Inspired by the V&A
11 May 2012 6 Comments
in dye, exhibitions, felt Tags: crochet, felt, gauze, indigo, muslin, sake bottle, shibori, silk, V&A, velvet, vessels
Every year the Victoria & Albert Museum holds an art competition, called “Inspired by” for people on part-time courses. Entrants have to create a piece inspired by work in the collections of the V&A or the Museum of Childhood. Selected works are displayed in the relevant museum in October.
I’m planning to enter some of the indigo felted vessels I’ve made. The pieces that have inspired me are a stoneware sake set by Yamada Hikaru made around 1979, and a 17th-century blue and white porcelain sake bottle, maker unknown.
I love the organic simplicity of the forms of the vessels in the sake set, and I thought I would use indigo dye and shibori, both traditional Japanese techniques, to add the blue and white element.
You’ve already seen some of these, but here’s a photo of the final set. The two larger felt vessels are ombre dyed with indigo, while the five smaller ones are nuno felted with a different yarn or fabric, also dyed with indigo.
Larger felt vessel, ombre dyed with indigo
Smaller felt vessel, also ombre dyed with indigo
Nuno felt pot with silk velvet
Nuno felt pot with cotton muslin
Nuno felt pot with silk chiffon
Nuno felt pot with ombre-dyed crocheted lambswool
Nuno felt pot with cotton gauze
Just have to fill in the entry form now – probably the hardest part! ;-)
Still blue
03 May 2012 2 Comments
in dye, felt Tags: crochet, felt vessel, indigo, ombre dyeing, shibori, silk chiffon
The loss adjuster came yesterday and said that he would be sending a company round to install some heaters and dehumidifiers to help speed up the drying process (the walls of the hall are still sopping and the kitchen floor is still damp 10 days after the flood). The wall and ceiling paper in the dining room (aka my studio) have been the worst affected, so it looks as if there will be considerable disruption there over the next few weeks.
In the meantime I plough on – what else is there to do? Yesterday I ombre dyed my latest vessel. It’s not as even as I intended, but the unevenness adds extra texture, like a ceramic glaze, so I’m happy with it.
I’ve also made some smaller nuno pots, again dyed with indigo. The first used silk chiffon, the second crocheted yarn that had been ombre dyed.
Indigo and felt
27 Apr 2012 6 Comments
in dye, felt Tags: felt, gauze, indigo, nuno, shell, shibori, vessel. pot
The rain stopped for a while yesterday afternoon, and the combined sunshine and wind finally gave me a chance to dry out some of the wetter items. The house still smells of damp carpet though.
The loss adjuster isn’t coming till next Wednesday, so I managed to find a quiet corner and escape from the chaos by working on some more samples, combining my two favourite techniques of felting and indigo.
First up I tried some ombre dyeing directly on one of the felt shell structures. This is not as subtle as it should have been – the wool takes up the indigo more easily than the cotton I’ve been using, and the depth of the shell is a bit shallow for a good gradient.
Then I made a couple of small nuno pots using cotton gauze and cotton muslin dyed using shibori techniques. The gauze in particular gives a lovely cobwebby effect.
I felt much better afterwards!
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!
Getting solid colour with indigo
22 Mar 2012 8 Comments
in dye Tags: indigo, itajime, shibori, sky fabric
I admit my heart sank when I saw that one of the things we were supposed to do for the second lesson of my online indigo workshop with Shibori Girl (Glennis Dolce) was dye a large piece of fabric a solid colour. I’ve tried this before, and ended up instead with a lovely pattern, which wasn’t what I wanted!
But now I know that’s because I did practically everything wrong. I didn’t wet the fabric before putting it in the vat, and I just left it submerged for 10 minutes without working it beneath the surface. To minimise air pockets, you’re supposed to lower it carefully into the vat from one end, then keep squeezing and smoothing it while it’s in the vat.
At Morley College we are told always to put the lid on the vat to prevent it deranging. Although Glennis gives advice like squeezing the fabric out below the surface to minimise oxidation, she feels that it is important to keep that vat open while dyeing so that you can help the indigo penetrate the fabric properly.
I guess with your own vat you know how much you are working with it and how much exposure it has had. With a shared vat everyone could be sloshing items around and it would derange very quickly.
Anyway, following Glennis’s instructions, it was much easier to get a uniform colour across the whole piece.
The fabric on the left and in the centre is a light cotton calico, while the fabric on the right is a cotton/linen mix, which came out a brighter blue and much less grey.
Then I had a go at making a “sky piece”, so called because it resembles clouds in the sky. You wet the fabric, crumple it up and tie with string or rubber bands. After each dip, let it oxidise, rinse, then tie and dip again until you’re happy with the result. I did three dips altogether:
Sorry – I clearly didn’t manage to peg them in the same orientation each time!
Finally, I had a go at itajime, folding some very light cotton muslin and clamping it beween a couple of CDs. The sheerness of the fabric and the sunshine (yay!) made this quite tricky to photograph, but you get the idea!
The little blue circles in the middle of the CD didn’t really come out in the central part of the cloth, because that’s the area that was in the middle of the folds where the indigo didn’t penetrate. I used a syringe to make sure it penetrated around the edges; if the syringe had a needle I could have properly injected it into the cloth!
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