Fishes - and Defiance

I do not like the final result of my sewing which was shown here yesterday. It is pinned up at the end of the corridor and I just get gloomier every time I see it. I can think of nothing to improve it.

So I decided to take the taste out of my mouth  by doing something different and had a hunt through pieces of fabric which I have created at the Bourneville. I ended up with this one of printed fishes and seaweed plus a larger fish in Mola work.

This is how it is now. I am defiant about this.- trivial? yes, fun? yes, artistic merit?  none. Tough.


I have finished weaving a lace sample for the Guild records and am weaving a sample for my records. Then I shall set about weaving the scarf for the October Exhibition.

I have also revised the handout for the lace weave class ready for next Saturday. A reasonably productive day.

Teaching Lace Weave

I got caught on the hop earlier this week by being asked questions about the drafting of  lace weave. Kennet Valley Guild runs a weavers course for 6 weeks in the spring and the 'improvers' are all doing lace weave. Everyone had selected their pattern and yarn and the first day was on Saturday - yesterday. I was looking forward to a day answering questions and generally helping out. Instead of which I realised when asked these questions that I needed to give a talk about drafts for lace weaves because they are not standard and Atwater-Bronson can be difficult to understand. I prepared a handout and more than an hour first thing on Saturday was taken up with discoursing on this topic. I am not entirely sure that I was very clear. Anyway they all spent the rest of the time, getting to grips with their looms. Half of them are now weaving, some will be weaving by next Saturday and two had just finished designing their weaving. So on the whole progress. Meanwhile Rosie and the beginners got on like a house on fire. They all made enormous progress.

My only gripe about the day had to do with lunch. My daughter Anne came over for the day to look after Michael and I knew of their plans to cook a Japanese meal. They were cooking something I rather like - ekonomiyaki. So I told them to keep me some. But they ate it all!!! So no lunch and a very miffed Pat who had gone without lunch at the class for the sake of this treat!

The combination of a class at Bourneville on Friday, taking Michael to Worcester Royal on Friday afternoon and going to Newbury for the weaving course on Saturday meant that the downstairs part of the house was littered with bags and boxes so I spent part of this morning tidying up. I rather think that what has happened is that the litter has gone upstairs!!

These are the washed cottolin towels in Summer and Winter. It is a cold grey day today and I decided to try taking a photo outside. The colours have come out well. The shrinkage in width was 10% and in length was 16% which amounts to 5 inches in 30. A lot.

I have not been happy about photos for some time  and have been told that an overcast day and outside is the best. Certainly the colours have come out realistic.

Our tutor, Annette lucas, at Bourneville has insisted that we stop doing samples of varied techniques and deal with one piece only, developing it into a finished piece.

So this is my piece which contains a great variety of techniques. The starting point was a screen print of paper doilies onto the back of a piece of scrap furnishing fabric. This was cut out and Bondawebbed onto a piece of red  tweedy fabric. I also did some individual prints of the same motif onto another scrap of fabric. I added wire round the edge and machine stitching in the middle to make 3D motifs when cut out. There is also a place where I have used Mola work to cut through the printed layer of fabric to the red fabric backing. In the lower right hand corner, the same shape has been stitched on Aquafilm and then the film washed away.  The violet piece in the upper left is a piece of cotton dyed by me and appliqued on. So that's it. The loose motifs are just tacked on in case I change my mind. At the moment, it is pinned up at the end of the corridor for me to ruminate about.

I am not at sure about this piece. One of Michael's carers said (very shrewdly, I thought). 'You don't like it because you can't see what to use it for'. Well yes , it can only be hung on the wall and we have better things around than that. I have had a great idea for decorating one of the calico shoppers and have started by dyeing one brown.  I can see Annette disapproving of this so I had better incorporate some of the fabric I have created at Bourneville!!

 

A Long-Awaited Book

Three years ago, I became aware of a book entitled 'Art Deco and Art Nouveau Book bBnding' By Duncan and de Bartha (ISBN0-8109-1881-1, 1988). What I read about it made me anxious to see it but there were no copies on Amazon.co.uk and one on the US Amazon at a price which translated into £145.00. So I kept an eye on the price. After about a year, there were five or six copies on offer by different booksellers, none less than £80.00. But slowly, slowly, the cost decreased to £40.00 at which point I gave in and bought it. It is fantastic. It is a book to read  and read again.  I can quite see why it was so expensive and it is worth every penny of £145.00.

On the left is one example of a bound book. There are 252 photos of different bookbindings - all French!!!!! The trouble is they are 95% leather inlay which is difficult  and I have no hope of remotely emulating but I can still sigh over the photos.

This is a photo (rather poor) of an acrylic painting by Michael of Abigail who is our great-niece. 

He is now working on a set of paintings and drawings of morning glories for a book which I intend to submit to a local exhibition in March. I have collected together a lot of haiku about morning glories and will create a book with a Japanese binding from all this material.

On the weaving front, I have warped up and started a scarf in Atwater-Bronson lace or to be precise, I am weaving a sample for the Guild records first. I have also wound a warp for the concertina double weave book.

I did go to my Bourneville class this morning and am manufacturing little individual motifs to attach to a bigger item. But I had to rush back as Michael went to hospital this afternoon to have a transfusion of some fancy chemical.

Washing is Good

I put the Flower and Leaf towel through the washer and drier. Washed at 40 degrees. The shrinkage was large but it is cottolin. It went from 15 by 31 inches to 13.5 to 26 inches. In the process, it became much softer - and the colours came up better. It is almost accceptable now. I must wash the other two towels.

Alicante Close

There is a housing estate in Malvern called Tomatolands. It used to contain a large number of large greenhouses which grew tomatoes. The entrance road has a notice saying 'Harbinger Avenue leading to Alicante Close'. This has niggled me. What are the other roads called? So I checked up today. They are 'Sunrise', 'Shirley Close' and 'Challenger Close'.  Where, I ask, is 'Moneymaker Way' or 'Gardeners Delight Crescent'?

I have wound a warp of yellow wool (dyed by me last week) for a lace weave scarf. I have also turned two large skeins of Tencel 2/20 into fat bobbins ready for winding another warp. And I have played with photos of my S&W trees on Photoshop for the Leek Exhibition and did not like any of it. So I went for a walk and came up with a better design. 

I ordered a new Thermofax for Christmas Carol yesterday. The first one had a mediaeval-style font for the title and was illegible when screen printed. So this time it is in TRAJAN  which is great. The screen came today - how's that for service? and I must go and carry out a few more trials on calico. Last time I used cotton - not stout enough. High time this book was bound. Especially as I need to do three others by the end of March, two concertina and one Japanese. I can definitely see a period of design in front of me. I know what I want but can I do it? Watch this space.

This afternoon I walked round the nearby houses as the Common is seriously muddy and very slippery. I made a New Year's Resolution to go for a short walk every day. Ten minutes later I amended this to 3 times a week. There is no point in pretending that I can get time every day when Michael and hospitals and nurses have to be accomodated. And anyway there is a thing called weather. I have only managed three walks in 18 days which is not at all good.

Summer and Winter At Last

I have cut off the Summer and Winter warp today and tidied up all the ends. Apart from the first section which is a series of samples in Summer and Winter, there are three separate towel lengths and two sections each about 12 inches long. Recall that the warp is plain blue over 60% of the width and striped for the rest.

The first one is the least successful towel (Flowers and Leaves). Don't like. It might have worked on 32 shafts but 8 is too few to give nice curved edges.

This one is much nicer (Mughal Windows).

And this is the nicest (Random A) - well, the most to my taste. The draft for Random B was the one that reminded me of 1980s Space Invaders. I erased that one.

I think the reason the last two work is that there is no call for curved edges.

The two 12 inch lengths were of trees, one with a white/pink/green tree and one with a dark green tree. The first is okay but the striped bit of the warp is a bit useless. In the second, the weft green is too near the warp blue in tone.  Both are no good, as they stand, for the Leek exhibition. I need to cut them apart and re-assemble them to make use of them.  I might do that in Photoshop before setting out with scissors.

One thing though, I now have three nice sized kitchen towels. in cottolin. They are 15 by 30 inches. Previous towels have been too small!!!

Dyed Shopper

I acquired five shopping bags in calico from my Friday class and decided driving home that I could use up the Procion MX dye I had left to dye a bag. This is it. The grey/white lightning lines are couched silver lurex - which looks dull in the photo and nice in real life. I am quite pleased with it. It gave me a chance to practice using metallic threads which I want to do in my project - but I unpicked  all the metallic silver thread from the bag as the thread was too thin and does not make the impact I wanted. Hence the couched down lurex.

Some of Thursday's dyeing is still damp. The wool is all dried and is a very pleasing colour. When the Voyager comes home next Thursday, I will warp it up with this wool for the lace weave class. The student is going to take away a rigid heddle loom instead of the Voyager. She has some very fancy knitting yarn which she is going to use for a weft and make some cushions. And she only needs tabby so the rigid heddle is okay.

I am making great progress with Summer and Winter and it might be taken off tomorrow. On talking to the tutor at the Bourneville class on Friday, I realised that I had not factored in the Midlands Textile Forum's Exhibition in Leek in September this year. I was horrified. I can't warp up anything specially as other projects must come first. A bit of lateral thinking and I have decided to use the tail of the Summer and Winter warp to do trees (yes again). I have done Spring and am ready to do autumn. I will only weave two and they will be mounted separately but in the same frame. That means a mount board with two rectangles cut in it.  They will not be plain weaving but embellished in some way as yet undecided. I will play with them when they are off the loom.

The Friday class was excellent as usual. I spent the entire time doing one small piece of embroidery on Aquafoil. I have not had the courage to wash the aquafoil off yet!!