It's A Wrap.

Not all of the work is dark and meaningful, though it does feel that way sometimes; some of it is purely experimental, the response to 'what if...' questions.  I was thinking about what I've learned so far about making textile books, and the fact that books don't have a right side and a wrong side; they are genuinely double sided, unlike quilts and embroidery, where there is a definite Right Side and a Wrong Side.  How, I thought, could  you work on both sides at once, meaningfully?  And answer there came... wrap it.  Reader, I did.

Another khadi paper accordion, dyed with the usual suspects from the natural world.  This time, I've taken thin strips of rust dyed silk; some of it was waste from a project, some cut from whole cloth.  The exception is the page in the middle, which is two strips of lutradur, stitched together with variegated hand dyed thread, some of which has been left to dangle down the page.  And then I strayed a little from the original concept, and stitched the silk to attach it to the paper (admittedly for a good reason; see below).  They are very small stitches, and I suppose I could have made them in a colour that blended with the paper, but given that I've got that central piece, with dangling thread, I wanted the rest of the pages to refer to that, somehow.  Here are the pages:

I rather like this.  It's sparse, but interesting.  It lets you contemplate the relationships between the strips, and between the strips and the paper.  I may add a word or two, but the jury's still out on that. 

Wrapping isn't a technique I'd normally associate with a book.  It's not until I stopped thinking about that piece of paper as 'a book', that I realised that wrapping would be an interesting way of approaching it. I think there might be more of these coming my way .  And finally, the back...

I particularly like that central page, the lutradur with the stitch.  It's quirky, and I do like a bit of quirky.  I wanted a bit of stitch in this, but none of this is decorative per se; it's purely functional.  In the lutradur, it's holding two strips together, so that the colour density was increased.  Elsewhere, it's holding the silk to the paper...and nothing else.  Sometimes less really is more.

The Helpful Cat

...always knows when  a job is boring, and tries to help.  Mollie being who she is, meant a lot of leaping up and down, trying to catch the warp pieces as I cut them.  Given that they are twice the length of a large, three seater sofa, and there were, at the end of it, twenty six of them, she had a very happy time catching and attempting to chew them.  Sigh.

Now, all I have to do is thread each one of the twenty six onto a peg, ready for the fabric strips I tore up earlier.

This afternoon, though, I'll be out in the garden, collecting these fellows (no, not the insect, the flower). They are scattered through the grass; a better gardener than me would dig them up, but I want the flowers for dyeing.  You can use the roots, too, so doubtless a bit of digging will be done later.



I've got a list of plants I'd like to add to the garden this year, purely for dyeing purposes, starting with a eucalyptus.  Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, will know that at one point, there were several full sized trees in the garden, but high winds brought them down.  My intention this time, though, would be to keep chopping bits off, to dye with the leaves.  I'd like some St John's Wort, mainly because I like it as a plant, but it is useful too... not that I'm obsessed... yet... or much...

Getting Rusty...

...or maybe that should be, rustier... I found quite a lot of the rust dyed silk, and I'm working my way through it.  I stitched this a couple of nights ago, a very simple little piece.  The shape of the rust motif just begged to be turned into a flower, a daisy of sorts, perhaps... and the 'stem' is made from semi felted hand dyed yarn.  After the frenzy of stitch that was the last piece I showed you, I think this is a great reminder that often, less is more.

Some of the rust dyed silk isn't terribly interesting, though, so I have taken a couple of smaller pieces and bundled them up with onion skins, oak leaves and birch bark (I almost typed birk barch..err.. birk works, barch, though, doesn't, except as slang (look it up...)).  Here's one of them...

Because it's such a small piece, I confess that I just popped in what was lying around from a previous bundling session.  I like working in that kind of random way, not knowing what will appear.  It's how I work in general.  It's fun.

Bundling Up...

is a good idea in the winter (it's a three jumper day round here)... but  eco printers do it all year round!  I was given India Flint's book on natural dyeing for Christmas, and a week ago, I followed her instructions for 'cold bundling'.  This technique basically involves putting plant materials onto damp cloth, wrapping them up tight, and leaving them for at least a week, or as long as you can bear it... the longer the better, really... before unwrapping them to expose the colour, letting them dry, then ironing.  Ecoprinting, in a nutshell..  Of course, there's a lot more to it than that... but for my first attempt, I used red and brown onion skins and tops, the top of a red pepper (I didn't think that would work, and I don't think it did...), and some tea.  I tied them up with fishing line, and left them for a week.  This is what I found when I went to check them today.

The one on the left is reminiscent of a haggis... as you can see, the one at the right is not terribly well wrapped... I'm not the tidiest of workers...  My intention had been to take a photograph, and then leave them a bit longer; and then I spotted the mould.  Reader, I panicked.  So... I unwrapped them, and they are currently drying off.  The one on the left is silk, the other one is cotton, and the difference is clear.

Here is a close up of the silk... the dark flecks are tea leaves, still hanging on; they will brush off when it's dry (I hope!).

The variety of colour isn't really showing well in a photograph; I'm quite pleased with it, though, and think it will make an interesting little quilted piece.  There are reddish sections where there were red onion skins, but they show much better on the cotton (there were more of them in this bundle);

There is much more overall colour on the silk piece, but it was much smaller than the cotton.  I think I have a lot to learn about this particular process, but I'm happy enough with my first attempt...watch this space to see what I (eventually) do with it.  It is a slow process; it will have to sit for a couple of weeks before it is rinsed, and then I will be able to do something with it.  

Now to try ivy...