Household Geometrics

I've finished off the very un-inspirational summer project of Household Geometrics.  Having scoured the house looking for squares, circles, etc etc.  Its been very difficult to get enthused by such a dull subject, sketching taps and plug holes and kitchen utensils!  I found myself homing in on circles, spheres and rounds once again, this time in particular inspired by the bathroom shower head, loads of repeating patterns of circles within circles; and secondly by an installation on the South Bank of kitchen sieves by the Korean artist Choi Jeong Hwa.   The sieves in particular got me looking at stacked semi circles and repeating piles of half circle shapes.  Trying to meet one of the tutors recommendations I've also tried to get messy by stencilling and stamping (made at home from parcel packaging foam stuff) these patterns and shapes on paper and fabrics, as well as more trying Shibori.  I've also been looking at fabric construction ideas and this time playing around with Suffolk Puffs (or YoYos) having found a little plastic 'YoYo maker' tool to make them that gets a great result every time.  I've used the puffs to create masses of puffs overlapping, like the sieve installation taking an individual piece any by repeating that shape to create a new patterns and shapes.

 

Shibori Dyeing

Here are the results at my first attempt at Shibori dyeing. These samples were all stitched to create a resist to the dye, by using different techniques the dye cannot penetrate the compressed fabric areas, thus creating the patterns. These were dyed using Turquoise MX cold water dye at 2%, the fabric used was fine lightweight white cotton.

These little circles were created using a simple BINDING technique to create rings of undyed fabric using small beads to create the circular repeating shapes. The bead positions were marked onto the fabric prior to binding. 

This is another method of binding called SPIDERWEB.  This is created by making a pinched umbrella like bunch of fabric and the thread resist is wound up and down the fabric bunch, here shown close up and as a group, I didn't like the inconsistency of the resist and dye dispersal.

Here are some stitched samples, for these the fabric is stitched and then gathered to create the resist.  This is the least successful sample created using a technique called MOKUME where the fabric sewn in running stitch and pulled tight like a concertina. Dye penetrated the compressed areas more than it should have done.

More successfully, this Shibori method is called ORI NUI where wavy lines are drawn, folded and stitched along the fold line to create two rows of dots.

 My final sample is my favourite so far (and I think the simplest) and is called KARAMATSU or Japanese Larch.  In this case the fabric is folded and concentric half circles are drawn on the fold  and then stitched with running stitch and drawn up tight to create the resist.

I found all of these methods in 'Shibori Designs and Techniques' by Mandy Southan.

School Placement

I'm now about to start my final week at Highcliffe School for my work placement.  Not much update on the textile work front as I'm pretty busy experiencing what its like to work in a senior school!  This a small sample of Shibori resist that I created to demonstrate  to the GCSE group, various knitting techniques that I have used as part of my course.