An unexpected and peculiar colour

Continuing my pleating theme. I made yet another foil masking tape piece. Still the old boring white but this time more integrated mixing the two techniques together.

Quite effective. But not dramatic enough for me, pleats need to be more bold and I would prefer larger gaps between the pleats.

As I was making it I decided I would dye it after finishing to see the effect of the different fabrics and some yarns that I had incorporated. Below the scrim was silk , cotton and alpaca.

Green I decided would be good. I mixed a nice kind of khaki green which I hoped would give lots of shade possibilities. I read again about mordants and modifiers thought I understood and went for it.

Not really the expected results . In fact very peculiar all together.

 

Not a sign of green. I have to admit that I mixed my khaki from orange and turquoise blue , but if was definitely green in the pot and on a piece of paper. What seems to have happened is the cotton has become dirty blue , the wool and alpaca dirty orange and the very small amout of silk very dark green. So unexpected and peculiar. I better read my dying books again.

 

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Technical problems

I wrote a blog 10 days ago seriously about progress with my course . I took the photos ,and I then left home without them. So this blog will appear later.
In the meantime I have been I have been enjoying my neighbours, David's , Herdwick lambs.

Walking the fells

And testing out weaving and felting combined

Normal service will be resumed soon !

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Pleats

I am continuing my exploration into making pleats in felt .

I have continued to try stitching , masking tape and foil with mixed success. I abandoned cling film , it's just too delicate for me.

Overall my Sucess has been better using scrim than habotai ( pongee). Mostly I think this has been down too the fact that slightly different methods of felting is called for by the two fabrics, because of their different structures but this is hard to achieve when working everything together.

Here some tasters of my successes and failures close up of one big piece of felt.

Foil pleated prefelted scrim, works quite well

Stitched prefelt into habotai, works wells , but the fabric is not well attached to the pleats.

Stitched prefelt into scrim . Works well , is more controllable than the foil technique , but takes a lot longer to do.

Masking tape pleats on scrim , which is pretty effective and on habotai which is not successful . With the scrim the tape can be used to stick two sides of a pleat together , this does not work with the close woven habotai and so it's impossible to get the same effect. Used in a different way I think the tape would be a good way of making bubbles in the silk , by preventing it attaching to fibres trying to penetrate it.

So mixed effects which is a success as that is what I was trying to achieve.

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Framing

I have puzzled for a while on a good way to display my flat felt work. I am really not happy with most of the ways I have seen to directly attach pieces of felt to walls. I want mine to hang vertically which appears to be hard to achieve. As textile works though the feel is important and of course there texture and a lot of this is lost if you frame in a box frame for example .

So I have been testing an alternative technique

First take some stretcher bars , which you can but very cheaply in art shops and are made in a wide range of sizes and hammer them together into a frame.

Then cover them with some opaque fabric of a colour that's sympathetic to your final effect. In this case white. Quickly and easily stapled to the wooden bars.

Attach your felt masterpiece to its backing fabric . Centre on the covered frame , this is probably the hardest task and staple into position, taking care of the corners. Because of the two layers of fabric all your attaching stitching is hidden

Trim the fabric , attach gummed paper tape to give a professional finish.

Here the finished piece. Just a small test piece for now.

Which I am still not sure I have got it completely right , but I am making progress.

 

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Foil , masking tape and felt

Take an aspect of felt making and explore it with opened experiments. Easy to say difficult to choose what to do. Incorpoartion of fabric , knitting , beads, crochet, dying, laminating and connections by threads.....Just a few of the things I would like to test . Another time. I choose to explore pleats , or really the techniques of incorporation of texture into felt via pleats. Sounds a bit boring really when I write it down , but only time will tell.

So I tried eight different techniques to pleat my fabric. I used stitching , foil, cling film, masking tape and gaffer tape. Good to use all these alternatives as you never know what it going to happen , which after all us the whole idea.

I was a bit constrained as the city and guilds ( bless them ) insists that the experiment all happens together , on one piece of felt , which means all treated the same , not really ideal for these diverse processes and materials.

My starting point .

The final piece with its eight different experiments. It is all white , so that it can be true texture comparison not confused by colour.

Overall I am quite pleased and these are my favorites .

 

Masking tape used to prevent lamination as a way of making pleats.

Foil used to go hold the texture and also prevent laminating.

Unfortunately the gaffer tape although successful will not be taken further for now.

 

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Seams

When asked how to fasten two pieces of felt together I go back to my sewing roots , and think straight seams and French seams. With more thought I realised that with felt the possibilities are enormous. You can of course sew felt in a traditional way and get a traditional effect. But if you sew it at the prefelt stage , well you can either create an stand out seam or you can make the seam almost completley invisible.

Here is an example, a very small sample.

It almost looks like piping.

Then of course you might want an invisible seam , and these example would be almost invisible if I had chosen a more sympathetic thread colour.

My favorites seams are using a fabric or yarn to make the seam , I think this could look really cool , with slightly more exciting colours , and adds a flexibility that could be very wearable in a felted garment.

All I need now is to work out how to make a jacket so I can use my seaming skills.

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City and guilds

The City and Guilds course I am doing , is called Level 3 Certificate in Design and Craft 7716-23 Feltmaking. Design for craft , I quote " provides the means to develop a design reference for craft , through a series of outcomes demonstrated by a body of practical work. For me it is sometimes difficult to document this process and present this body of work ! I have a tendency to just do the design work in my head, or maybe I am kidding myself. This attitude is not acceptable understandably to the C&G . I need a little more discipline. One of the good things is that although the design process can take many directions , in the course , you get asked to try things. Which is good because I have found something's I really like doing , that I have never tried before.

Do to a lack of design documentation I have been rethinking and redoing my documentation for a piece of bark I picked up last summer. The bark is quite big , well about 25 cm long , so first I zoomed in to a small area.

I then attempted to draw the keg elements of this with wax , ink and bleach. I found this collection of media rather difficult. Not least because you cannot see what you have drawn with the wax until you add the ink and then it's too late to go back. Consquently I am not too pleased with my final result.

After this I had to develop the same concept into colours. This required my active imagination and a play with Photoshop as the colours in the bark are pretty muted. I drew with pastels which I do like using.

I had to use some own printed materials for my felted piece and I decided to try for a texture and a smooth effect trying to mirror my drawing above. After adding my texture effects and slashing the printed scrim I started with no longer resemble a rectangle , it was more like a fish. Never mind . After a bit more slashingof my Shetland fibres here is the finished piece.

Except I think it needs some stitching , but that will have to wait for another time.

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