SHIBORI INDIGO DYEING WORKSHOP

This Saturday I was lucky to be able to attend a fantastic workshop at Melbourne's Kimono House.  The workshop was run by a very charming and knowledgable lady called Colleen Weste who knows many things about fabrics, Japanese shibori methods and indigo dyeing.  

I decided to attend the workshop as I have long loved traditional Japanese dye methods and the fantastic indigo colour.  In particular I was keen to learn about the 'itajime' dye method whereby you use shapes and clamp them onto fabric as the resist.  This year I have been teaching year 9 and 10 students how to make kimonos, including dyeing their own fabric.  I can't wait to try some of these dye methods with the students!

Here are some of my before and after photos from the day.  I loved it all and I will definitely be trying out some more fabric pieces.

Stitching the silk pre-dye...

Clamping with all sorts for 'Itajime'...

Pegs leave interesting marks...

I trialled wrapping a variety of items into this cotton piece of fabric including screws and champagne corks...

Itajime sample one....

Itajime sample two...

 Itajime sample two...

Itajime sample three...

Itajime sample two...Gracie likes it too!

PILLOWS!

I spent a day making pillow covers yesterday and practiced sewing a zip!  After a few dodgy pillows, I feel that I have got the hang of it!  

I screen printed this design onto 100% linen...

At Spotlight I found a really groovy, fluro pink polka dot cotton for the back of the pillow...I love it!

I also made a cover for my friend Claire who loves horses, but I liked hers so much that I made one for myself!  I also love this mustard polka dot.  I think the fabrics come from Japan somewhere.  I think I need more of this fabric!!!

A Birthday Gift

In November last year I did a two day workshop at Harvest Textiles, which I posted about here.  A few weeks after the course I made the fabric into a groovy pillow for a friend's birthday present.  The lucky recipient also received a rocking chair which had been given a lick of grey paint.  I thought I would share it with you as I'm rather proud of it....

Crochet Rug Update

A couple of weekends ago I went to a wedding in country New South Wales which was just lovely, however, it also gave me some serious crochet time as the drive was about 8 and a half hours.  Coming from Scotland, 8 and half hours is a ridiculous drive, but in Australia, its nothing to these Aussie peeps. 

Here are some pics of how the rug is coming along.  I am hoping to get it a bit bigger still.  When the centre of the rug is at my knee, I would like the out circumference to be at my toes.  As you can see there is still a bit to go!

P.S. I love fluro nail varnish!

Making, making, making...(for Christmas)

I've been a busy little Christmas elf over the last couple of weeks! I have made christmas cards by Lino printing and some hand made screen-printed tea towels (currently en route to the UK from Australia). It's always such a busy time of year but I really enjoy making cards and gifts - even if it does stress me out a little.

Merry christmas folks!

Cutting paper stencils for the screen printing.....

I printed onto 100% linen, a few different colours as I was just playing around really...

I also made this fluro pink print - which is a bit like an Easter egg now that I see it, but was really just a bit of a doodle when I was cutting the stencil.

Screen printing at Harvest Textiles

This weekend I had a lovely time at Harvest Textiles in Melbourne on their two day screen printing workshop.

Louise Saxton

I have been studying the work of Melbourne based artist, Louise Saxton recently as part of my year 11 coursework in Studio Arts Textiles.  On Thursday last week I,  along with another teacher took a group of students to visit her 'Sanctuary' exhibition at Heide Gallery, Melbourne.  The students loved her work, as did I, so I thought I would share it here!  I was so keen to find out more about Louise's work that on Sunday (my usual day of pj's and lie-in) I went to Louise's talk at Heide gallery.  What a pleasure it was to hear Louise talk and have the chance to ask questions!

Louise collects pieces of needlework from op shops and cuts out the embroidery motifs, which she then assembles into these wonderful pieces.  It's hard to make out in the images, but these are actually pinned together, and not sewn.  The tiny bits of embroidery are arranged and pinned onto fine tulle then are pinned to the wall.  The pins are silver or brass and give off a lovely sparkle in the gallery lighting, and the artwork sits slightly away from the wall, which creates wonderful shadows.

The colours and textures of these work are just stunning.  It takes Louise a very long time to arrange and pin these works, which I greatly admire.

Louise based these works from the Sanctuary exhibition on old watercolour paintings (see the emu image below).  It was really interesting to hear her talk about her interest in making homage to the anonymous needlework artists and the art of needlework which is a dying tradition in today's society.  She also talked about how she is paying homage to and highlighting the beautiful illustrations of long forgotten naturalists and illustrators.  Interestingly she does not view herself as a textile artist, as she doesn't actually make the embroidery, she re-works them.

You can see more of Louise's work here, and there is also a great on line interview with Louise here.  She has a lovely blog too, which you can find here.

Hope you like!

This is Louise in front of two of her works at Heide gallery.  They are much bigger than the real life birds which makes you really look and consider the detail in the tiny embroidery pieces.  You are constantly moving back and forward when looking at her work, so you can see all the detail and then when you step back you get to see the beautiful birds better.

My little blue book...

I've been busy making this little book for the latest theme for Art Club/Around the Kitchen Table which is blue this month.  It is part of another blog that I run, which you can find here. 

The task was to make something based on the theme 'blue' and it took me a really long time to decide on something - blue is such a huge theme!  I finally decided last week on making a fabric book.  I found some great instructions on this blog here. 

My year 11 students are currently working on an artist book project in class and they have to make use of a range of textile based skills to create a book of some sort.  I find that it helps to have exemplars to show students and I also really like getting to make things at school!  This was made using tie-dye, shibori, salt lift, solvent transfer, lino printing, screen printing, hand embroidery and free motion embroidery. Hope you like it...

Solvent transfers on top of tie-dye and shibori dyed fabric...

Lino printing on top of a painted piece of fabric and free motion embroidery on top of shibori...

I used blanket stitch to bind half of the pages together then just sort of stitched all of them together in three lines. It's a bit messy but I don't mind that...

The front...

The back...

The binding...

Detail of free motion embroidery on top of tie-dyed fabric...

This was the first step I took to make the book.  I used a metre of white poly-cotton and painted lots of shades of blue procion dyes and just had a bit of fun really! 

These are the tie-dyed pieces of fabric pre-dye bath...

Shibori...