I have had to start a new blog so that I have enough capacity to upload images for the full duration of this level. My apologies for anyone that follows me by email but I would love you to follow me on the new blog too – pop over and click follow just as you did before.
It’s still Raw to Creative edge – just level 3 this time !
https://rawtocreativeedge3.wordpress.com
Well I am very pleased to report back that I have passed Textiles 2 and with a mark that I am very pleased with too. So onwards and upwards to Level 3 Advanced textiles. There are some admin things I need to sort out first and quickly too as I have some news about exhibitions to feed back on. One of them is my blog as it was noted that it is hard to navigate. I’m not really sure what this means so I need to look at to a bit more closely to work out…..
A days workshop in her studio playing with screen printing and sublimation printing.
Trying out some silks and screen images
Transfer image samples
Paper collage images ready to print
2 day workshop on Devoree with Dionne Swift at Missingdon Abbey Buckinghamshire.
First samples to practice techniques
Using thermofax screens to print onto dyed silk velvet – left and right after the process has been completed. So what prints in paste is the part to burn away.
Left – double process. Printed blue and then printed devoree paste over the top ( don’t know if it would also work the other way around)
Right – After the process has been completed – some lovely varirations and transparent marks.
Print in paste and print in colour – gives lovely overlapping circles
SILK PAINTING and DEVOREE workshop wit Mary Day at Denham College, Abingdon.
Painting on the devore paste onto a stretch silk velvet scarf
Painting with procian dyes
detail
hanging on display
Natasher Kerr – an artist whose work I saw at a Chelsea art show about 20 years ago and liked at the time has only just bounced back into my memory…she would have been a good source of inspiration for the Story telling with imagery and text section.
This short film of Natasha Kerr at work in her east London studio reveals how contemporary artists are evolving and developing the quilting tradition today. The mixed media pieces involve painting, sewing, found photographs and other emphemera and explore the power of memory and personal history to create distinctly unusual modern family heirlooms.
(REF – http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/q/quilts-1700-2010-videos/)
For a local art exhibition I created 8 textile works based on mono printed Japanese circles and borrowed the Boro technique of stitching ….very happy to say I sold 4 of the 8 pieces too.
Completely by accident a bit of fabric had become stained with the dye from cheap tissue paper when I discovered my window had been leaking and the fabric beneath it had become damp…… but it gave me an idea.
I used a selection of overlapping sheets I different colours and rolled the sheet up and then folded it and secured it with string.,,,then the fun bit…I left in outside to get wet and dry out as mother natured saw fit to allow the dye to leach out without any intervention from me. Great results too !! Similar to tie dye I suppose but there are some lovely dry dye textures to along with complete colour bleed.
The full length fabric sample….reminds me a little of Jo Budd’s work
Now the only thing I know this cheap tissue is not UV stable either – its produced cheaply which is why the dye can leach out so easily. So I need to think further on to know what I can do with it to make it useable …I m going to try some further experiments with UV spray ( but might not be waterproof) and also find some UV or at least light reflective glass to see if that can help.
Whilst studying the digital textiles section I was also thinking off on a tangent about textiles for outside use….many because where I live we have a flag festival for the summer months where houses display flags relating to some local charity, history or simply personal to their property but also thinking on about the possible use of textiles outside.
I used some off cuts of digitally printed samples and secured them to an outside bit of trellis to determine how robust the fabrics were but mainly to check for colours fastness. The location was in full sunlight all summer just as a textile flag would be. It is now October for the samples have been there for about 4 months.
Samples have been tried to trellis for several week to determine how light fast they were
The results are disappointing really as the colours have faded considerably in what is really only a short amount of time. These fabrics are specific for “banners” so I had hoped they would be better.
I think if I was to consider this further for outside textiles I might need to consider some kind of protective UV filter finishing on it….if such thing exists.
The strip shows the fade in colour – the fabric was a perforated polyester suitable for outside banners
The fabrics was a silk satin type lightweight fabric. Slightly harder to see the fade as the top line has stitching to enhance it but the fade can be seen all the same.
rawtocreativeedge 