Finished?

Found time to stitch the garment together and now, i feel i need to overdye again to get a darker brown form the walnuts, because i'm not happy with the strong contrasts on the front.Ironically,the back is fine!A last dip and then that's the end.

Looks a little dull on the studio door, but apart from the contrast, the whole piece has worked quite well and the pattern, which came free from Burda's web site, is really useful.More later when i finally go to collect fallen walnuts from a friend.

the final piece

My pre felt arrived from the UK yesterday at last,so I carefully split the layer and embarked on the last section of my walnut dyed fabric for some sort of garment-not sure what yet.This is the piece before dyeing but after all the manual work.

Both of these pictures illustrate perfectly how the final dyeing process ties all the surfaces together and makes for a more harmonious whole.

Learning by experience.

No matter how much experience a person has, i.e me,in dyeing and fabric handling,mistakes happen.I should have known that if i wanted two reasonably similar pieces of fabric, they should both have been dyed in the same vat-obvious to all but an idiot, i.e ,me.I collected some walnuts, made a lovely vat and dyed my first piece,then thought,maybe it should be darker, and added a piece of rusty iron.The second piece came out grey-ish.Drat! Collected more walnuts which resulted in my other half falling in a ditch, made another vat and dyed the whole lot again,which gave a match, but not such a nice brown.Will I ever learn?
Anyway, still have a third piece to go to make a garment, so maybe I'll remember what I did!

This is the fabric,made up of recycled scarves muslin and devored silk ,felted to a very thin layer of prefelt.

The overdyeing brings all the differing elements together,and dulls down anything which is too bright or jarring.

Check out the texture-I really love what can be done with this devore fabric,

The end of a lovely week.

This is Daphne's glorious piece of work, which just grew and grew-a masterpiece in my opinion.

A very sophisticated washing line!

 Finally,Valerie's reatrained and retro pieces,destined for a window hanging.Altogether ,a very focussed and productive course, which has certainly given me food for thought.

more course results.

One of Pat's pieces-nice to see that the print and devore and cut out areas all link together.

This  is Valerie's very subtle avocado dyed piece,still in progress as witnessed by the pins.It is amazing how each person has a different take on the same basic technique.

Devore lace sample ,felted to fine pre-felt by Daphne,then dyed with rhubarb root extract-amzing how this picks out the pattern even with all that texture.The end of another really successful day with masses of work achieved and alcohol at the end to round it off before a relaxing evening.What more could we want?

Lace felt course

Already day 2 at the atelier,sun shining and lots of work being done.

Bushes draped in Devore lace-so much work there isn't enough space to hang it up,so our little bush is dressed up in its best.

This is Eileen's lovely piece,produced from a screen which in turn came from her drawing of some old lace.

A piece by Sarah,to echoe the large piece of felt made yesterday and then cut carefully into a beautifuk design.Tomorrow we will begin the work of combining fabrics,light with heavy,plain and textured.Very exciting to watch it all grow.

preparing for a busy week

My felt and lace course begins tomorrow and i'm really looking forward to teaching again.The studio is tidy, but shouldn't be that way for long and all the samples and course materials waiting to be used.I hadn't realised how much work i had done on the techniques since the Snow Queen exhibit, but have already some new ideas for a further course-more of that later.It's good to have time to work alone, but equally good to work with other like minded people.

The work is really about contrasts ,heavy/light ,space/pattern and there are endless combinations for felt and fabric-could work on this forever! Then there are the dyeing possibilities.

Will try to post pictures as the week goes on.