creating Archives - Inspired By Everyday Beauty

Dyeing in the street

This summer while out on my daily walks, I frequently passed by the most beautiful manhole covers in the north end of the city. The covers are relief designs of fish, a gentle reminder to any of us who look at manhole covers that our waterways are all connected. Sewer water and street runoff eventually flow down into our lakes and rivers. The implicit message is that we should be mindful of what we put down the drains and onto our surfaces as all toxins have the potential to poison our precious resource. OK, maybe not everyone picks up that message, but I sure wish they would!

In truth, what I have been thinking as I’ve passed by is what cool rust-dye prints these fish could make on a piece of cotton. Unfortunately, these two manhole covers are situated in a fairly heavy industrial park strip.

Not the best situation to set up a makeshift studio. And, I wouldn’t want to be using any process that would risk toxic substances being left on the ground or in the drain.

Nevertheless, this section of my walk was always occupied with thoughts of how I could clean the dirt off the covers; what size cotton I would need; how I would hold down the cotton; how I would keep the trucks off the cotton; whether anyone would steal my cotton if left unguarded; how I would transport my supplies; where I could unobtrusively set up a lawn chair to wait while the rust process evolved; how many hours I’d have to wait for the rust to transfer… So many logistics to conquer in the name of street art.

This weekend, with it’s usual abruptness, Labour Day was upon us. The summer is officially over. It was looking like my chance for lifting a print this year would soon be gone.

The other day, I took a different walking route and I came upon the very same manhole covers only two blocks from home, safely located in the middle of a sidewalk. Aha, I thought, if we get one more sunny day, I might just be able to do it.

I started by running a little test at home. I wanted to make sure my idea would work before venturing out into public where I might be seen playing around a sewer cover. With a vinegar-soaked piece of cotton, some rusty washers and a hot sunny piece of the driveway, the experiment worked. All I would need would be a harmless vinegar/water solution, and recyclable plastic bags.

The next day, before I could lose my nerve, I gathered up my supplies: vinegar to wet down the cotton and the cover, pre-dyed cotton with a watery indigo pattern, zip lock bags to weigh down the wet fabric for maximum contact, a black garbage bag to cover the piece and capture the sun’s heat (to speed up the process), a comfy lawn chair for the wait, a sunhat, and of course, my beloved iPhone for timing and doing crossword puzzles during the wait.

I headed off to the site just after noon. I got set up without any problems, found a nice shady spot for my chair (no need for a sunhat, could have used a sweater), and set the timer for an hour.

When the chimes rang, I took my first peek. The rusty washers I had thrown on for good measure were starting to give a nice print, but that was it. Not even the slightest discoloration from the manhole cover let alone the beginnings of a nice fish print. Hmm, it wasn’t looking good.

Determined to give it the best shot, I waited another hour and still I saw nothing but a wet piece of cotton. My phone battery was about to die, I was chilled to the bone, and I was in desperate need of a bio break. I gave up and headed home for a hot bath.

I was feeling pretty disheartened, but my husband reminded me that Thomas Edison once said that no experiment is a waste of time and that even a failed experiment could teach us something…we can for a certainty learn how a thing cannot be done. After puzzling for a while on why it was unsuccessful, I verified with a quick google search what I suspected: manhole covers are treated to resist rusting (duh).

The problem was that by this time I was fully committed to that fish print and I wasn’t ready to give up. So, during my wakeful hours in the night, I made a new plan. I decided to use the cover as a relief plate, similar to doing a charcoal rubbing. To make the print permanent, I could use my brayer and thickened, water-based ink to transfer the pattern onto the cotton.

This morning, I packed up a new bucket of supplies, added a sweater, and headed back to the site. I tried a test piece of cotton. It worked!

I was on a roll. Why print one fish when you can print a whole school of fish! Within about 45 minutes I had printed and printed and printed, blues, golds, coppers…

Success! My original idea for fish printed on a piece of indigo pole-dyed cotton turned out just as I had hoped. As a side bonus, I have a long piece which was meant to be my test scrap that I also love. Two for the price of one! Next up, the fun of sewing them into something.

Inks, pigments and playing in the woods

This year, to celebrate the summer solstice, I participated in a day-long workshop foraging in the woods and then using the bounty we collected to to make inks and pigments. We also tried our hand at making fresh flower prints, and we learned how to make artists’ charcoal from willow branches. It was a fantastic day and lucky for you, I got lots of pictures!

We started off on a morning hike through the woods with very dark clouds looming. Everyone had rain gear and boots and a healthy sense of adventure, so the on and off rain that hit didn’t dampen the adventure.

The hike began with some lessons on foraging responsibly: do no damage, do not take anything that appears to be unique or in short supply, and do not take more than you need. With this in mind, most of our walk was spent observing and in my case, taking pictures. It was only on the way back that we collected a few samples of mud, rocks, flowers, leaves and bark.

It is still pretty early in the season and there were lots of wild flowers to be seen along the way. For my little pouch of keepers I picked two wild columbine, a couple of purple cow’s vetch and two bunch berries. We also saw lots of clover and daisies and other common field flowers, but I chose primarily for colour.

One bonus to all the rainy days we’ve had was that mushrooms were popping up everywhere. I do not know how to identify mushrooms, but I marveled over the variety of colours and shapes. They are easily overlooked while you are concentrating on the the trail, and trying not slip on roots and mud, but if you keep your eyes open you will spot them.

I have always loved lichen and it is abundant in our area. On this trip, we saw three different categories of lichen. Covering most of the exposed granite we saw lots of ‘crustose’ lichen, that’s easy to remember because it looks like a crust. It is so common that we often don’t even notice it. On a damp tree, we spotted some ‘foliose’ lichen patches, which looks a little leafy. To my delight, on an old decaying log, I saw some of my favorite ‘fruticose’ lichen. It has has little upside down funnels that look like fruit cups. Sometimes, all kinds of lichen crowd together and compete with moss for space. You can use lichen for creating natural dyes, but unlike mushrooms lichen takes an incredibly long time to grow so we decided to let it be for now.

*Lunch was well underway when we returned*

Before we knew it, the morning was gone and our tummies were rumbling, so we headed back to the lodge to dry off, fuel up with a delicious lunch and get down to creating. ¹

Laura, our instructor had prepared lots of different work stations so that everyone could spread out to different activities and play at their own pace. She had a stock of pre-made inks and pigments, paper, brushes, hammers, mortars and pestles, soap, willow branches, eye droppers, pH shifting agents, and lots of glass vials and jars. Let the science begin!!

We had decided as a group to do two different ink dyes, one with birch bark and one with sumac leaves. We also had some buckthorn berries and some avocado pits and skins from Laura’s kitchen. Most natural dyes will shift colour if you alter their pH or add iron or copper salts. A separate work station had been set up so we could experiment.

I guess now would be a good time to mention the difference between ‘ink’ and ‘pigment’. Ink is made by boiling down plant matter to leech out the colour making a concentrated, water based ink. Think of boiling water with tea leaves.

Pigment on the other hand, is non-soluble and is made from pounding, or grinding various types of rock or clay. Once ground down to as fine a powder as possible, the pigment can be added to a substrate to create a paint or a pastel. Mica, can be ground into a pigment which will add sparkle and shine to your paints, inks or pastels.

In our case, we used a bit of honey and soap bar shavings to make a playdough type mixture, then rolled it into drawing pastels. We had gathered some interesting rocks and clay, and, some of us even came back with a few bits of mica.

Out near the open fire, Luke filled a tin can with slim willow branches. He added a tight lid in which he had punched air holes. Then, he tossed the sealed tin into the fire. Soon, we had a tin of artists’ charcoal!

As if we weren’t having enough fun already, there was one more activity to try. We had each gathered a few wild flowers and Laura had prepared pieces of water colour paper for us. We made a ‘flower sandwich’ with our blossoms and the two pieces of paper. Then we gently hammered until the colour of the flowers created a two-for one print.

The end of the day came very quickly! For me it was a perfect day of fresh air, good food, good company and creativity.

I came home with a nice selection of natural inks to try out on some watercolour painting. I also made a blue-green pastel stick and chose some willow charcoal sticks for some sketching.

Of course, the day got me thinking of how to use these dyes and pigments on fabrics. When I got home I ordered a book Make Ink A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking, by Jason Logan, so I could keep on learning. Who knows what will come next!

*My selection of natural dyes for watercolour painting*

The venue for this workshop was Wintergreen Studios Wintergreen Studios an off-grid wilderness facility. Check it out! ↩︎

Dye With Love

As you know, last summer I became captivated with the Magic of eco dying. At Summer camp I had lots of fun playing around with old cotton fabric and different leaves and flowers that I had gathered on my walks. You also know that I like Creating with purpose.

I decided the next step was to try printing on paper.

I had a few dry runs. Or, I should say wet runs. My first attempts to press leaves between rust-water soaked papers resulted in a bit of a soggy blur. I’ll spare you pictures of that mess!

Through practice, I discovered a few tricks:

use a good quality paper–I used cold press water colour paper
wet the leaves rather than the paper
separate all the leaf layers with parchment paper to avoid bleed through
stack the papers and press them very tightly between two ceramic tiles
steam (i.e. not immersed in water) for 90 minutes
cool completely before unwrapping to peek at the creations

I used six 8″ x 10″ pieces of paper folded in half with leaves in between every layer and every layer separated with parchment paper.

If you are following the math, that means I ended up being able to make a three-section journal, each section with two nested sheets. Folding the sheets in the middle means each section has 8 printed sides and the whole journal is 24 pages.

Some of the parchment papers were too beautiful to discard. I added a few into the journal for secret note space and textural variety.

The original intention was for words to be added free form throughout the journal, but I knew that it might be difficult to dive in and start to write on the flora imprinted pages. I added some lines for encouragement and to give sections for guiding script. I added dyed lined paper, and also stitched in some black lines. I remembered how as a child I had loved running our old Singer treadle machine with no thread over paper pretending to sew. This seemed like a fun idea to add texture and the suggestion of lines.

Next of course, I had to figure out how to bind the whole thing together. A a quick google search lead to directions on how to bind a book with waxed thread.

*Three sections bound with waxed thread*

After binding, there were a few long ends on my threads, which once braided were too nice to cut, so I added some wild turkey feathers, foraged on a summer walk, to serve a book marks.

My dear friend Martha in her retirement is focusing on a love of the written word and expressing herself through poetry. What better reason to create a special journal in which she can scribe beautiful words. This journal was definitely a project of dyeing with love.

*The final poetry journal dyed with love*

A Room of My Own

It was many years ago that I heard of Virginia Woolfe’s Room of One’s Own, but I recall that even then, when I had neither the funds nor the room to be creative, I thought it a brilliant idea.

I feel as though finally, I have arrived.

After a full renovation of our house, a process that spanned over ten years as my husband lovingly made our house a home, the final piece was an upstairs atelier for me!

As you know, since retirement I have plunged into creative pursuits of all kinds and creativity needs space! Not just for an afternoon, but sometimes for more lengthy periods as projects evolve and “mijote” as the French say. It may be possible that my husband tired of my work areas spreading throughout the living room, the kitchen, the dining room, the basement, and occasionally the bedroom. But, whatever the impetus he came up with the great idea to build me a room of my own–an atelier where I could have all my bits and pieces at hand, and keep all my bits and pieces somewhat contained!

I love it! Once and for all I have almost all my ‘stuff’ together in a workable space. There is room for a big design board to post and plan works in progress; my new sewing machine fits into my old 1913 Singer machine table; a workbench gives space for drawing and printing and painting; an in-wall ironing board allows for quick pressing and doubles as an alternate work surface; lots of shelves house books and papers and supplies; and a big reclaimed glass cabinet stores a good chunk of my fabric stash.

The laminate floor works well for spotting rogue pins and quick sweeps, with a couple of sheepskin rugs for cozier footing when needed. The roman blinds can be pulled right up for maximum light. The sliding pocket door closes off the nearby washroom (read water supply), and opens up for more light and heat when needed.

The light is optimal: two big north east windows providing natural light are supplemented with a bar LED light for drearier days and night work, and a desk lamp for closer hand work.

The space is small, but efficient (8′ x12′) and everything is within reach. I’ve been spending winter days holed up in my atelier happily working away on projects, listening to CBC radio and gazing out at the neighbourhood.

That my friends, is the explanation for not having posted a blog in a while…I’ve been too busy playing and creating in the room that is my own.

Fabric Collage Play

Sorry to say I’ve fallen behind in my blogging, but I’ve been very busy having fun! In November, I attended a Fabric Collage workshop at the Kingston Seniors’ Centre https://seniorskingston.ca/ and it has given me a fun new obsession. The workshop was presented by Linda Coulter, a local fibre artist who specializes in collage https://www.lindacoultertextileart.com/

Fabric collage seems to be a perfect combination for me. You can use every scrap and piece of fabric, thread or bobble that you already have in your stash; you can have a lot of fun cutting and laying out pieces to build your design from either your imagination or your favourite photos; and, after tacking everything together, you can secure and ‘paint’ the piece with lots of hand sewing.

At the workshop, we each chose a prepared bundle of fabrics that provided a foundation or ‘ground’ fabric and a mix of cotton in compatible colours, different scales and different values. Who doesn’t love to get a little bundle of fabrics? Let the fun begin!

Linda provided a great balance of instruction, guidance and freedom to appeal to participants ranging from debutants to those more experienced with design and fabric construction. The introductory lesson was a good refresher for me to consider pattern, scale, colour value, movement, light/dark and focal point.

My bundle had an overall warm-toned assortment of yellows and oranges that are not my usual preferred colour palette, but I decided to roll with it and experiment. I used my bundle of fabrics for inspiration and began to lay out a base that would show some depth. I used a variety of scales to create a foreground and background. The instructor had brought a mountain of other fabrics from her stash and we were encouraged to hunt for any bits that we needed for our design. This was pure, unfiltered fun.

While cutting, layering, and adjusting our collages we kept stepping back to view the design from different angles for overall effect. This is very useful to know when to add or take away pieces, to achieve balance, movement, and a focal point. Once satisfied, the next step was to pin and baste all of the pieces onto the ground fabric. Not to worry though, basting can be removed, and pieces could still be shuffled around or changed at any point (the benefit of not using any glue)!

That is as far as we got in the short workshop. We bundled up our work to take home where, as Linda advised, we let it sit for a bit looking at it from different angles and distances before finalizing it. Then my favorite part, the hand sewing. I love to hold the fabric in my hands and add stitching with coloured threads to adhere the pieces to the collage, and to highlight any detail. To me, this is a bit like mess-free painting that can always be picked out and changed to correct mistakes.

*Baste and pin all the pieces to the ground fabric*

I did try not to make a landscape, but it seemed to migrate in that direction. It’s reminiscent of a forest gone to swamp land, as I see so often on my country walks in the countryside north of Kingston. My focal point–as is very plain to see–was the gorgeous bright flower cut from a larger fabric piece. Have I mentioned how much I love flowers? If you look closely while out in nature, no matter how bleak a landscape may seem from a distance, there is almost always at least one flower to be found. In this piece, I flipped the narrative–as one can do in collage–by making the swampland retreat to the background allowing the larger-than-life flower to dominate. I finished the piece with a border of muted, moss-coloured faux suede to tie into the imagined landscape and highlight the brightness of the flower.

Having tried my first collage guided by fabrics and imagination, I decided to try the next one using a favorite photo for inspiration. You know I love flowers… I chose this photo of a dandelion gone to seed because of the beautiful texture of the seed globe. As it turns out, you will see that the dandelion becomes my oversize focal point and I take great liberty in imagining the background setting in which it can be found. Maybe there is a theme developing here of letting flowers shine in their environments…

It was time to dive into my stash and choose fabrics that would create the background and setting for a dandelion star. I was intrigued with how I might show the texture of the fluffy seeds and considered using strands of white mohair, but decided to keep with cotton thread and stitch technique to avoid letting the piece become too busy. I used a variety of scale and pattern all in the same bright palette, to build a pastural scene fading off to woodlands, hills and sky. It was great fun to experiment with the adhering stitches, varying style and colour to alternately blend into or define the background.

**Imagine lying in a field looking up at this beautiful dandelion surrounded by pastures, woods and hills beyond.**

Fair to say I am now hooked on fabric collage and will add it into my long list of other fibre-based obsessions. I can’t wait to create more using my photos, fabrics I print and dye, hand sewing and free-motion machine stitching….if only there were more time in a day!

Evolve

As I am exploring pictures, postings and websites with artists’ fibre creations I love to zoom in and dissect them visually to analyse what they have done to achieve their effect. Sometimes, in magazines or on individual artist’s blogs there will be a description of the steps they have taken to create their piece. This is very useful as a learning tool to figure out the technicalities and skills needed.

What I would like to know more about though is the process, the inside scoop on how a piece actually evolves. Do ‘real artists’ just dive into a bucket of paints or cloths or threads and magically end up with a dazzling creation that has translated their inner thoughts through their hands? Or, do they secretly and carefully pre-plan their creations, using design principles and mathematical calculations to ensure that their vision will be transformed into a tangible interpretation?

I would argue that as with just about anything…it depends. It depends on the artist, and the medium, and the mood, and the desired outcome…. As with so many things, there is a time and a place for each style, even a time and place for a bit of each.

I have tried both. Sometimes ‘just diving in’, although very therapeutic and tons of fun, can result in one big mess, but it can also render some wonderful surprises! Careful planning, thinking and calculating on the other hand can help you to arrive at an end point with no catastrophic mistakes leading to ruination, or, leave you bogged down forever in the planning and fretting stage without ever getting at it. Both processes can end in big wastes of money, time and resources, and both can result in beautiful pieces of art.

Maybe the true skill is to know how to listen to your feelings toward any given subject, the medium and the desired outcome in the very moment when you want to create.

So all that, is a lead in to my latest endeavor which started with a dive in and then evolved from a disaster to a finished piece that I love.

As you will know from my previous blogs (Magic), this summer I fell in love with eco dyeing. I did most pieces on cotton and was happy with the results. Then I decided to try eco dyeing some beautiful Queen Anne’s Lace on a piece of wool–I dove in. Well, long story short, I think the wool was too fuzzy and although I got a great physical imprint of the flower from the pressure added in steaming, the print of the flower itself was a dark, blurry mess. So, I tucked it away in a bag and moved on.

Later in the summer, I decided it was time to start learning how to free-motion stitch on my sewing machine. In part to speed up some of the work that goes into embroidery, but also to try out a method I had seen that can embellish both wet and dry felt pieces. Aha, a purpose for my Queen Anne’s Lace mistake. What better way to start than to try free-motion stitching on a throw away piece of wool?

I backed the piece of wool with a light-weight, iron-on interfacing to give it some stability and to prevent wool dust clogging up my machine. I dropped the feeder feet on my machine and removed the presser foot. These recommendations are all made by Moy Mackay, who has written several books on felting techniques (http://moymackay.com).

I started by loosely following the impressions the flowers had left on the wool, roughly staying within the dark black shadows of the blooms. This seemed to be laying down a good base and I was starting to get the hang of my hands controlling the speed of the fabric movement rather than the machine foot pedal controlling the speed. I decided to keep on going and added two tones of green free-motion stitching to define the centre of the floral bundles.

The piece was starting to develop into something, so I kept on playing. For a different texture I switched to hand sewing. Deciding it needed some definition to make it look a little more like the fields of Queen Anne that were my inspiration, I used three strands of cotton embroidery floss to add in some stems. Using a heavy linen thread, I added some floret detail.

Now that I had a wool piece that I was starting to like, I turned my mind to how it could be mounted. I just happened to have a bundle of recently acquired silk ends. Hmmm, maybe one of those could be a border? I intended just to put one framing border so I auditioned the different silks. I wanted to complement the tones of the piece and not overwhelm it with the border so I settled on the smaller, green and gold print to pick up the colour of the stems and flower centers.

I decided on about a two inch border to frame the wool and then, the piece started to grow. I really liked that cream coloured silk, maybe a second, wider border around the first? What about the gold plaid? It was beautiful too and I did like the taupe tie in. This is the point where I had to take a step back and breathe. I needed to consider when less is more and get ready to make the call on when more would be too much. In this case, the plaid was out, it had started to get too busy and detract from the main piece.

*Loved the cream border, but it still needed some finishing*

One more round of the gold and green fabric would finish it nicely, giving it a ‘contained’ feeling. When I put it up on my design board it still wasn’t quite right though, so I added one final element by hand quilting around the detail of the commercial embellishment on the cream silk.

*Finished piece: Queen Anne’s Lace Embellished*

My initial plan was to mount this piece by stretching it over a wooden frame but as it evolved I realized the puffiness the batting on the frame gave was not the look I wanted. Instead, I backed the piece with the plaid silk and suspended it on dowels.

The final surprise was that although I hadn’t planned it, this piece fits perfectly in our dining room! It was a long path of experimental evolution for this one, but I like how it traveled from a throw-away mistake to a treasure.

What is your style, do you plan ahead or just jump in? Let me know what you think in the comments below.