Flooded house
25 Apr 2012 5 Comments
in Uncategorized Tags: flood
My absence has been slightly longer than anticipated, owing to a bit of a domestic crisis.
When we got back from Italy on Monday night, we discovered that the water tank in our loft had overflowed, flooding much of the house (right down to the cellar) and causing the ceiling beneath the tank to collapse.
The ceiling underneath the water tank collapsed
Luckily, our neighbours heard the sound of running water and managed to get into the house and turn off the water and electricity at the mains – or the damage could have been even worse. 
So instead of going to college yesterday I spent the day trying to clean up the mess and dealing with insurance companies, loss adjusters, plumbers, locksmiths et al.
The biggest problem is getting everything dried out, especially large items like rugs, as the weather is too wet to put them outside. Some of my fleece got wet as well, though most of it was in plastic bags.
So there’s likely to be a slight hiatus before creative activities resume. Lord knows how long it will take to redecorate.
Frosty the snowman
17 Apr 2012 2 Comments
in felt Tags: felt, gourd, Morley College, nuno, velvet, vessels
Back to Morley College today – and time to start thinking about exhibition ideas.
I have a couple of ideas, based around the work I’ve been doing on textures in 3D felt and shells – but I need to hone them down more and focus. I won’t add any more at this stage – just show you what I worked on today.
The first was intended to be a gourd shape, though it looks more like Frosty the snowman! You can’t tell very easily from the picture, but the top sphere is smaller than the bottom sphere. The “waist” needs to be more elongated – so I’m going to try using a single resist next time (this was made with two different circular resists felted together).
The second was a small velvet nuno pot. I used the same technique as for the silk nuno pot – but should have used blue wool, as the white coming through is a bit intrusive. But it’s the first time I’ve successfully managed to felt with velvet, so two cheers for that at least!
Now I’m off to Italy for a few days – hopefully for some warmer weather and good food! Ciao bellas – see you all in a week or so!
More stitched shibori
16 Apr 2012 2 Comments
in dye Tags: indigo, Japanese larch, ombre, shibori
Just a couple more stitched shibori samples.
This one was plain running stitch on a piece of cotton/linen fabric that had previously been dyed mid-blue with indigo:
Then I tried combining stitch and ombre, using a Japanese larch pattern on cotton. This was a bit tricky because once the stitching is all drawn up, it’s difficult to judge the gradation of the ombre.
Also, the stitching contrast works best against a darker background (of course). But one of the other students said that she likes the way the pattern disappears due to the ombre.
Back to college tomorrow – will have to start thinking about what to do for the exhibition in July!
Shibori dragonfly and ombre
13 Apr 2012 7 Comments
in dye Tags: dragonfly, indigo, ombre, stitched resist
I haven’t had much time recently to concentrate on being creative. I’ve found from experience that if I try to rush through something in a couple of hours, it inevitably goes wrong and I end up wasting time and materials, so I might as well have done something else. Also – understandably – when ESP is on holiday he wants to go out and do things rather than sit and watch me making felt! 
So over Easter we visited a couple of exhibitions – David Hockney at the Royal Academy (absolutely brilliant) and the Hajj exhibition at the British Museum, which contained some impressive embroidered textiles.
This morning I finally found some time to tackle some of the lessons from the online shibori course – stitching a dragonfly and trying some ombre dyeing (graded colour).
Both these pieces were dyed with indigo on linen, dipped several times.
I also tried some ombre dyeing on a cheap scarf I bought in a charity shop for 99p. I don’t even know what it’s made of, but it has a very open weave. I folded it several times, and dipped it in a couple of different dilutions of indigo.
The mathematics of nautilus shells
03 Apr 2012 1 Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: logarithmic spirals, mathematics, nautilus
Just in case it’s not immediately apparent from the title, this post is a bit of a geeky diversion into the mathematics behind spirals. Skip now if the word “logarithm” sends you into a cold sweat!
Essentially, a nautilus shell is a logarithmic spiral, also known as an equiangular spiral or Bernoulli spiral. If you imagine a number of equally spaced lines radiating from a central point, an equiangular spiral will hit each of these radials at the same angle.
Image from Wolfram Research
Image from xahlee.org
What this means is that each layer of the spiral gets bigger as it grows, unlike an Archimedean spiral, where the width of the layers remains constant.
Image from spiralzoom.com
Nature seems to like logarithmic spirals – as well as mollusc shells you can see them in the shape of galaxies, like the spiral arms of the Milky Way, and in hurricane and cyclone formations.
Will any of this help me construct a nautilus shell in felt? Probably not, but it’s been an interesting diversion.
Normal service to be resumed next time.
Nautilus progress
29 Mar 2012 2 Comments
in felt Tags: felt, nautilus, resists
I was lying in bed this morning, dozing (well, dozing as much as is possible when John Humphreys is hectoring a politician on the radio), when I had a eureka moment on my nautilus project.
Instead of adding successive resists on one side, as I have been doing, what about adding resists on both sides? This could add the chambers and felt the spiral at the same time.
At Liz’s request, I have taken a photo of the felting in progress, with the resists in place, but I’m not sure it will help much.
It’s a bit complicated to explain. You’ll just have to take my word for it that it does work – up to a point.
It looks more like a rose than a nautilus at the moment – I need to look at the relative widths of successive resists and the distances between them as they get larger. But I think I may have cracked the basic technique.
Blue moons
28 Mar 2012 1 Comment
I wasn’t going to do any textile stuff today, as I had loads of work to get through. But then my internet connection seriously started playing up, so I took that as a sign that the indigo goddesses were telling me to abandon my desk and head for the vat for an hour. And it was a beautiful sunny day, after all. 
This week on our course we’re playing with moons and stars. So here are a few moons I tried out.
From left to right:
1. Single moon on very sheer unbleached muslin
2. Three dips, with one moon added each time
3. Three moons on pre-dyed sky fabric (my favourite)
4. Three moons on pre-dyed pale blue fabric, with (not very) successful attempt at overlapping moons in the middle.
I’ll probably be trying more of these on some different fabrics. And the stars still beckon…
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