Some animal creations ready for Christmas .
Living and Dyeing have been busy getting ready for christmas, making pressents and creating some new animal designs. Meet Esther and Angus, an odd couple but kind and cuddely non the less.
These 3 limited additon cushions work well as a collection, created from Hessian, screen printed silk useing acid dye (Curtisy of my second year at Duncan of Jordanston) and machine + hand stitched detail useing organic cotton thread.
More to come on the animal invation as more people need their christmas pressents! Ho Ho Ho!
CUSHIONS!
Finally finally cushions for my cushion covers have arrived!
here are the two finished products i have so far.
Hand made useing off white hessian with stitched detail ontop of naturally dyed silks.
The start of the cushion invasion!
The matterials used in the process are off white hessian as the base fabric, the orange and green fabrics stitched on is naturaly dyed, hand woven peace silk satin. The thread used to create shape and pattern is organic cotton thread. All materials are purchased from Offset Warehouse – whom specialise in eco fabrics.
Sewing, sewing, sewing!
Mark Making.
Free hand sewing machine shapes. Ideas for adding detail into design work.
Sketchbook pages inspired by reeds, developing marks that can be translated through the media of stitch.
Results of the Xanthoria Parietina (common yellow lichen)
Step by step what i did after fermentation in a jar for a few weeks…
First, strain off and discard of the lichen…
Secondly, add fabric samples and stir a few times.
Thirdly, as i didn’t have much time to continuly stir them for a decent amount of time i then proceeded to add the whole contents back into the jar and left in there for an extra week
This being the result… from this… 
to this…
Crottle Dyeing, RESULTS! + Reeds printed dye
After a good few days of soaking my fabric in strained off crottle dye (as i found out it’s just plain sillyness to not strain it off as bit of crottle get stuck to the fabric and a terrable pain to get out). This is the results of an over dye.
The fabrics are: bamboo, wool, paper like tussah silk, hand spun peace silk and natural draped peace silk.
The second batch of results gained today was from a half hearted experiment of my wraping some reeds up in fabrics, binding it and submerging in water for a few days… These are the results: (useing bamboo fabric)
finaly feeling at home…
finaly starting to balane out work and studio time, can you see my studio if starting to feel a little more homely… i.e messy?
A day in the studio.
Finally, finally!! I have found the time to get a decent amount of time in the studio.
So today was a day for meeting other residents, experimenting more with the crottle, rather foolishly sniffing a jar of week olf ammonia (never do it kids, not even if the colour is really pretty… it will not smell nice) and painting.
I’m afraid no pictures of me gassing myself or that of the dye experiments today, the later is for another post for another day.
BUT here are my first attempts at getting back into sketchbook work.
Living + Dyeing. 