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.

 

Not quite so serious

Still being a little creative over the summer holidays (and using some of my newly learnt knitting techniques from my first year at Uni).  This is Loopy the Sheep made with love for Ellis, to add to her ever growing pile of soft toys and animals xx.

Pattern from Amanda Berry at

http://www.etsy.com/shop/fluffandfuzz?section_id=11800947

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.

Knitting with fabric strips

Now that I am on my very long summer hols, and I feel that I have had a bit of a rest; I've now started working my way through some of the ideas that I came across during term time, but didn't get around to trying them out.  This is a large square of old printed furnishing fabric cut on the bias to create a very long 3cm wide strip which I then knitted in garter stitch (every row knit) using 15mm (pretty fat) needles.  I've no idea what you would do with this, as the strip is far from perfect with extra rough ends where the fabric was cut on the turn, and creates random tufts in the knit, but its pretty self supporting and almost sculptural in its nature.

Crochet Spheres

Having hand knitted spheres for my uni projects this year, I thought I'd try to experiment with crochet.  I found this simple pattern at http://www.kundhi.com/blog/2010/10/11/tiny-crochet-ball-pattern/.  Although they worked out quite well, I found the number of rounds less easy to count than in knitting and I kept losing my place in the pattern.  Here are some of the better samples which look a bit like ice cream scoops.  I think that the crochet is less flexible than knitting as there are less stitch choices, so I think I may revert back to the knitting!

Batik

Whilst I has at Highcliffe School I had a chance to experiment with melted wax and tjantings to create batik samples.  These were drawn with wax and then dyed with MX cold water dye in magenta.  Although I used fine lawn, I think you may need to use more wax to get a better resist, and its certainly a method that needs some practise, although by its nature will never be perfect. 

Getting the wax off was more of a challenge, these were initially ironed between a sandwich of brown paper, which seemed to melt and spread the wax and made the fabric stiffer.  I then poured boiling water over them which removed more wax but killed the grass beneath!  Once dried I was then left with a very thin layer of wax residue on the fabric, which I then ironed again in a brown paper sandwich, which removed most of it.

I quite like the method, but not sure sufficiently keen to invest in the tools required!  I think I'm going to return to the shibori stitched resist method for comparison.

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.