Collections

This year the annual exhibition of the TX Creative Textiles group is centred around the theme of 'Collections'.  For my part I have been collecting leaves and rusty things and kitchen scraps and using them to colour cloth. I started my experimenting back in October and every month or so I have tried something else.  Due to the pressure of other work I've not been so good at documenting my progress here, but I have been documenting it all in a journal which forms part of my exhibit.

Not everything has been successful of course, not every piece of cloth has made it into the exhibition, but I have been really pleased with most of my results.  Left to right, these hanging cloths have been coloured using

1. Various fallen autumn leaves on cotton
2. Fallen autumn leaves, mostly copper beech, on silk
3. Ivy leaves (aka weeding!) on silk
4. A variety of seaweed on cotton
5. A variety of seaweed on silk
6. A variety of seaweed on silk
7. Rust, with tea, on cotton
8. Rust, with green tea, on cotton
9. Rust, with green tea, on silk
10. Onion skins on silk
11. Onion skins on cotton

I will try to tell you about some of them in a bit more detail over the next few days, now that I have time to step back from them a little.

But back to the exhibition, it runs from 8th August to 16th September at Castle Park Arts Centre in Frodsham, full details on my Events page.  There is a really wide variety of lovely work this year, more pictures to come.  It's definitely our best yet.  But then, we say that every year! 

And on Friday 10th August we have a 'Meet the Artists' evening from 7pm to 9pm, everyone is welcome.

Catch up

Oh I have been away a long time...  lots to tell you, I'll probably forget most of it...

The De-Junk, Re-Junk exhibition was very well received with lots of lovely visitors who all seemed to enjoy themselves.  I sold some of my new upcycled bottle vases and some eco daisies too, and lots of my seashore art cards.  I was chuffed!  I have some bottle vases left over but some of them will probably be going out to a couple of lovely local shops, I'll let you know when it's confirmed.  I've made a couple of new ones and listed this one in my etsy shop, more to follow when I have more stock.

Straight after the exhibition finished we dashed away for a few days over in Scarborough.  We had glorious weather, in fact, it was really too hot, something I never thought I'd say about a holiday in Scarborough!

Now I need to get my head down and sort out my natural dyed fabric experiments which are going to be part of the annual TX creative textiles exhibition at Castle Park Arts Centre in Frodsham.
Just a few sneak peeks for you here...

First bundle

My bundles are looking pretty good, a much darker colour than I expected to get. And while they didn't smell too good while they were simmering away (a bit cabbagey) they smell lovely now, the essence of autumn distilled. The dark colour may be due in part to the fact that I had used the pan for tea dyeing in the past and it is pretty well impregnated with tea.

I've managed to last a week before opening one... I chose the second from the left to unwrap - I just had to open one of them to see what had happened!

This one is a strip of old sheeting.  Here are the leaves that came out of it - no longer the lovely dark red they were!

And this is the result, hanging up to dry after rinsing in cold water. I am absolutely thrilled with it!  There are lovely rich browns, quite a bit of yellow which doesn't show too well in the photograph, and even some pinky bits.  And some nice patterning where the thread was wrapped round it too.

It will be interesting to see how much of the colour stays when it dries and whether it fades quickly or not.

I'm leaving the others a bit longer... not sure quite how long before I can't resist opening them!

A new project

I know, I must be mad starting something new... but I am thinking ahead because I will need a project to show with my textiles group and I am trying not to be too last minute this year!  Our theme is 'Collections' and it seemed to me to be the perfect opportunity to try something I have been thinking about for a while.

I have been dying cloth for my embroidery with tea for a long time but I first became interested in dying cloth with other natural materials when I was making my vegetable paper.  I noticed that the brighter vegetables stained the pressing cloths, and some colour remained even after washing.  And sometimes when I re-used the washed cloths the vegetable colour in the cloth would affect the colour of the new vegetable paper, so the veg dyed the cloth which in turn dyed the veg...  A little while later I discovered India Flint and was completely awestruck by her work, if you don't know of her do go and check it out.

So I am going to do a series of experiments, bundling cloth with natural materials and other things that I collect (the shoreline turns up some interesting bits of rusty metal at times...).  Cooking it, leaving it, maybe even burying it, I'm not expecting spectacular results, I'm just interested to see what happens.  The bundles will be a personal record of my year.  And since the best thing I can do with my bundles is be patient and leave them alone I hope the project will fit in with the madness that is my life at the moment!

I've started with a few leaves picked up in my local park, wrapped in some well worn upcycled cotton sheeting, some butter muslin and a piece of my wedding dress silk (what do you mean it's not normal to cut up your wedding dress?!)




They simmered away for a couple of hours in some (rather murky) rainwater in an old aluminium pan which I'm sure must have come from my grandmother, if not even from her mother. And now I shall leave them for a while. I wonder how long I can manage before I can't resist opening at least one little bundle?

And, I had some lovely roses for my birthday last week.

 

 

It would be a shame to let all those leaves go to waste... I'm not sure if the petals will do anything, but no harm in trying!