developed, and today was time to work on layout ( approximately A3 size). The advantages of the mobile phone are very apparent at this stage, as it is possible to quickly rearrange elements in a composition and then record them in a photograph.


Tiered, linear array


Tiered, linear array with inversions


Linear array, offset elements


Diagonal array


Random array


In the end, with the help of the saintly Marian, I've gone with none of these, but with a cluster or elements and some straying pieces, in the hope that this will give me more variety in the use of the screen. The phone ran out of battery, so pics of that will need to wait.

Also today a return to the Olympics project. I have been so unenthusiastic about this, I've really struggled to get to an image. Eventually I've gone with sailing because: I have sailed myself; sails are very graphic and come in lots of shapes, sizes and colours; Britain has a great Olympics sailing team. Again working with cut up paper, tissue this time, overlapping. Inspiration came from lots of images of sails, and playing about with overlaying colours of the tissue. This starting model is about 60 cm long.



I hope to match these colours using the dye recipes from the workshop last weekend and to exploit the transparency of the Procion P dyes.