This lovely basket full of colour was picked from my garden last autumn, which I then steamed in a few batches, layered up on hand made paper and cloth to give me more starting materials.
Laid out onto paper for steaming.
I’ve been building up a real stash of printed, coloured and dyed papers and fabrics to use for my pieces. Here’s a peak at some of my stash in my workbasket. I’m amazed at some of the colours I’ve ended up with from the eco dyeing, but I must admit the lilac is a charity shop velvet scarf, just sang out with the yellow gold of my ecodyed silk velvet.
It was all carefully ironed at one point, the best kind of ironing I think we’d all agree, but I’ve been delving in since then!
This photo shows one piece in progress....sometimes I think the back is just as interesting as the front!
I’ve been playing around with making mixed media samples.....using all sorts of papers, scrim and scraps of my Lino printed and stencilled or screen printed cloths. I layered them all up, using watered down glue to bind it all together into a “new” cloth.
When it had dried I added colour, walnut ink, fabric paint, shimmer spritzers, diluted acrylic, alcohol inks, metallic powders with medium, coffee granules, all sorts of fun! When this had all had chance to dry I added more variations, crackle paste, modelling paste and stencils, building up layers, and also used a heat gun to burn some back.
I had a really good time playing, but found to my surprise that I didn’t like all the results, however I could cherry pick the bits I wanted to use. It’s funny how some pieces talk to me and others don’t! I had a plan from the beginning, but it changed a bit with the results of all these samples, but that’s life, and I do like a bit of serendipity.
Page from my sketchbook...
So my series of work has developed from slow handstitching my first piece, when my mind did a lot of mulling and pondering of ideas, through machining my cloths, overprinting and dyeing and then cavorting off into mixed media!
It’s been really good to be working on a couple of pieces at the same time, the variety and change of pace suits my butterfly mind.
Thanks for stopping by.
Debbie
