Yellow ...Inspirations for Easter (and April's Challenge)

Photo Friday : Wendy Cotterill

 This week's image comes from Wendy Cotterill, whose blog you can find here, and whose shop, Gallery Textiles,  is here; Wendy specialises in Spunbond fabrics.  Wendy says about this particular piece:

 

Lutradur

The inspiration for this piece (and many others) has been an interpretation of a seascape, or more specifically, waves. The resulting piece itself is not particularly inspirational, but more what it represents - embryonic techniques and the expression of movement.

 

This piece was created from a piece of 30g Lutradur which was initially painted with water colour type paints in the early days when I first started experimenting with Lutradur.

Water based paints are okay, but dry to a much paler finish.

The pink section near the top of the piece were coloured with transfer dyes, and although not immediately apparent, has letter forms on the surface. Again, this was the first time I used my now favourite technique of transferring text onto fabric.

 

 

Once the piece was coloured I cut the Lutradur into section with a soldering iron using a  vermicelli type pattern on the edges and reassembled the sections laying one over the edge of the next and stitched them together with a free running stitch.

 

 

This overlaying technique creates a colour combining effect, although on reflection, not a very good one in this instance. The colours are too 'muddy' and similar in tone.

 

This experimental piece did however turn out to be quite pivotal in informing much of my subsequent work with spunbonded and synthetic fabrics;

This where I first tried out my transferring text with transfer dyes and have used it to great effect many times since.

 

It is also where I made the decided not to use any kind of applied paint to the surface of any of the spunbonded fabrics including Lutradur, as any heat distressing is compromised. I also learned (eventually) that a soldering iron gets very hot and burns you if you touch the tip!!

This is the piece of work that I did as a result of the one described here

 

Artists Statement

When Marion asked me for an Artists Statement, it took me back a few years as I have not written one since I graduated with a Fine Art degree in 1993.  When I read them I find a lot terribly self conscious, but here goes!!.

I carry a lot of 'textiles' baggage around with me, enough to have invented the term 'bag lady' and once threatened that if ever I wrote my memoirs they would entitled 'My Life in Carrier Bags'. In my early 20s I worked in the fashion industry as a pattern cutter, a job that is now done by computers and subsequently taught in further education passing on my skills to young fashionistas in the 1980s - you may remember the 80s?? Big shoulder pads and mahooousive jewellery?? I honed my teaching skills but a combination of events - a terminal decline in UK based manufacturing, my hankering to return to my first passion of surface pattern & decoration and an unexpected left hand turn took me back to study for a degree in Fine Art where specialised in experimental photo/printmaking and colour on canvas which very much informs most of the work that I still produce. A short hiatus in producing any kind of work at all - ie unemployment - eventually led me down the road of gaining a whole new set of (digital) skills and have adopted the ever increasing possibilities of desktop technologies which has subsequently enabled me to reinvent my world of textiles. I still do a bit of stitching when I have too!!

 

Try It Out Thursday : Finally Finished!

Well, if you remember, I asked for comments on Tuesday.  The two I got were unanimous... that flower was too strongly coloured...right shape, right size, just wrong everything else!  So, I thought... what could I do about it? 

As you know, when you transfer dye something, you get more than  one print from the paper (up to five, if you're lucky, but at least three).  So I took another piece of the lutradur from the same dye batch, and stitched into it, as you can see below.

Then, I cut out two freehand floral shapes, put them on top of the piece, and added a freshwater pearl, like so:

Well, yes, it's an improvement... but it's not quite right.  So, out with the heat gun... remember, if you try this, that your small shape will get Even Smaller when you heat it, so a. cut it a bit bigger than you want it and b. don't hold it in your fingers when using the heatgun (I pinned mine down to a table top using a pencil). 

As you can see from the close up, below, I've added a tiny bit of the Zeelon that covers the whole piece, just to link it properly to the whole.  And there we are, finished at last!

Wondering Wednesday : Sources

Gill asked if I had a favourite source for Brusho.  As it happens, I do; I go straight to the people who make it, Colourcraft Ltd.  For people in  Norfolk, I stock a little for sale in The Little Green Shed (I also have transfer and other dyes).

But there's a bigger question... where do you GET this stuff?  I wondered if it would be a good idea to have a supplier list on a page on this blog, so that people can share information about suppliers?  I know, for instance, it is very difficult to get Zeelon in the US... so lets see if we can establish who is stocking what, where... leave a comment here, and I'll set up a page.  If there's anyone who would like to volunteer to keep it updated, I'd be very grateful for the help?

And in that vein...I'm working on some kits using spun bonded fabrics.  The idea is to provide everything you need to experiment with a particular technique, such as bead making, in a single bag, with full instructions, which you can either follow or ignore <g>.  Do you think this is a good idea?  Would you buy such a thing?  Email me for more information, or if you have a suggestion for the kind of kit you would like to see.  Or just pop a comment on here. 

The image, incidentally, is powdered Brusho on paper.  It's lovely stuff!

Try It Out Tuesday : Changing Direction

Remember this?  Well...I'm still not happy.  I have had it kicking about the dining room, right in front of the computer, just looking at it.  I did some more thinking, and playing around, and finally took all those embellishments off the piece, and added one single thing.  It is a suede flower, in beige and a very pale turquoise/green colour.  Eau de nil, but a bit stronger.  It was just the right size to put in the circle, there... and immediately, the piece changed.  It took some of the detail out of the stitching, made a very clear focal point, and seemed to pull the whole piece together...or at least to begin to do that. 

So, I decided to take a similar colour and stitch into the top.  I did this to attempt to decrease the strength of the stitching, which gives the piece its structure.  Putting the flower in there makes it look like a vaguely retro 60's motif...which I rather like.  See what you think.  In the end, I used a variegated beige /mushroom/brown thread which really shouldn't go well, but seems to.

Am I happy now?  No, not really.  I don't think the stitching on the top  layer is strong enough in colour to defuse that strong, dark stitching behind.   I think more stitch is called for; what do you think?  Hand or machine?  More embellishment?  Strong Drink...?  Another layer of cloth?  Please do leave a comment, I'd be interested to see what you think.  We might even get a conversation going!

No matter how badly you feel about a piece, you can normally retrieve it using layer.  One way or another, by either adding colour and/or pattern, or reducing it by, say, burning away, you can change the focus and feel of a piece.  Try it... you know you want to.

Inspiration Monday

Could you use this...and if so, how?

March Challenge : The Contenders!

Angela Huddart:

I printed the photo onto all three weights of Zeelon - A4 size - then layered them light, medium, heavy, spray basting them together and fusing the whole lot onto stiff interfacing. I drew circles in various sizes, cut them out and reversed them so the light weight Zeelon is on top.  I sewed these in place using gold Madeira thread and embroidered small circles inside each one and zapped them with the heat gun.  I then filled in the background with a zig-zag stitch in the gold thread.

The photos show the piece photographed on the window with the light shining through (001), photographed flat to show the actual colours (002) and a close-up (001a)

The photo reminded me straight away of a meteor and strangely on the same day there were reports on the news about a meteor which was about to hit the Earth somewhere.  So, my piece is called 'Meteor Shower'.

Felicity Griffin Clark
the photo looked as though the rocks were cracking and about to erupt so i tried to capture a feeling of fracture in my piece.

i printed the photo onto evolon and lutradur - i started with a bottom layer of wool suiting, then a piece of black kimono lining, the evolon with some curves slashed through it and the kimono pulled through slightly, then the lutradur and some black tulle. i machine stitched it then burnt it back with a heat gun. then dripped sumi ink down the front so it ran down the long stitched curves.

it's called fissures.

VOTING : Please leave a vote in the Poll for the March Challenge; your vote will be anonymous.  The Poll is open for ten days from today.  I think both pieces are really interesting, and make great use of the original image.  Good luck to both of you, and thanks for taking part!