EXOTICA

I went to the class at Bournville yesterday, more Bondaweb and stitching. I am not going to show my trivial attempts. Apart from putting the sewing machine needle through my finger, I worked hard.

On the way home I visited EXOTICA, the Midlands Textile Forum's show at Birmingham Botanic Gardens. They have a nice gallery which is a throughway so lots of people pass by and stop to comment

'Oh look, it's all stitched'
'This one says it's made of felt'
'Look at those nice flowers'
'I do like that, it looks just like the greenhouse'

The 'art' pieces were passed by. It was 'pictures' they liked.

I thought the exhibition was good, one of the best I have seen from MTF and I think the reason was that the exhibition had a theme which was the Botanical Gardens. Also everything had to be hung and a size limit of 50 by 50 cms was put on entries. The result is that the hanging looked uniform. Everything was framed - except for mine which I thought were poor and that was my fault. I put a dowel through the top and weighted the bottom with lead weights for curtains. The hanging wire was visible at the top (which it was not for anyone else). The pieces were 50 by 50 cm so picture framing them would have made them too large. A better method would have been to have made a stout wooden frame to exactly the size of the weaving, mount the weaving on a larger piece of dyed calico and staple the calico to the  back of the frame. The other thing that was obvious was that the selvedges of the birds was wiggly. Clearly the use of quite different yarns in the weft pulled in one of the sections. Moral:- use the same type of yarn throughout as weft. I should have hung up the pieces at home for a week to check these flaws.

When I got home, I realised that I was not going to get the piece of needle out of my finger so went round to the local Minor Injuries Unit, where they insisted on X-raying it. It took about 20 seconds to remove it and the nurse insisted I take it home with me - 'It's your property'!!  After all that I spent the rest of the day doing not much. I must be more energetic today.

Harwood House

This is the centre of Newent which is about seven miles north of Gloucester. On the left is the 16th century market hall. Straight in front is Harwood House where we used to live. Mostly 16th century but with 14th century bits. The arched door on the left leads into the remaining 14th century bit. Over the central front door is written HARWOOD HOUSE which was painted by Michael and is still there after 30 years. This is actually a jettied house but it has been infilled at some time. The walls are over 2 ft thick on the ground floor where they were infilled.

 The house was built on the module of 18ft  which is the space needed by a yoke of oxen. So each of the three floors contains two 18ft square rooms and then there is another room out the back on each floor. On the left is a view of the back. The house is a dress shop now and the owner kindly took me out to look at the garden. The figtree  and conifer we planted are both enormous. 

I spent some time wandering around Newent - pretty much the same as 30 years ago. The green grocer had a fine selection of local plums. There is a good quilting shop where I bought needles for book binding, more cotton and calico, a rotary cutter and some interesting stuff called Fast2Fuse which you can glue fabric to on both sides.

The other thing of note yesterday was that a book that Annette Lucas recommended arrived from Amazon (£1.43 + postage - the money side of that transaction defeats me but my daughter, Anne, says if there is no additional marginal cost then it is worth it  to the bookseller. The book is Aimone 'The Fibrearts book of Wearable Art'and it is wonderful. Superb clothes by Randall Darwal and Candiss Cole among many others. I am inspired!!

My daughter, Anne, is here and she wants to go through our slides. We dug them out last night. There are all sorts of strange labels on the boxes. Then we spent some time looking on the web for a firm which would turn them into jpegs and decided we did not want to entrust to a strange firm we did not know. So I am going to call a local firm today and see what they can offer.

SCREAMS ABOUT XEROX

On 8th August we bought (at great expense) a XEROX duplex colour  Laser printer Type 8560DN. It prints very nicely but it does NOT print duplex. In fact it seizes up on printing the second side. It then has to be switched off and on in order to clear the erroneous messages.

Obviously you call XEROX support. And you get someone who says that serial number belongs to someone in Greenock and I must provide proof that I own it.  So you FAX the invoice (with PAID stamped all over it) and wait and wait and wait. After two weeks you ring up the XEROX support centre again and get someone else who says it is sorted out and he will arrange an engineer to call. And you wait and wait - until today. I phone up. They STILL think the printer belongs to someone in Greenock and I get very stroppy.  So I have to email in documents saying who we are plus other data. This time I have a note of the name and  his email address.  What are the chances of getting an engineer soon? Low I would have said.

And the reason for posting this blog? DON'T EVEN THINK OF BUYING A XEROX PRINTER. They are great printers - when they work. I can live with simplex printing if I have to  but I paid £556.00 for the duplex facility and could have had simplex for a fraction of that cost. Bah!!!!

Dyeing Again

Chris Fletcher came over yesterday and we had a dyeing day in the garage. I wanted to see how well the indigo vat had kept and the answer is not very. Things did not come out the nice very dark blue as they did ten days ago. The rack on the left shows some of our results although there is a fair amount of Procion MX there too.  Part of the problem was me trying to dye some polycotton which had not been scoured first. In addition to what you see on the left, there is a whole lot of  2/20 Tencel yarn (200 gms) which is sitting in Procion  for 24 hours. This is more weft for the Tencel curtains - see later.

My sister, Dorothy tells me that polycotton does not dye well. What with all the dying/printing/etc etc that has happened in the last few weeks, I have no pure cotton or calico left so today I will go to Newent to a quilting shop and get some - and wash it first!! I have some pots of Procion MX dye left over and will finish them up. Besides I need some needles. I have managed to wreck several needles doing Japanese style bookbinding. And I need some curved needles for bookbinding. I have managed to mislay 3 of them in the house somewhere which is quite distressing. So I bought myself a needle book to live with the book binding kit.

Chris did lots of dying, including a piece of slub silk fabric which she has sewn up shibori-style. This did come out a lovely shimmering blue. She went home with lots of plastic bags containing wet yarn and cloth and three small buckets containing yarn in three different autumnal colours in Procion dye.

I have reviewed the calculations for the Tencel curtains and got round to producing a draft for it. The final weaving should be nothing like as lurid as this. The warp is space dyed 2/20 Tencel from Just Our Yarns and is darker and much more subtle that the colours shown here. The self pink which I have dyed is very close to the colour of the 'pink' warp. My idea is that it would shimmer. I shall start on warping up the Megado soon - probably Saturday.

There is nothing on the Megado and Kombo now and what is on the Voyager is for a beginning weaver - she starts tomorrow. So the Voyager is warped up with white 2/6 cotton and she has a red 2/6 cotton for weft to try out simple tabby and twills.

EXOTICA

EXOTICA, an exhibition by Midlands Textile Forum is on at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens from now to the end of September. There was a Study Day there a year ago and this exhibition is the MTF's response to that Study Day. I haven't been yet but am hoping to go on my way home from the 'Creative Textiles' Class at Bournville next Friday.  The class is being held right next door to the Cadbury's Works cricket ground. The wrought iron gates to the cricket ground are a marvel of intricacy!

The class is nine strong and very hot on textiles. Most of them have qualifications in City or guilds or degrees in Art and design (except me). Last Friday we had demonstrations on using bondaweb and dissolvable fabric.  And got given home work! 

On Saturday, there was a Kennet Valley Guild meeting at which it was decided that next spring's weaving class will be on Lace weaves. A good discussion on what people had done over the summer and lots of ambitious plans for autumn and winter. I did not take my camera which was a nuisance but I persuaded someone else to take photos of the Bag Challenge. And I forgot take my entry for that!

I have just about warped up the Voyager ready for a beginner weaver and have all the yarns for the Tencel curtains for the Megado next to the computer. I had intended to make this as a simple striped length but am now wondering about using something similar to the draft for the Convergence piece and I do want to do it as a double stitched cloth to give it enough body for a curtain. So I cannot use the Convergence draft directly as that was on 32 shafts and I will only have 28 here as I need 4 for the back  cloth if it is going to be double stitched cloth - and besides have I got enough Tencel? So a lengthy computer session is called for.

Space Dyed 5-section Warp

This is the 5-section warp in 2-ply Shetland from Uppinghams. It has been space dyed with acid dyes. I used strong colours because the weft is a lightly dyed indigo merino which is pale blue.

The finished scarf - well not quite. It has not been washed yet but I need it for Saturday to talk about space dyeing warps and there is not enough time to wash, dry and press the scarf before then.

Two of the warp sections have been reversed end for end and inserted between the other three. You can see the gradual colour change over down the scarf  and the sharp division across the scarf between adjacent sections of the warp.
This is a big improvement on the scarf   using the same technique but from a warp tie dyed in indigo.

Autumn Cyclamen

Last Friday two of the dyers expressed amazement at our cyclamen. They are the sign of autumn and they are everywhere in our garden. They seed freely and we have a wide range of leaf shapes (this is cyclamen hederifolium after all) and colours range from white and bright red.

This is a pinkish one.

And here is a pure white one.

The colchicums will be next and then the nerines. Our maples are looking as though they might change colour soon but I have seen a large ornamental maple tree down the road which has turned completely to orange-gold.

And autumn means classes start up again. Tomorrow I start on 'Creative Textiles' in Bournville (as in Chocolate town) which is in the south of Birmingham. I have collected everything on the list together. This is going to be very interesting for me.