Splashes of Colour

The sun made an appearance last Sunday and we had a trip to the seaside. 
Morecambe to be precise. After a really lovely walk along the prom we returned via the residential area and were delighted by some unexpected artworks on the gable ends of some houses. This was a particularly good one showing the cockling heritage.
Thought it might be nice to share.


After 6 months of saying 'I really need to dye some more velvet' I actually got down to it this week.

(I must state here that I do not eat pot noodles..those pots are very old and were my sons)

Now I have to confess I really hate it. 

Hate doing it.

 Perhaps because I'm trying to get a big pile of velvet, (I wonder if the collective noun for velvet is 'pile') dyed and ready to go so, no messing about. 

But I get sidetracked and really can't help playing. 

Instead of just dunking it in the dye, I have to go the shibori route..well slightly shibori..I just pull it from corner to corner, twist it and tie it up,

 using a syringe to inject the colour. 

Its then I go off into a trance watching the colour seep through the pristine white silk velvet and I submit to the joy of dyeing.

Its amazing that just after I did this I had to nip out and look what was by the car...its a bit hard to see 

but the colours are stunning and almost the same as the above velvet.

When I get really carried away I have even more fun, injecting the dye and then following it with plain water, so it separates into its constituent parts. Who would think this started life as chocolate brown?

It was hard to concentrate on this dyeing as there was an extremely dangerous activity going on on the stairs.

 My Irish Industrial Sewing machine is going for a service. It had taken four of us two years ago, to carry it upstairs and what goes up must come down so we got our sons round. After  sarcastic remarks about me in my rubber gloves and plastic apron like 'Its Gunther Von Jackie', they and my husband summoned all their strength and carried the machine down. I refused to have anything to do with it unless they used ropes but they wouldn't so I turned the radio up very high and got with my dyeing, all the while imagining crushed fingers, hernias, squashed feet and other such horrors.

I needn't have worried and it now stands on its trolley in the hallway looking like some malevolent steampunk barbecue awaiting the man from Stockport to say when he's ready. 

I have to say he has no help with lifting there, and has just had a new hip so.....I'll keep you posted.

Back to the dyeing. An overnight stay in bags

and then the big rinse (oh I feel so criminal using all that water, but I only do it about every two years)

Of course the weather was dull ,

 but doesn't it look good on the line.

Then I gave it 10 minutes in the tumble dryer to lift the pile and remove the creases.

But look, I wanted pinky purples....

I wanted shocking pinks

I wanted a new palette.

And I've got it.

Then today I went to the felt group and Joan had been on a course with Helen Melville using natural dyes. Click on the link to see how it really should be done.

Yummy

And natural.

Sigh.

And in other news: I've sold both of my pieces of work which were accepted for the West Lancs Open Exhibition. Three and four little felt pieces on white box canvases. You've seen them lots. I'm delighted.

Second: I am filled with gratitude to Ali for the information she gave here.

 I have a never ending battle with google reader but if you watch the tutorial she mentions in her blog you can install a little button on your toolbar which just says 'next' and it will take you to the next unread item on your list. 

Now if you invest, say, one evening, in catching up completely, then after that, you can click 'next' just a few times and catch up quite cheerfully and quickly.  It really solves the problem and makes blog reading a pleasure again.

There is a lovely sentence at the end that says 'You have reached the end of this internet. Try another?'

Quitting the Velvet?

Velvet is my addiction. I love adding it to different background fabrics and stitching and sculpting it, like these felt brooches.

But wait!

What is that I spy?

A velvet-less piece...

Just the one.

I can't really kick the habit but maybe now and then a bit more stitch and a bit less surface is fun.

Slight Improvement

Do you remember the 'Post with Appalling Picture Quality'?

Those items have now returned and have obligingly posed again.


These pictures are an improvement but


I still wish I understood the workings of my camera,


and could make it take better pictures.


Its almost idiot proof,

but I am quite some idiot.

I've listed some of these in my ETSY shop.

I've taken advantage of the lemons.

If this idiot knows one thing, its her colour wheel.

(With grateful thanks to Mrs Bond, Lower V a, Winckley Square Convent School, 1964.

I had my very first migraine induced by painting the tints and shades of yellow on said colour wheel)

''This week I have mostly been making.......

....gold and red.''

These are by far the most sumptuous versions of my cuffs and brooches but the pictures are so disappointing.
The red is deep, deep, shimmery, subtle so I have chosen the pictures on the basis of colour not sharpness.


I just wanted to ask you dear reader, to ask all your blog friends,

to leave me your wrist size and preferred width of cuff

on my survey post which you can click here to visit.

I think to be a valuable survey it has to have about 100 participants.

If you have already done it, thank you, and please leave a comment here instead.

I love to hear from you.

I am doing a craft fair on Sunday if anyone lives nearby pop along to The Old School, Ulnes Walton near Leyland.

Porky and Blodwen will be there.

I Heart Harris Tweed

I really do.

Velvets

Silk fibres and plain velvets dyed in oranges, pastels, and dull shades to complement the bright ones I bought. I used mulberry silk tops, tussah silk tops and silk noils as well as soya bean fibre.

And these are the ones I bought from Wingham Wool Works, along with all my other irresistible buys.

Dyed and ready for action

The great push begins soon for Art and Garden 2008, and the Platform Gallery Open Textile exhibition
So fabrics are bound and dyed and effects marvelled at.
This was the result of one syringe full of Kemtex dark brown, followed by a syringe full of plain water on silk velvet.

footnote: The Mistress of Longears made a comment on flickr that this looks like a Chrysalis and a butterfly.

I wish I'd thought of that.