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.
Six sheets turn into 24 pages
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.
little secret note spaceparchment insert
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.
lined paper used coarse black thread sewn lineslines for guided writing unthreaded lines for textureunthreaded needle lines for guided scriptneedle punched lines suggest writing
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 threadTurkey feather bookmarks!
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.
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.
What is this? Too fuzzy. Too Blurry.
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.
Black free-motion machine stitchingLayer one of green free-motion stitchingCotton embroidery thread stemSecond layer of green centre and linen florets
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.
Silk stashChoosing a border
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.
Stop! It’s getting too busy
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 finishingHand quilting on the cream border
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.
Perfectly situated in our dining room
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.
