20:20 Print Exchange

My parcel that went to the ArtHouse last year for the Print Exchange.

The collography print is part of the Wakefield ArtWalk, tomorrow.  

The sun shining through the window at Fell House, on Friday,

as we were preparing the boards for the exhibition.

Some of the boards we completed on Friday. The cameras are there to document our hard work. The resulting film will be shown tomorrow during the exhibition. I'm looking forward to seeing it. It's been created using stop-motion photography, so it will look as though we worked really fast!  



pomegranate patterns

This was the cotton, painted with egg, before I dyed it with the pomegranate.

I just brushed it on randomly.

 This was the silk, also painted with egg; the brushmarks show up darker.

And this is my patio, after laying out the wet fabric as I took it out of the dye-pot! It'll be interesting to see how long it lasts, once it rains.



pomegranate dye #3

So this is some linen thread I put into the pomegranate dye-pot. The colour's very different! I didn't use any kind of mordant; just popped it into the pot. Maybe that's why it came out such a lovely golden colour?

Here is the wedding dress bodice, silk, with some man-made fabric flowers. The silk is a pale grey; the man-made fabric not taken at all. I dropped this piece in late on in the process. It wasn't in for long at all. Certainly not as long a time as the silk and cotton lengths. You can see the silk fabric behind the silk bodice. Noticeable how different the colours are. 

And finally the POT!
Direct off the cooker, and still steaming. The wrapped cotton and silk still amidst the mulch!

pomegranate dye #2

 A cut-up silk shirt; dyed with pomegranate.

No pre-mordant.

Painted with marks made by brushing whisked egg onto it.

 Out of the dye-pot, and onto the patio to be photographed; the silk still wet.

 The silk shirt dried. The colour is lightened again, as always.

Here you can see the brush marks made by painting egg onto the fabric.

The close-up shows some of the brush marks made by egg.

It's had the effect of darkening the pomegranate dye.



pomegranate dye #1

So last week I boiled up the pomegranate, and dyed some silk, and some cotton fabric in the resulting slush! Here are the results from the cotton;

 The cotton, wet, from the dye-pot, laid out on my patio. The cotton had been pre-mordanted by soaking it in soya-milk. I folded this fabric into a square, and held it together with clamps



 Still wet, and nice and shiney!

 After drying, this is how it looks; the fabric has lightened as it's dried, which always happens. The white 'squares' come from the clamps. There's a nice black edging to them, where the metal has had some chemical effect. The range of colours is lovely, and really surprising. Black, creams, greys, and browns. The browns look as though I've been rust dyeing.

Above; a close-up of the squares made by the metal clamps.

You can see the black edging, but the photo's not very good otherwise.

neolithic carved ball

From an old sketchbook; another of the mysterious carved balls I've discovered in museums up and down the country. This was one of the least worn versions I found. Tricky to draw; even trickier to carve, I bet. Especially when they didn't use metal tools....as they didn't, because these were carved in the 'new stone age'.  

leaf dye-pot

A bowl that's sitting in my garden; rainwater & leaves. And like the Kraken, deep underwater, lurk 2 pieces of fabric, soaking up the primeval ooze...and hopefully making wonderful marks and patterns, while they wait.
I've decided to leave these 2 pieces in a long time; there's a piece of silk which has leaves wrapped into it, and a piece of cotton which is pre-mordanted with soya-milk. This is slow dye-ing, for sure!

And I just had to include this photo! Taken this week on a day-trip to Skelmanthorpe! Worth it, just for the laugh this notice gave me.

fragments......

 One of the samples I'm working on. Tweed. Curtain fabric. Silk threads.

Silk fabrics. Spirals of threads. Muted colours. The gathering of the fabric as one layer is stitched to the other. Textures.

No print included in this one......

trees

Today's been a gorgeous sunny, warm day. I've been out in the garden; clearing away; cleaning the pond to get it ready for the frogs; planting up some Lilly-of-the-valley that Rob gave me; threading wire through the drilled holes of the fallen birdbox, almost ready to pop back up in the tree now; sawed up some wood; prepared a relief print.

Spring felt like it was on it's way, and I could almost imagine the garden all greened up like it was last summer.

The trees aren't greened over yet though; still look more like this! But there was a real shift in the season today.
I put a pomegranate dye-pot on today; soaking it first. Will boil it up later in the week, and pop in some fabric. Not used pomegranate before, so it'll be interesting to see how it comes out.  

wish stone

I picked this pebble up in the grounds of Westgate Chapel when they had some road-chips delivered to fill-in the muddy bits, and the holes and dips in the drive. This caught my eye, so I brought it home with me and cleaned it up.
I've a long history of collecting these pebbles cut with quartz. Someone told me many years ago that they were 'wish stones'. You make a wish, and throw them, usually into water...moving water; a river, the sea. It's sitting on my kitchen window ledge, awaiting the right wish! Then I'll pass it on, for somebody else to catch the wish.

bird box

Close-up of the seed stitches on the 4-band sampler of the previous post. I'm working on the tweed heart piece. It may take some time, as I work out what words to use, and where to place them.
Meantime I look out the window, at the birdbox, and hope the blue tits that are inspecting it, will take up residence. A friend told me a wonderful story that wrens had used one of their nest boxes to sleep in at night, and she'd seen them all emerging from it one morning; a seemingly endless stream of wrens flying out of it! What a sight that must have been. I've often wondered why birds don't roost in nestboxes overnight in the winter. It must surely be safer, and the combined body-heat would help them survive the cold?

A close inspection of this photo, will show the blue tit checking out the property! It's in the middle of the photo.