I have moved forward a little on my tree limb. I decided to go with a grey sky as a background so that I had more choice with colour.
I added a branch in brown It isn’t as flat a brown as it looks in the picture but I think I need to add a different brown to it. I will work on that.
Then I sketched the branch to think about colours. I decided on an orange central vein. That is probably not the right name for it but it is what I can think of to call it. Then a purple fuzzy haze with flowers in it. and some idea of budding leaves.
So far people here like the pink ones. I am not sure. Which ones do you like?
After searching my stash for another brown to go with my branch I had nothing. So it was good timing that there was a fibre event near me called For the Love Of Fibre. This is its second year. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1167963160700589
I was looking for brown but it seems I turned the wrong way went in and ended up in Top of the Whorl Spindles https://www.facebook.com/katspindles She had no brown wool but she had these amazing sample boxes that are just the right size for me.
I wandered around and stopped at the Black Lamb https://theblacklamb.ca/ They have lots of wool but not the right brown so I got a piece of Black Felt (it’s more than prefelt but less than felt) It is thicker than the prefelt or felt you typically see. In the picture, it looks like there are lots of white hairs in it but that is just what it picked up in the stack of prefelt. I think if I run the lint roll over it, it will be good. They also gave me a size 40 spiral needle to try out.
Then after doing a full circuit of the room just to the right of the entrance, there was Farfelu Fibreworks https://farfelufibreworks.ca/ and she had the perfect brown. It is a little darker than it appears in the picture but lighter than the pencil roving in the picture with it.
It is Finnish wool so I was surprised at how soft it was. I asked her later and it is a lamb fleece. I asked people at the guild social to guess what it was I got superfine merino, alpaca and angora as guesses. I will have to see how it wet felts as well as needle felting. I think I will be wanting more so naturally she lives on the other side of the province. Oh well, maybe we can get her to come for our guild Sale and Exhibition in November.
The Albany (on Auckland’s North Shore) Spinners held their annual dye in April that they titled, “Dartmoor dyeing”. Dartmoor dyeing involves splitting your unwashed fleece into 4 equal portions, dyeing the portions red, yellow, blue and green, then dividing each colour 4 times, keeping 1 portion aside and dyeing other 3 portions from each colour in the other colours (so 3 of the 4 blue pieces would be distributed to the red, yellow and green dye vats). From what I have read, you can achieve some lovely variations within each section of fleece due to the lanolin in the fleece inhibiting dye uptake in some areas more than other.
I hadn’t heard of the term Dartmoor Dyeing before (have you?) but I have seen dye courses that describe mixing dyes in cups, I expect with very similar results, does that technique have a name? Sequential dyeing perhaps? This all got me thinking about a colour theory course I took as part of my Diploma in Art and Design and the dyed samples I made after the course.
Anyone who knows me or my work will probably have noticed I have a soft spot for bright colours, particularly complementary or split complementary combinations. If you’re not sure what complementary colours are, this link covers the basics of colour theory in a fun interactive way* (the tool in the top right is great if you are looking for colour inspiration too). I think colour theory, and especially its impact on human psychology, is fascinating.
*Edit – feel free to skip over the sections where they discuss the RGB colour wheel, this is specific to optical colour mixing (what computers and TVs do) and completely at odds with how dyer’s and painters mix colours.
I am always sorely tempted by the dizzying array of colours on the Dharma Trading web site but you really don’t need to buy every colour. The vast majority of colours can be mixed from just the 3 primary colours.
A word of caution before you go shopping: The dyer’s colour wheel differs slightly from the red, blue and yellow primary colours of the traditional / painter’s colour wheel. For most dye brands, the primary colours are magenta, turquoise and yellow. The brands with a wider a range of colours will almost certainly also have a red and a blue but they are invariably made from a mix of the primary dye pigments, this means that when you start mixing them with other colours you will end up with muddy tones to your colours. If your brand offers a choice of yellows and it is not clear which one is the primary yellow, pick the brightest / coolest yellow i.e. a lemon yellow rather than a sunset yellow. Yellows with the warmer tones may have been mixed with a tiny amount of magenta which will make it impossible to achieve a bright green.
My go-to colours for dyeing are magenta, turquoise, yellow, black and silver grey. As you will see below it is fairly easy to make your own black by dyeing with magenta and turquoise to saturation but I find it handy to have black premixed. I find silver grey is a tricky colour to achieve by colour mixing and I like using it for space dyeing so I keep a small pot of it in my stash.
My Dye Set Up
This set up is for acid fast dying of animal fibres (wool, silk, feathers etc) but the colour mixing could easily be adapted for fibre-reactive dyes used on plant-based fibres.
Instead of the traditional vat / large pan full of dye method, I like to use zip lock bags in a steamer so I can dye multiple different colours simultaneously with just one heat source. Because this is a low immersion technique you will get more variation in the depth of colour across the contents of each bag, if you are wanting solid, even colours using the dye vat / pan method is recommended, this allows you to move your fibre through the dye pot so the fibre is more evenly exposed to the dye.
To achieve reproducible results, especially if you are dyeing small amounts (less than 100g) of dry fibre, I recommend premixing your dye powder with water. This also means you don’t need to wear a face-mask for the whole dye session (masks are only needed while the dyes are still in powder form). I keep my liquid dyes at room temperature and they all work well, even after several months on the shelf.
To make a liquid concentrate I mix 1g of dye per 10ml of water and store them in water-tight jars. The dye tends to settle out of solution while stored so the jars will need a shake before each use.
For the dye bath, I prefer to use citric acid crystals rather than vinegar to avoid that residual “fish and chip shop” smell you get with vinegar. I use citric acid at a rate of 15-20g per 5 litre bucket of warm water and add about a teaspoon of dish-soap to that to aid wetting out of the fibres.
I pre-soak my fibres in the acid / soap solution for a few minutes while I prepare the dye and dye bags.
Let the fun begin!
For this project I was working with 10 x 10 cm (4″) squares of merino prefelt and tiny skeins of super-wash merino yarn, so diluted 2 ml of dye concentrate in 10 ml of water (this made my working solutions 0.2g of dye in 12ml water).
I chose to work with just the 3 primary colours but you could add any of the secondary colours if you wish, but note you will get a range of browns and grey tones in some of your samples.
I ended up with 16 different colours from the 3 primary colours:
Turquoise
Yellow
Magenta
TY
YM
MT
TTY
YYM
MMT
TYY
YMM
MTT
TTYM
YYMT
MMTY
TYM
With so many different colour combinations it is easy to lose track, so I pre-labelled all my bags:
Tip: I stand each bag in a 1 litre jug before pouring some acid water (about 150ml – just enough to cover the fibre) from the bucket the fibre is soaking in. You can add extra water after adding the fibre if you find there isn’t enough to cover it.
Then I added 1.5 – 2 ml of my diluted dye. For example the MMY bag received 1 ml of Magenta and 0.5 ml of Yellow. The TMMY bag received 0.5 ml Turquoise, 1 ml Magenta and 0.5 ml Yellow.
The bag was jiggled to mix / disperse the dye before dropping in a piece of pre-soaked felt. Excess air was squeezed out of the bag, the bag sealed and stacked in the steamer with the “zip” uppermost (just in case it pops open as any trapped air inside expands) .
I steam my bags for an hour (the dye only needs about 30 min at around 80 degC to fix but they also need some time to get up to temperature). I leave the bags in the steamer to cool overnight before rinsing the next morning.
Tip: The water in the bag should be clear when you come to rinse the fibre, if it isn’t you have used more dye than you needed to but you can still use the remaining dye to dye some more fibre a paler colour – just drop in your pre-soaked fibre and steam as you did before.
After rinsing, I left the samples on their bags to dry so I could figure out which was which!
Here are some of the samples arranged in the primary, secondary and tertiary colour wheel that most people will be familiar with:
Similar to mixing paint, I have noticed the yellow dye is not as intense as the magenta and turquoise, this is most obvious in the MY (equal quantities of yellow and magenta) square, which should give an orange colour but is closer to a scarlet red and the YYM square that should be a yellowy-orange but is orange.
The same samples as above but with the complementary colour mixes (for example mixing red and green or yellow and purple) added to the centre, by including all 3 primary colours in different quantities you can get different shades of browns and greys:
I suspect I forgot to jiggle the TMY bag before dropping the sample into it, oops!
I also dyed some super-wash yarn to saturation (approx. 0.1g dye per mini-skein) – all of these bags had a tinge of colour in the water after dyeing. The samples at the violet end of the range (bottom of the photo) are very nearly black.
I had a few mini skeins left over after the saturation dyeing so dropped those in with the felt samples, just to see how they would compare to the “saturated” skeins. The blocks in the photo with 2 skeins on them are the extra skeins. Most are predictably very similar in colour to the felt block they were dyed with but the TTM skein is definitely more blue than its felt block.
If you don’t have time to dye lots of wool samples but want a record of which colours you can achieve by mixing the dyes you already have, you can use the same technique but brush the mixed dyes onto heavy weight cartridge or water colour paper. This is an example from one of my sketchbooks where I have mixed slowly increasing amounts of one dye colour into the other:
The 3 columns on the right are what you can expect to achieve it you mix complementary colours (green with magenta, violet with yellow, turquoise with orange).
I also did something similar with my watercolour paints, this is just one page of 4 charts – I find these charts really useful reference when I am trying to mix a specific colour:
Four Ravens Gallery in Missoula, MT (USA) is holding a garden themed exhibition in May. I have several pieces that will be included in the show. I decided to make another felted vase cover to fit a glass vase that is 4″ diameter and 6″ tall.
I wanted a mixture of greens but didn’t want to take the time to card a batt. So I laid out different colors of green wool for each layer. Here’s the first layer, so that’s the inside of the vase cover.
Then I added a second layer which is much more neutralized green.
The third layer was a mix of greens that I had hand carded and was left over from another project.
Then comes the fun layer. I added a variety of green wool, yellow silk noil, red mixed wool in tufts and burnt orange locks. There are also a couple of pieces of bright green cheesecloth under there somewhere. Then the felting and fulling process (no photos) happened.
And here’s the vase. The photos show it from different angles. In the center photo, you can just see a small piece of the bright green cheesecloth. It’s a bright and cheery piece and reminds me of spring in the garden. If you’re in the Missoula area, you should check out the gallery as there are some wonderful artists represented there.
I had another wonderful day teaching some ladies to nuno felt scarves.
I was busy ( talking) and didn’t take as many pictures as I would have liked at the beginning. So no pictures of the starting silk. I dye the blanks myself using the scrunch method of low-immersion MX dying. I learned how to form Paula Burches All about hand dyeing site. It is an amazing site. Don’t go unless you have some time to explore, there is so much information. http://www.pburch.net/dyeing.shtml
If you click any of the pictures they should open up larger in a new tab.
Back to the class, here are the layouts just before we wet them down.
and then everyone got rubbing. This is the time it’s great to have a chatty group. It makes the work go faster. And I don’t have to do all the talking.
Sorry, no rolling pictures. The problem with a chatty group is I love to chat too and forget to take pictures.
But I do have some pictures of the finished scarves once all the fulling was done.
here’s a nice group shot from the end of the class.
One of the ladies went home and dried her scarf so she could wear it right away. Doesn’t Kim look great? The colours really suit her.
Denice also sent me a picture of hers when it was dry. I love the silk flowers.
It was a fun day for everyone.
I taught a short sheep class the other day. They were young people so just one picture of the finished sheep.
To warn you in advance, this post has loads of photos and no fiber unless you count bison as fiber. But it should be inspiring so I hope that you will continue on reading to learn about my recent trip to Yellowstone National Park (YNP) and my first snowmobile ride. Last year, our friends from Idaho, Howie and Janine had asked us to join them for a couple of snowmobile tours in YNP and we thought, why not? It’s kind of a bucket list item as we are downhill skiers but have never snowmobiled before. So we journeyed off to West Yellowstone, MT and got to see some real winter inspiration. There was tons of snow and it was cold but we had a great time. Seeing YNP in the winter is so different than the usual summertime visits.
With the snowmobile tours that we took, you could rent all the gear to stay warm so everyone looked alike. The first day we took the “Old Faithful” tour where we saw a lot of thermal features, waterfalls and of course, Old Faithful geyser. We had a great guide who explained all about how Yellowstone is mainly a big volcano which is really quite close to the surface. He reassured us that the volcano is not predicted to erupt for another 70,000 years. You can read more about Yellowstone National Park here.
Here are some of the thermal features that we saw. It was amazing to see some of these beautiful colors on a winter day. If you click on each photo, the titles might give you a bit more information.
We saw a lot of wildlife and it was amazing to be on the same roadway as the bison. We did not get off the snowmobiles when we encountered bison and we kept moving slowly by the herds with the snowmobiles close together so that a bison couldn’t get in between two snowmobiles. They pretty much ignored us. They are huge, shaggy beasts and quite awesome to see their size and strength pushing through deep snow off the roads. The coyote on the top left, was hurrying down the road as we went by. There were lots of ravens around and you can’t really tell from this photo but they are big birds and noisy! There are a lot of wildlife that can stay in YNP because the rivers don’t freeze. With all the thermals, geysers and warm water flowing in the rivers, it provides a habitat for a large variety of birds and mammals to survive in the harsh winter.
On our second tour, we went to the “Grand Canyon” of YNP. It was a bit longer on the snowmobiles but has some great scenery. The snow/ice has fascinating shapes as the steam coats the surrounding pine trees. We call these snow ghosts in our area (you see a lot at Whitefish Mountain Resort).
On our day off, we visited the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone. It was a really cool place to visit. They rescue grizzly bears, wolves, otters and other small animals that would normally be euthanized. They also do a lot of education of the public about these wild animals. It was great to be able to see the animals more closely. The bears don’t hibernate at the center because they get plenty of food. Bears only need to hibernate if they don’t have a good food source. I wish we could have seen some of the otters in the wild (some had been spotted several days before we were there) but no luck. They do have a bear cam and a wolf cam so that you can view the animals live if you like.
Dennis did get a video of the wolves. There is a building where you could be inside (warm and cozy) and watch wolves interact with each other. This is a pack of a mama wolf and her four offspring.
I had a great time on this trip, rode and drove a snowmobile for the first time and was inspired by winter. So if you get the chance to visit Yellowstone National Park in the wintertime, go for it. You will see some amazing sights.
I told you in my last post that I had created a handmade book from deconstructed screen printed fabric and paper at our retreat. We followed this free tutorial by Jeanne Oliver. She has lots of free content on her site and some wonderful online classes. This is the book I created.
Here’s the book from the front. I used hemp canvas fabric that I had screen printed. The cover was constructed from the hemp canvas, book board and deconstructed screen printed paper.
The book was bound with pamphlet stitch and copper wire. I have created many books with pamphlet stitch but had never used wire. It was a bit tricky but I like the result, plus it’s very sturdy.
Here are the inside front cover (L) and inside back cover (R). I really love the organic feel of the screen printing. I made three signatures and used plaster on canvas pages plus additional pages of various papers and a bit of fabric. The main pages were created with canvas, plaster and gesso.
I didn’t take photos of all the page spreads but wanted to show a range of what was included in the book. The brown paper on the left is a “faux rice paper” that I made with tissue paper, walnut ink and matte medium. The photo on the right shows the inside of the copper wire binding.
These next photos shows a variety of papers that I used in addition to the plaster and canvas pages. Some were painted, some eco printed and I used some specialty rice papers as well.
Here are a few more page spreads. Besides paper, I also added in some hand dyed canvas as well. The book is fun in itself and could probably be left as is. But I want to make it into a book about the forest with sketches, additional ephemera related to trees and whatever else reminds me of the forest. So I will be working on this slowly and adding bits and pieces to it over time.
These are a few of the types of things that I might add. Paula kindly gave me the pieces with definitions and the labels. She has loads of ephemera and is very generous. Thanks Paula! You could easily make this type of book with felt as the cover fabric. I would love to see your results if you give it a try. You can submit photos of your work here and we will post them.
My local group had our annual retreat in early September. We go out to a lovely lodge on Little Bitterroot Lake and spend a couple of days creating and playing with art stuff. This photo is from sometime in the past. Sadly, this year, the air was full of smoke and you could barely see the mountains across the water. This year, our activities included deconstructed screen printing, making a book and creating some “faux” rice paper.
These are a few of the paper prints that I created. Deconstructed screen printing is done with a previously prepared screen in which the thickened dye has been left to dry. Then you use more thickened dye or plain print paste to release the dried dye from the screen. It is a serendipitous process and you are never sure what you will get in the final prints. I teach this process on felt in my online class.
I usually use fairly thick paper so that I can wash out the thickener that is left on the paper. That way I can do other processes on top of the paper without it running. These are similar to some of the papers that I used in my recent collage challenge.
One of the fun things about the paper is that you can end up using either side. The photo on the left shows the front side of the printed paper and the right photo is the back side.
Here are some of the fabric pieces that I printed. If you click on the individual photos, you can see what type of fabric I used. The little scraps on the top left photo are what was left over after I used a piece of printed hemp canvas for the cover of my book.
These prints are all on silk. The left side is silk habotai, the middle is silk organza and the right side photo is the silk organza layered over the habotai. You could print on many types of silk and this would be a great way to create your own fabric for using in nuno felting.
I will be using these for my upcoming classes that I am taking as backgrounds for stitching, in collages and wherever else suits my fancy.
Next time, I will show you the book that I created while at the retreat. It’s not entirely finished but you will be able to see the deconstructed screen printed canvas as the cover and a piece of printed paper as the inside covers.
My local art group doesn’t meet over the summer but we decided to do a collage challenge. The challenge was to create a collage every day using at most 3 pieces of paper and to only take 12 minutes to create the collage. I started the challenge on May 24th and reached my goal of 100 days on September 5th. The hardest issue I had with the challenge was the time restraint. Even with choosing my paper in advance, I had a hard time completing a collage in 12 minutes. So I ignored the time limit but tried to keep it under 30 minutes. No waffling around on how it went together.
Today, I’m showing you some of my favorite collages. There were some that turned out good and others, not so good. But it was a great way to work on color studies, composition and to do something creative to start out my day. If you would like to see all 100 collages, you can check them out on my Instagram account here:
In case you’re wondering, I have a huge plastic tub filled with paper that has been gelli printed, screen printed, hand painted, printed with block prints and whatever other techniques I have done in the past. So I have a wonderful source of papers to use for collage. If you are thinking of trying this challenge, you can use whatever paper sources you have. Many artists use magazine photos, open source online photos, wrapping papers, or whatever they have on hand.
So here are a few of my favorites. You can click on the photos to enlarge if you’d like to see them closer. I had a great time searching through my papers and creating a different collage every day.
Have you tried this type of daily challenge? We’d love to see your results and hear about the challenge. Let me know if you’d like to write a post about a challenge you have participated in.
And speaking of challenges, our third quarter challenge using botanicals as a theme is over at the end of this month. I think a few of my collages meet the guidelines! If you have something botanical to share for the challenge, please submit your photo here.
After putting my work in two different galleries, I felt a moment of panic because I have no more artwork that would be ready to go if anything sold. Better get to work!
This is the fabric after I nuno felted it to black pre felt for the weeping birch piece. I had some red prefelt of the correct size so I decided to see what the fabric would look like with a red wool base.
Here is the piece after felting. It definitely has a different feel than with the black wool. Now to decide how I should move forward with this piece. What do you see? It’s always so interesting to hear what different people see in the same background.
This is the nuno background that I used for Summer Fireworks. It was felted on to white pre felt. Since I was already using the red prefelt, I decided to back the dyed silk from the same piece of fabric with red pre felt. How different would it look?
Here is the silk fabric nuno felted on to red wool. I see trees and bushes at the top of this with perhaps grasses or flowers at the bottom? Or maybe roots and the underground at the bottom? I will show you my progress as I get further along in the process.
I definitely enjoyed seeing the difference that the pre felt wool color makes in the end nuno felted result. I will have to try out more colors when I get the chance.
I am still all packed up so decided to do another small picture. This one is 3.5 x2.5 inches. I wanted to do a sunset. Step one google sunset pictures in the public domain. Well, that was disappointing. It seems that the popular configuration is oversaturated with the blinding sun dead center and if there is anything else in the picture it is a black silhouette. I was looking for something more subdued with lots of colour in the sky but with colour still in the landscape. I tried adding qualifying words to my google search but it didn’t help. I just kept scrolling and scrolling. The further away from the top hits the better it got. Sometimes page 5 has better pictures than the first page.
I started with this small piece of offcut from a long-ago project. I think it was a little bag.
I decided to go with my imagination rather than an actual picture. Drew in the horizon, the lake, the hill and an indication of trees. I knew the trees would disappear under the sky so not much point to that.
I added some sky using 2 shades of blue. I used 3 shades of orange and a little white to do some nice sunset-kissed streaky clouds in the sky.
The water was next. It is a combination of Prussian blue and navy.
I added the grass. It is antique, olive green and a puter/brown colour. I was thinking of late in the year when the grass turns golden. I carded the colours together but not too much so I would have some nice variation.
Then I added the cloud reflection in the water.
I wanted some trees on the ridge. I want the ridge to be in the distance with the trees striking up a little. I don’t like them. they look too much like they belong at a Christmas tree farm, so I took them off.
Next, I tried mixing some shades of green and then drafting it thin. I told it in my fingers to give it some cohesion and needled 3 trees on the ridge. I like these better but am still not sure. I think I probably just need to not look at them so closely. The thumbnails that show along the bottom of my photo editing software look better than the big picture but it’s twice as big as the actual picture so it shows too much detail. I would like to add more trees but not sure it won’t just end up looking like a green blob. I may leave it and more onto the flowers in the foreground. Any suggestions for the trees.
For the next one, I hope to go bigger. I always want to add too much detail and it’s just not possible with a small picture.
And one last thing, a cute thing. This is Storm. He was born on Saturday. we have no idea who his mom is. Perhaps the storm spooked her.
We had a huge storm in Ontario it took out power to most of the south of the province. We were out for a little over a day. Many people are still out. You may not see Jan in 2 days. It hasn’t been like this since the Icestorm of 1998. At least the weather is better for this one.
here’s the outage map the darker green is the area the hydro company covers and all the dots are the numbers of outages in that area. London, Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa have separate hydro companies but they all have huge outages too. if you follow the link you can zoom in and see different areas.
