Are you bored yet?

This morning we woke to a fresh fall of the white stuff and happily we didn't have to be anywhere.  Although the snow that came down seemed a bit light and not the big flakes type I thought I would have another crack at snow dyeing but this time using dye solutions.  

The fabrics were soda soaked and then piled up on inverted foil dishes to keep them out of the melting snow.

Procion MX dyes were prepared using a piece of the soda soaked fabric as a drop cloth to catch any loose powder and I wore a mask to save me inhaling any dye powder.  I used Bright Scarlet, Turquoise (which doesn't take well in cold temperatures but I like it) and Warm Black.  I was hoping that the warm black would split and give me some other colours.

I poured the colours on, scarlet first, then turquoise, then black but didn't use all the dye as I didn't want to get solid colour.  I forgot to put the dropcloth in the bowl so I bagged it up and poured the surplus turquoise and black carfeully onto it so that the colours mixed as little as possible.

I had a small accident with some spilt dye on the doormat so quickly soaked it up with a colour catcher.  I was really pleased with the pattern that the dye made on the catcher.

I left the fabric sitting under the snow until about 5 o'clock this evening and it's now out of the cold environment and batching in my warm studio in plastic.  We will have to be patient until tomorrow when I will rinse it all out.  So far the results look very promising but I didn't take any piccies of that stage, sorry.  

While the dye was doing its thing DH and I decided to take advantage of the lying snow to go for a  walk and take some photos.  

You can see why I didn't fancy taking the car out, our side road is a bit slippy and there's a slope to negotiate at the bottom.

A bit of inspiration in car tyre patterns,

and paw prints and sled tracks.

We didn't go very far, just across to a neighbouring housing estate which, at the moment affords a view across fields to Great Gonerby.

DH looks like one of those scarecrows that villages put out for scarecrow festivals :-)  If things go to plan these fields will soon be lost to 99 houses.  They just have to find a way of bridging the railway line.  

I havn't tweaked the light in the photo too much as the atmosphere was very muted.  There were some lovely lines and potential stitch marks in the views.

What do you think?  This year we have to choose a theme for the Journal Quilt challenge in the Contemporary Quilt Group of the Quilters Guild and I think I am going to choose 'Marks' as that should allow me enough latitude for the year.  I didn't do the challenge last year but I am excited by the 12" x 8" horizontal format this year and 'Marks' will enable me to continue the work I started with Jo Budd, Shelley Rhodes and Dionne Swift.

Shelley Rhodes

I think I may have mentioned our trip to Lancashire and the fact that it was prompted by the lure of a workshop with Shelley Rhodes.  I had seen Shelley's work at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace last year and hoped that her workshop would challenge me and lead me on in my quest for better self expression in my textile work.

Shelley has a spacious and welcoming studio in the beautiful countryside near Carnforth Lancashire.

The studio is the main building with roof fanlights and is a lovely stone building with exposed wood rafters. I think there were 8 of us for the workshop but the day was so busy that there was barely time to say hi.

The workshop was titled 'Fabulous Fragments' and before we went Shelley asked us to collect items from which to work in a small box and to photograph them in various groupings and print off A4 images.  It didn't take much thought for me to decide to take a selection of beach finds.

We went through a series of hectic exercises to enable us to study a selected item and consider the marks it revealed and also to produce papers from which to work later and to distress some of the printed images.

We had a brainstorming session so that we could introduce ourselves and say what had interested us by our chosen 'fragments'.  I settled on working with the greeny shell in the box and I also used the encrusted piece of plastic I found on the beach in Cornwall some time ago.

From the shell I made marks on a piece of paper I had constructed but  I didn't think to photograph it in its entirety before I cut into it later. The following photographs pretty much show the whole piece but in sections.

Some of the marks above were already on the papers I used.  The dark ink marks and various pastel marks were part of the process.  We also started to join pieces of prepared papers and fabrics together to work towards either a finished piece or a series of small pieces,

These holes were meant to echo the holes in the plastic and would reveal the underlying layers when used in a piece of work.

The final piece is made up of linen, a piece of my printed paper, hand made paper and tracing paper  and was worked into with stitch.  Clearly it needs a lot more work and will probably remain as a sample.  Shelley suggested that I grow it vertically and I may do that when I have the time to work with it further. 

At Shelley's suggestion I used 'L-shapes' to isolate areas of the larger piece of constructed paper and came up with some interesting sections which were attached to a backing with tiny gold pins, a tiny piece of the encrusted plastic being added as a unifying link.

I think the top photo is upside down but it sort of works either way.  I think these warrant further work and may even develop into larger textile pieces.  I'm not sure how big the last image will enlarge to but I was fascinated to see the detail in the plastic after I took the photo.  The shapes there are reminiscent of stitch and take me back to micro to macro of Jo Budd's workshop last year at Summer School.  

We also made time for a little monoprinting on lens tissue and other surfaces exploring our marks further

No time to include these in any work on the day but potential nonetheless. 

I am still digesting everything we did on the day but I have lots of ideas to take forward.  The workshop was full on and two days would have been wonderful but I was glad I made the journey.  Shelley is a calm yet stimulating teacher and it would be great to work with her again to develop some of these ideas. 

More from Lancashire and two beautiful Arts and Crafts houses soon.

Nature's Marks Experiment

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Yesterday I was looking in at Dale Rollerson's blog in Australia and read that she was thinking of putting a piece of fabric out into the garden after she had worked on it a little to see what happened. This set me thinking. I had had an idea for some time to put a canvas panel in the garden to see what marks the elements would make on it but had never done anything about it. The idea started when I saw this piece of hardboard laying about at a venue I went to.

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So, spurred on by Dale and Maggie Grey, I have put 4 surfaces out into the garden to see what the weather can do to them. They are, clockwise, canvas with rusty blades, silk, cotton, and satin (I think). They are in different areas of the garden so I'll see what difference that makes too. Dale has been working on her fabric before putting it outside and may stitch on it first. As it is summer in Australia the effects on the two sets of fabric will surely be different. If I can find the time and energy tomorrow I think I will prepare another piece of cloth in a similar way to Dale and put that out too. Good job we don't get too many visitors, they'd think I'd completely lost the plot! I probably have!!!! LOL