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.

End of Term

Hand in for this term is Wednesday.   I've finished ahead of schedule, all work finished, printed, mounted and self assessment written.  Quite glad to see the back of it all really for this year and looking forward to doing some work of my own during the extended summer holidays!

So here we are, my final sample of little biscuits: tone on tone fabric bonded pieces as well as simple stitches have been used to embellish the small squares of fabric prior to sewing, manipulating and stuffing.

Match Samples

Over the last couple of days I've been dyeing and sewing samples based on my match book theme.  I'm still undecided as to whether to pursue the simple match shape with single straight lines and stitches or base my designs on the match books and boxes themselves, more square in design and potentially more scope for 3D.  Need to make a decision as although we are formally on Easter Holidays, there's not that much time left before we hand all the samples for this term in, so I'm trying to at least nail down the final design.  Current favourite are my little pillows, these are intended to  resemble a very large scale match heads, and are approximately 10cm square, so I am currently considering shades of blue and green merging horizontally into each other made up with slightly smaller 8cm squares.

Memorabilia - Match Books

The third brief has sent us on an exploration of memories: belongings, reminiscence, recollections, emotions, glances, memories, keepsakes, gifts, ephemera - collectible items that were originally designed to be short-lived, a memento from a place or time, previous memories. 

I've decided to dig out a jar of old match books that I have collected over the years.  Having gone through the jar there are lots of memories as well as loads of rich colours and simple rectangular form in  match books and matches themselves.  Having had a good look, I'm not quite sure how to turn these into a textile art piece!

Chain Mail

Now we are moving onto our third travel brief, I thought I'd upload some of the knit samples, to bring this section to a close.  The theme of the new brief is Design Crafts: Innovating with materials and processes, 'Memorabilia: memories and nostalgia of a journey'.  I think I may revert to some of the imagery from the first brief based on the vintage sewing kit I have, or alternatively I could start afresh with my own box of collected items, or my book of old post cards I found in the loft last week!