printing at Llantrisant

Had another lovely weekend teaching at Llantrisant with a felt group, who all worked really hard and did a wide variety of printing with Thermofax screens,using natural dye extracts.It's always a joy to see other people using the same basic methods,yet coming up with such different results.

Loved these little chickens.

I love this but I can't turn it round the right way-sorry!

This lovely sample is Mandy's,who organised the weekend in the lovely Model  House craft centre,where the facilities were excellent.I'm sure she will do wonderful things with all her printing when time allows.

Pat's trees with woad and rust worked well and will go on to be developed into a final piece for her exhibition later in the year. 

I love the 'drawn' feel of Claire's images on muslin.All together a very happy weekend and thank you Pat for the hospitality.

  

More images from the course.

Work printed and waiting to be cut as a lace felt.

A Klimt hanging being constructed, using pre felt and scrim.

Some of the natural dyes we used.The Japanese indigo worked beautifully on silk and is growing again for the next session.More of all this later-keep watching!

slow cloth progress

Two new patches one waiting to be attached,one already in place.It's almost addictive,putting the latest little piece in place-certainly won't want to part with this one,The next patch is already to go on,but where?This one is a thcermofax printed definition of Fabric which seems appropriate,but a bit solid in terms of the weight of the fabric,so it needs very careful placement.I have also two printed rust fabric samples waiting,both printed with gum tragacanth and Lac natural dye extract.A digger arrives tomorrow as part of the new build plan so I shall be hiding in my studio away from the noise and mess-plenty of time to do lots of work on the lace kimono-watch this space!  

Student work

As I don't have any finished work-or even in progress, because I went to a craft fair at Farncombe this wekend,thought I would post some student work for you to look at.This was done on the last earth friendly dyeing course in my studio in South west France, using mainly rust,woad and some buckthorn with additives.Another similar course will be coming up in June next year.I love the combination of rust and woad and the subtle ranges we can achieve.Come to think of it, this is one of the main attractions of natural dyes altogether,plus it seems almost impossible to dye colours which will not combine well together.

Some of the work has the added detail of thermofax printing on the surface, also using natural dyes as extracts, thickened with gum tragacanth, which is what I intend to use the teal extract for ,when there is some time!More pictures of that later.

October 6th 2008

Onion/Golden rod episode 2.

I tied the silk around two wooden blocks with knitting cotton and immersed the lot in the red onion dye, so that I would have some large blank areas to work on later, with the actual onion skins.My kitchen smells quite badly because Golden rod seems very stinky, but the silk sample is beginning to look quite good, though it does need more work to be useful for my next piece of felt.