Colour/Discolour

When you buy a piece of fabric do you really think about what you have bought?  I choose by colour, by pattern or simply by the feel of the cloth but little else crosses my mind except what I'm going to make with it.  So it's come as quite a surprise that when you do all these processes yourself it's actually very time-consuming.

I'm reupholstering an old chair, one my mother bought from a junk shop and re-covered for me about 30 years ago.  It's a sentimental project with more than a passing nod to my ancestry in the furniture business.  I wanted to truly personalise the chair and what better way to do it than with fabric I had printed myself?  

Once I had settled on a colour (at least two weeks agonising over that) I then spent several hours dyeing a couple of metres of linen union.  Having spent all that time colouring I then proceeded to apply discharge paste to bleach out a pattern. Then it all had to be washed again.  It's taken around 6 hours so far and that's not including drying time.  It would have been so much easier to buy some lovely fabric off the shelf but not nearly as satisfying.  

There's more work to do before the fabric makes it onto the chair but that will have to wait until next week.

Getting ready

I'm making preparations for a Christmas workshop in a couple of weeks time.  My plan was to use coloured copper wire and glass beads.  The only trouble is that the ideas in my head don't quite match what I can create. 

The most elegant way to make this little star would be to use a single piece of wire but as I have discovered this takes careful planning and lots of thinking ahead.  How many beads to thread at a time, where to make the first twist of wire, how many twists, what size of bead?  I might moan a bit but this is probably what I love most about new projects.  I like testing out my ideas and finding the best solution to a problem.

Whilst this was quite nice to mess around with myself, it's not something that would translate well for a workshop so I've decided that my little star will be one of a kind. I'm afraid it's back to the drawing board for me.

Making time

It's not always easy to find time in our busy lives for art, but this week I went to the first meeting of a local art group.

I was surprised to find so many people there and when the initial nervous buzz of chatter has died down, a quiet calm descended on the room as a dozen or so folk started to sketch the still life compositions that had been set up for us.  As we got a bit more confident we started talking with our neighbours about our choice of media or what we were planning to do with our initial sketches.

We are all amateurs, with no airs or pretensions and yet we come together to draw and sketch.  We plan to meet to meet once a month, sharing ideas, discussing our work and maybe inviting a tutor to give a workshop on a particular technique.  Making time to do something we enjoy.

Pastel pumpkin

With lots going on this week, there hasn't been much time for art. I've consoled myself with a quick sketch of one of the seasonal orange fruits that are so abundant. I used my pastel pencils, building up layers of colour and shading.  It's a messy process but quite satisfying as you get the feel of the curves and contours of the pumpkin when you blend the pastels. 

Inspiration

Last week I went to see Cloth and Memory 2 at Salt's Mill with my namesake and kindred spirit, Claire.  The exhibition is on a truly monumental scale and is staged in the old spinning shed at the mill.  The work was all meritorious but the pieces that were most eloquent were the ones that had been created in direct response to the Mill itself.

It got me thinking about how I could develop one of my recent themes, the work of women social reformers from the Victorian era.  I've already made two pieces inspired by lace from the Gawthorpe Hall collection and I've got an idea for at least one item if not more.  I want to continue to work with fine and translucent fabrics and inspiration came in the early hours of the morning - somewhere between waking and sleeping.  later that morning I started sampling with some cotton organdie sandwiched between two layers of fine net.  I stitched the fabrics together using silk yarn and a mixture of random patterns, text and drawing with thread.  Then I applied devore paste (rather too clumsily, I confess) and burnt out the cotton.  The resultant fabric was crude but had potential.  Using screens to print the devore paste will ensure a lighter touch and clear images.  The stitching needs to be denser to capture the fragments of cotton organdie.

Here are the seeds for a new projects.

Grey days

So much for the season of mist and mellow fruitfulness! The last few days have been characterised by thick fog which hardly any daylight can penetrate.

My morning walks often take me through beech woods.  The trees have not yet shed their leaves and the canopy is dense, few plants grow in their shadow. The thick fog had reduced the light and entering the darkness of the woods seemed foolhardy.  But my courage was rewarded, because as I started to emerge into open fields the silhouette of trees and walls was breathtaking.

Working with pigment ink pens in a Pointellist style seems to capture the ethereal nature of the day and the subject.  Although the Autumnal colours were present in the woods, the stark contrast of fog with the dark trees made me choose to work in a palette of greys. 

Working on the fly

 

It's been a crazy few weeks with little time for art and experimentation.  I took photos of some fly agaric mushrooms (Amanita muscaria) that I recently found in local woods and I've been mulling over what to do with them. I'm drawn to these brightly coloured fungi; there's something so exotic about their luscious, bright red-and-white spotted caps.  But they come with an air of danger too - they're hallucinogenic, and this made me think of some kind of manipulation technique.

The textile designer, Lucienne Day liked to cut up coloured pieces of paper to create abstract images so this seemed like a good place to start.  I have long admired her work, especially her ability to reduce a botanical drawing to its simplest form. 

I trimmed my photo to isolate the red cap of the fungus and then continued to cut it into 1cm strips.  I used the remaining trimmings to make similar strips that I wove in a warp direction.

Although simple, the weave pattern acts as a view-finder for different parts of the image. I noticed that the spots are not at all symmetrical; they have ragged edges and appear to be bursting through the bright red cap.  The whole effect is distorted and perhaps this would be a view of the world if you were to try eating one of these fairy toadstools.  I think I'll keep them safely on paper!