Our local group meeting in November was all about painting fabric. We are still working on background fabrics that will be included in our fabric books. We used a variety of “fabric” paints that are heat set.
Louise had cut up a bunch of different types of fabric to paint on and had a wide arrary of paints.
The idea was to spray water on to the fabric, then add paint and then you could if you wanted, add another piece of fabric on top to pick up extra paint. The photos above show a piece of sheer fabric that was painted, then a piece of cotton velveteen was added on top. The final photo on the right shows the velveteen after all the paint colors were added. This is Sally’s fabric.
Paula was working in shades of brown. These fabrics are all still wet, so it will be interesting to see what they look like dry.
I was working in fall colors. When you see the black printing, those are fabrics that we screen printed years ago that Louise still had in her stash.
These are a few of Louise’s painted pieces.
And one more photo of one of Sally’s painted fabrics. We left the fabric at Louise’s house to dry and then everything will need to be ironed. Next month, we have plans to do some fabric weaving for a book page.
I am happy to report that our floor is finished and we finally have all of our furniture back. I am still unpacking and rearranging but we are definitely near the end of this mammoth project. I’m happy with the new floor and perhaps at some point, I will completely forget the experience of having it done.
My local art group had another get together in the midst of the floor redo and we did some clamp dyeing. I didn’t take any process photos but I do have some of the finished pieces.
We had five pots of acid dye on the stove including bright yellow, yellow ochre, brick red, dark turquoise and purple. You can fold your fabric however you want or not, and then you clamp different objects to the fabric to create a resist for the dye. You put the clamped fabric into the lightest dye pot first. Then you can unclamp, reclamp in a different pattern and put it into a different color. You work from lighter colors to darker colors. You can dip the fabric partially or put it into soak. The variation are endless.
We used a variety of fabric too. The wool we were using was a very thick, hairy wool blanket. It really had to be clamped tightly and the results weren’t as crisp as thinner fabric.
These pieces are cotton velveteen which actually worked really well with the acid dyes. You can see that the thinner fabric took the dye differently.
This piece was done with two metal bird shapes that are the same. They were clamped to the folded fabric on either side.
This is a piece of Kraftex that was folded and clamped, then dipped into various colors.
This is a piece of silk that was folded up tightly and clamped and then dipped into various colors of dye.
Here’s a few more pieces of wool blanket.
And Birdie was supervising the drying process on the porch!
We’re planning on using these fabric pieces to create fabric books. We will be working all year on creating the fabric, then the different pages with other techniques and then putting the books together.
In May this year, I wrote about about a vessel I’d made for an exhibition called ‘Edge’. Although this hadn’t been the intention, the vessel gave me a sort of Japanese minimalism vibe, which was something I wanted to revisit.
Edge Vessel
The vessel fit the Edge brief in that I’d used a circular resist to create the shape but rather than cut the hole in the centre of the circle, I’d stood it on one edge, with the hole on the opposite edge. I like this shape and want to explore it further.
The fibre I’d used was something I also want to come back to. A beautiful fine carded merino and silk mix from World of Wool, it was time-consuming to lay out because of the short staple-length, but produced a lovely, light and velvety soft felt.
Before leaping into making something with so many variables of shape, surface design and fibre, I knew I needed to make some samples and decided to think first about the surface design.
I have no real knowledge of Japanese minimalist art and am not trying to replicate it, just play around with some of the simplicity of design and colours as inspiration. I love problem-solving (or perhaps that’s problem-investigating) so was setting myself a bit of a challenge.
I’ve seen various images of beautiful Japanese brush work using black ink brush strokes and red circles on a white background and I wondered if I could create something like that in felt. The biggest challenge seemed to be how to wet felt black, red and white together while keeping the colours separate. Prefelt seemed to be one way to go so I made three different black prefelts to see which might look like black ink brush strokes.
Using commercial black merino prefelt, I cut a strip and felted it a little. I didn’t think this would work well as it’s the cut ends that move most into the surrounding fibres and this strip is basically all cut edges. Next, I tried lightly prefelting two other types of black merino wool: carded and tops, as if I was starting to make felt rope.
commercial prefelt stripcarded batt layout carded batt prefelttop to bottom: merino strips from commercial prefelt, carded batt prefelt, tops prefelt Prefelt for black lines
The tops and carded wool produced very similar-looking results and I confess, when I got to the making bit, I lost track of which was which. The advantage of these was that the fibres are mainly running along the length of the line rather than sticking out of the sides so there should be less migration into the white. I decided I’d use these rather than the commercial prefelt strip.
I then turned my attention to red circles. I suspect carded wool might be best but I only have tops in red so that was what I used. First, I just tried making a circle freehand. I got about 2/3 of a circle and a raggedy bit. On the plus side, there weren’t cut edges, so that should help minimise side-to-side fibre migration. On the minus side, the shape left a lot to be desired! Needs further work.
Next, I made some red prefelt and cut a couple of circles out of it. I thought this would work less well but I was interested to see how they compared with the freehand idea.
freehand shapered prefelt with circle templateMaking red circles
I was aiming for a very simple design, so played around arranging black strands and red circles in different combinations.
Testing out different layouts
Now to actually make a sample.
My chosen layout
I used a rectangle of white silk and merino commercial prefelt for speed, and felted it together with three black strips and a red circle to see what happened.
Sample 1 completed
As you can see, the black didn’t migrate much on the long sides, though it did where I’d cut the shorter pieces (on the ends on the left side). The lines did, however, crimp and move a bit – maybe I need to prefelt these a bit less on the length and definitely more on any cut ends. Also, I must keep a better check on any movement as I felt.
The red, on the other hand, probably needed prefelting more as there was quite a lot of migration there. Basically, far too many loose cut ends, so either felt the edges harder or go back to a different layout.
At this point, I wonder why the heck I’m doing this: the layout looks so much better than the felted piece. Nevertheless, I decide to make a quick second sample before I finish for the day.
This time I used the freehand red circle with the raggedy edge. Somewhere in the dusty corners of my brain, I’d started to think about using resists to reveal the colours rather than just laying them on the surface. I hadn’t actually developed this thought but just plonked a resist on top of the red felt and laid a second layer of the white over the whole of the piece. I had some vague thoughts about the red incomplete circle looking a bit like a setting sun so placed it near the bottom and thought I could perhaps print some flying bird silhouettes on the upper part afterwards.
OK, I’m sort of freewheeling by this stage.
Sample 2 layout Sample 2 layout with extra layerSample 2 feltedSample 2
The useful learning from my experiments thus far was that the freehand circle (which has fibres running around the circumference of the circle, therefore avoiding lots of ends sticking out) works much better. You can see this very clearly from the under side. The cut ends clearly also migrate much more up and down as well as side to side. The freehand shape was probably also felted a bit harder than the red prefelt sheet.
Sample 1 underside: lots of migration round the edgesSample 2 underside: very little migrationComparing undersides of samples 1 & 2
For my final two test pieces, I lightly needle-felted some red circles then wet-felted the edges to make them as neat as possible. I went back to using the original white carded 70:30 merino:silk mix and decided to concentrate on getting the red circle right. I laid out two layers of fibre at right-angles to each other and put a needle felted circle top right.
Needle felted circleSample 3 layoutSample 3 felted Sample 3 finished with a printed treeSample 3 using needle felted circle
The needle-felted circle felted in well and when it was dry I printed a tree onto it. It’s a bit big but I’m going to make this into a birthday card for my Mum.
For my final test piece I continued with the carded merino & silk batt. I laid four layers of fibre round a circular resist and added one needle-felted red circle on each side.
As with my earlier Edge vessel, I cut it on one of the edges (rather than in the centre of the circle) and designed it to sit on the opposite edge.
Part-way through fulling, I worried that one of the red circles hadn’t felted in very well so did a little judicious needle felting around its edges before finishing the vessel.
layout for layers 1 & 3layout for layers 2 & 4Side 1 – still wetSide 2 – still wetSide 1 – nearly dryVessel with 2 circles: sample 4
This is a lot smaller than my original ‘edge’ vessel and much sturdier.
Conclusions?
The needle-felted and freehand wet-felted circles work better than cutting the circles from prefelt. I like the effect though could maybe make the need-felted circles a bit thinner: they do look as if they’re partially sitting on top of the surface. I’m happy that I’ve more or less cracked that bit of my challenge. As for the black lines, I’m leaving them for now but may come back to them at a later stage. The carded merino / silk batt was lovely to work with and I will definitely be making more things using this fibre. I might make a series of vessels using different colours and / or numbers of circles. I may also develop combining a circle and a printed tree. As usual, each experiment opens up lots of new possibilities. So much felt to make and too little time…..
This particular post has been inspired by some of our regular readers so here’s a quick advance thank you. I really love it when comments lead to further exploration and sharing!
Just a few cautionary words before I go on. I dip in and out of dyeing, definitely a hobbyist and I purely play so my dyeing exploits are experimental. There are lots of great sites out there if you really want to dig deep or if, like me you sometimes just love to watch someone’s process on social media you could check out @thedogwooddyer or @sashaduerr or @joanne_green_art on Instagram. Joanne has recently published a book which I would love to get hold of – it’s all about pigments. I have Sasha Duerr’s book; Natural Palettes and although it focuses on plants grown around California, there’s plenty of botanical commonality going on. It can be hard to believe that it’s Ireland I am talking about – and yes we do have some specimen Californian Redwoods here!
Second cautionary note: please exercise caution when dyeing and keep all of your dyeing equipment separate to your cooking equipment. It’s very important. Also, just because something is natural doesn’t automatically mean it is safe to handle without gloves or a mask. We recently had to burn wood in our pit. I extracted the charcoal and made some lye as an experiment. The pH is such that if it lands on skin it will feel like soap, lovely and soft, but what is happening is that it is dissolving the outer layer of skin! But please don’t be deterred by this. Just exercise caution and common sense and all will be grand!
When I started looking around for something to play with for this blog post I found some fallen branches from one of our cedar trees. I stripped the bark and left it to soak with the intention of throwing some fibres straight into the mix as the high level of tannins in the dye lot would mean that I did not have to heat the mix for it to work. After about a week soaking the mix I made the mistake of stirring it without gloves on. The resin in the mix started irritating my skin (yes, I learned a lesson that day). So it was back to the drawing board to find something safer to extract the dye from. (I haven’t yet learned how to extract the resin from the mix!)
This time I decided to opt for something most of us have at our disposal – compost! Onion skins to be more precise. I have been collecting these for quite some time (we are talking months here – I have been storing them in a cotton bag and they kept perfectly!). I had approximately 110g of skins which I just threw in a huge stock pot (used only for dyeing). I filled it three quarters way with water – not particularly scientific, probably around 6 litres, and put it on a low heat for about 4 hours. During this time I should have checked it (oops, I forgot!) but it was fine. It came to a rolling simmer. By this time it was bed time so I just turned it off and left it overnight to cool and then drained off the skins. There still appears to be colour left in the skins so I popped them into a nylon bag and left them to dry on the washing line – I will try to extract more dye another day.
The colour was a lovely rich colour – like a golden red. So I decided to extract the pigment from 1 litre of the liquid and use the rest for sample dyeing. I will hold on to the dyeing section for my next post as otherwise this will get a little too long and boring for you to read.
110g of onion skins ready for dye extraction
Overview Yummy colour.
Yummy colour against the light
Discarded onion skins. I dried these and I will dye with them again before composting them
Let’s start with the pigment making. We are talking natural dyeing here. Extracting the pigment from the dye liquid involves introducing a few ingredients which bind the molecules to themselves and cause them to separate from the liquid. First I am using an acid (alum) (which can also be used as a mordant on fabric and fibre to prepare the surface for dyeing). Then I add an alkaline solution (soda crystals). The two chemicals react and the pigment separates and sinks to the bottom. This can fizz up so make sure there’s plenty of room in the container. (Remember those great lava making experiments done back in the to encourage kids into science? You get my drift). The liquid is drained off then the remaining pigment is left to drain in a coffee filter. Once drained, the colour can be filtered in distilled water, dried, ground et voila! Pigment.
So, what do you need for this. As we are playing we will work in small quantities:
1 litre of dye liquid (filtered to remove all the plant material)
Alum (potassium aluminium sulphate) You will have to check where you can source this as it differs depending on location. Like me, you may need to buy online.
Soda crystals (I also use these to clean my washing machine so I can buy them in homeware shops)
pot and cooker to heat the liquid
2 Litre jug that can withstand hot liquid.
Glass jars (if you are patient, you will fit everything in 1 jar
Funnel
Coffee filter
Spoons (measuring and stirring)
weighing scales
pestle and mortar
boiling water
distilled water
Heat the dye liquid but don’t let it boil
Add the alum to a container then add boiling water and stir to dissolve the crystals. This may take a little while so be patient and make sure they are thoroughly dissolved. Quantities? My research has shown that this very much depends on the plant material, but a good starting point is 10% alum to liquid. I used 10 grams here.
Carefully (don’t burn yourself!) pour the dye liquid into the large jug. I tend to do this at the sink. Then add the alum liquid and stir well.
Now dissolve the soda crystals in boiling water. I used 5g here. Once dissolved add this to the big jug and stir. You may notice a fizzing chemical reaction.
Leave the solution to cool and separate. The pigments will sink to the bottom of the jug. The liquid on top should be clear. If it is not, it means that there is some pigment left in it and you could choose to play further with this liquid, once it is drained off. (In other words, repeat the steps outlined above).
Carefully pour off as much of the liquid as you can, without disturbing the pigment.
Set up your glass jar: place the funnel into it and then add the coffee filter to the funnel. Make sure that the funnel is not hitting the bottom of the jar – we want the drained liquid to escape through the bottom
Next slowly pour the wet pigment into the coffee filter. I find if I hurry at this, the filter can disintegrate so I let the filter soak up some of the damp as I am pouring.
Leave this overnight so that the water has mostly drained off and the pigment remains.
Now if you are planning to store your pigment, it is recommended that it is washed at least twice with distilled water and filtered through fresh coffee filters. This is to remove any unwanted mineral salts from the pigment. I am only playing so I did not bother with this step. I know that if this whets your appetite to find out more, you will remember this step.
The next step can be done either when the pigment is completely dry or getting there, scrape it into a mortar (bowl). Once completely dry start grinding using the pestle but be sure to wear a mask for this part as the dust is quite fine.
I store my pigments in tiny glass jars (yes, you guessed 1 litre doesn’t produce a lot but it makes up for it in satisfaction!). Make sure to label and date.
I have put together a slide show on the process I used.
Materials for making pigment
Heating up the liquid dye
Dissolving the alum – be patient, it takes time
Alum and soda crystals are getting to work
The pigment has sunk to the bottom of the jug
I do like this colour!
A bit blurred but here we can see the settled pigment
Here’s a photo of the filtration system
Slowly pouring the pigment into the coffee filter
The filter has soaked up some of the liquid
Here you can see the clear liquid draining off the pigment
Pigment is still draining
Checking on the pigment as it dries
Opening the coffee filters before scaping them clean
Scraping the pigment into the bowl. This will be left to dry
It takes time to grind down the pigment particles, patience is needed.
The yield is quite small but it’s still rewarding
This is the basic process. Colours can be altered before making the pigment by introducing an acid or an alkali and if this is of interest to you, it will be worth doing a bit of research.
I have, in a way, put the cart before the horse here, as I am showing you the process of making the pigment before running through the fabulous colours I achieved with this in dye form. But a promise is a promise and I wanted to deliver so I hope on this occasion you can forgive me. The general ‘rule’ that I have found is to use 10% of the volume of the dye as the binder. So for every 1 litre of dye liquid use 10 grams of alum. Then use 5 grams of soda crystals (or similar) and let the substance perform its magic. This is a good starting point. But like all rules a bit of flexibility can be needed so these figures can change and this is where experience comes into play (knowing what adjustment is needed for different plants). Most importantly, your curiousity and willingness to play comes to the fore here. Just give it a go and have lots of fun.
Helene
A little post script before this blog is published:
Since my adventures with onion skins, I decided to experiment with the yellow Chrysanthemums flowers from a lovely bouquet that had seen better days and was destined for the compost heap. I used the same ratio of alum and soda crystals only this time I didn’t hold back some of the dye material for fabrib experimentation and I made up pigment with the full dye bath. Here is the result:
Chrysanths pigment made from the yelow flower head
I may have mentioned this last year, but we have a farmer who grows a number of acres of sunflowers every summer. It’s done for charity and it is open to the public to come along, pick the sunflowers and make a donation to the Hospice Foundation. There’s an honesty box on site. It is a form of Meitheal – part of Irish culture where people help others out. By the time I arrived last week, a lot of the sunflowers had ‘gone over’. That said, after a lot of searching I found some that had yet to open and I was very pleased. So I picked and made my donation. Once home I started cutting off the lower leaves and I cut some of the stems so that they would look better in the vase. Rather than discard the waste I decided to run a little experiment. I slowly brought them to the boil. The smell was not particularly nice so I let everything cool down outside. I found I had a lot of liquid (and plenty of dark green dye), so I reduced down the liquid by heating it up again. (I did this out doors this time!). Then I made my pigment. It’s hard to see from the photos but it is a lovely dark green. I worked with a little over 2 litres of liquid. As you can see, it doesn’t produce a lot of pigment but it is very concentrated:
Sunflower leaf and stem pigment
I have decided to treat myself to Joanne Green’s new book Natural Watercolor Paint Making. I have followed her for a long time on Instagram and love her short videos on how she makes pigment. She had followed this up with a book about the process and I could not be happier. I heard from the book store that it is on its way to me so I’m quite excited about that. Please let me know if you would like me to review it in my next post.
I am not sure how it got to be Thursday so quickly. It’s been a busy week since we last chatted. I was working on another post about demoing felting, but it needs more work, so that will be coming later. This week at the local guild, we had a social focusing on Blending Boards. My Kia is partway through her gastric surgery (one of the parts of the new parts was missing from the box, so next week?) The weeds are trying to outnumber the plants in the pots, so that has to be done; they are all looking limp from heat and lack of water, i have to fix that too. The last part of the huge fleece is finally in for its first rinse. Just to add extra excitement, I am still wiping out and having long naps at odd moments. Life is fun!
Since you probably are not interested in the gastric distress of my car, and are likely trying to tackle your own weeds and lack of water (although it keeps raining?) So, this will be a short blog, so you can go enjoy the weeding and fleece washing while the snowbanks are not here. Let me show you what turned up, besides blending boards and bags of bits of fibre, at the local guild on Monday.
Guild social with Blending boards
0.11) Ann making rolags on the blending board, 2 more blending boards used in the background
0.12)- Ann’s rolag is flaccid!
0.13) 4 of the 6 spinners are using drop spindles
Daisy brought in her new book: “The Spinner’s Blending Board Bible: From Woolen to (Nearly!) Worsted and Everything in Between”, by Deborah Held. Released April 2025, it is hardcover and has 136 pages, in English. (ISBN: 978-0811773676, if you wanted to look at it too)
1.1)cover of: The Spinner’s Blending Board Bible, from wool to (nearly!) worsted and everything in between”, by Deborah Held
This book was written for spinners, but felters may also be inspired by it. Anyone working with fibre has more options if they know more ways to prepare that fibre. Different fibre preps produce different kinds of yarn if you are spinning, and will behave differently if you are wet or dry felting. More options are always good. For felters, the fibre mixes that a blending board can create may inspire you. Probably a turbulent sea or impending stormy sky, even mixes of greens suggesting distant trees?
Here are the main topics covered (I have listed the contents of all of chapter 4, since it may be of greatest interest to felters):
Foreword
Introduction
1: YOUR BLENDING BOARD: THE ALL-IN-ONE FIBER-PROCESSING TOOL
Breaking Down the Blending Board
A Comparison of Tools Used in Fiber Preparation
2: INDUSTRY SECRETS: UNLOCKING THE HIDDEN POTENTIAL OF YOUR BLENDING BOARD
Aftermarket Accessories
Technique: Dos and Don’ts
Smooth vs. Textured Preparations
Working with “Difficult” Fibers
3: ROLLED-OFF PREPARATIONS: ROLAGS, ROLLED LOGS, PUNIS, AND ROLY-POLIES
Rolled-off Preparations, Defined
Rolling Fiber Off Your Blending Board
Color, Texture, and Other Creative Play
4: BATTS AND CLOUDS, ROVINGS AND SLIVERS
Batts
Better Batts
Make the Best Batts
Layer Your Fiber in Thin Staple Lengths, Burnishing Often
Remove the Batt from the Blending Board
Make It a Double
Make It More Woolen with Multiple and Directional Passes
Directional Loading
Recard Your Batt
Make It More Worsted
Carded Clouds
Make It the Most Woolen
Roving vs. Sliver
Pin-drafted Roving
Make Your Own Roving, Multiple Ways
Hand-pulled Rovings: from a Batt/Cloud or Roll-up, as a Z-strip
Diz a Roving or Sliver
Diz from the Board
Off the Batt or Roving
Double-diz
Make It More Worsted
Creative Play with Color and Texture
Flecks/Tweeds and Heathers
Garneting for Extra Texture
Make It a Marl by Stacking Your Batts
Stripes/Repeating Colors and Variegates
Color Blocking
Gradients
Vertical and Horizontal Gradients
Individually Carded Gradients
Scraptastic Sandwich Batts
Fractals
Fancy Farm Batt
Bizzed Datty Bumps
5: UNEXPECTED WAYS TO USE YOUR BLENDING BOARD
Bring a Braid of Fiber Back to Life
Flick-card Locks and Line Them Up for Spinning
Flick-comb Your Locks
Diz a Repeatable “Combed” Top
Wet Felting
6: CARE AND STORAGE OF YOUR BLENDING BOARD
Keep It Clean
Storage
Acknowledgments
Appendix A: DIY Blending Board
Appendix B: Comparison of Blending Boards Used in This Book
Resources and Credits
Glossary
I like that the book considers repeatable and totally unrepeatable ways to work with fibre. While it’s fun to do artsy one-off things, it’s also nice to be able to get a predictable effect and repeat it if you want to. There are two tables I am particularly impressed with, one on types of fibre prep and what they produce (with pros and cons)(I want to meet this author!!). And the other on the Woolen to worsted continuum. It’s an elegant way of explaining vocabulary. Which is a problem when shopping for the prepared fibre, you want what you thought you were purchasing to arrive. There are good photos of various ways to lay out colour to get different effects as well as photos that show how to use the equipment, including the diz.
Let me show you a few interior pages to see if I can tempt you to check it out further.
2.1--2.6) interior shots of the book to tempt you to go take a look at it.
As you can see from the list of contents and the photos, this book covers a lot of ground, not only in ways to make use of a blending board but also in the various fibre preparations and how they are different. If your library or guild picks up this book, seek it out and take a perusal. Even if you never find a blending board at a garage sale or make your own, there is a lot of info here in case you do!
3)Back cover
Also, you can absorb the info presented and transfer that knowledge to a drum carder if you have one, or have access to use one. You can lay fibre directly on the drum, diz off or make rolags. Even after a short-ish perusal and skimming, it has me thinking odd thoughts of trying things on my drum carder. But first, I have to finish washing the last of that giant fleece. Just how big was that sheep? And what was he rolling around in? That water is filthy.
Oh no, a big storm is coming through in consecutive waves this evening, I guess the weather thought that fleece was very dirty too and is helping with the rinse! I will hope the waves of the incoming storm don’t take out the power before I get this posted!!! (Ann may not be able to do the final spellcheck and find all the missing or extra capitals!)
Have fun! Stay dry, Enjoy Summer and Keep Felting!!
I think I might have had too much time on my hands a while ago. As we say here ‘What’s seldom is wonderful!’ So I got a little curious about some things. Fibre of course had to be involved.
We don’t drink coffee in our house – my husband was never a fan and I found myself to be allergic to it after going cold turkey in China back in the 80s. I do love the coffee aroma and I can be sometimes found near one of our oldest coffee houses in Dublin, Bewleys, just sniffing the air. At this point, I really have to post a link to their rather famous cafe in the heart of Dublin. It’s a haunt of mine, even though I can’t drink it. It is worth calling in to if you are on vacation (the food is amazing). There can be queues so it is worth going early. Besides the food, the original works of art are breath taking. https://bewleysgraftonstreet.com/
What has this got to do with my post – absolutely nothing – but I just had to share so you have a special spot to add to your itinerary when you visit Dublin, Ireland.
But, I digress. We drink a lot of tea in the house and while I like lots of different flavours, I tend to consume mostly an Irish brand, Barrys. It, along with an Irish brand of crisps (potato chips) called Tayto are two products most requested when visiting ex-pats. We use tea bags rather than leaf tea and we compost the remainder as the bags are now biodegradable.
My first thought during this time of being busy doing nothing was, would the tea bags (without the tea) felt into merino fibre. Before I could experiment I had to empty the tea bags and wash and dry them. I have to admit this was not a favourite job. The smell of the used bags assaulted my nostrils, so I worked quickly (every cloud, silver lining and all that!). Once dry I divided the bags into two groups and I made marks on one group with what I thought was alcohol based walnut ink and let it dry. Then I went to work laying down the ‘marked’ tea bags and adding 10g of merino fibre on top (4 layers) I finished off with the unmarked tea bags, layering them so that I could see how thick it could make them before the fibre would stop permeating them.
It was a successful experiment. The bags fully felted into the fibre and the sample shrank by 45%. The marks, however disappeared, so I will add them again. It turns out the ink was acrylic – note to self: next time, read the label before buying!
I do like the textural finish on this piece and it is good to see that something as mundane and ordinary as a used tea bag can yield a successful result. Here’s a very quick peak at the bags and outcome:
Marking on teabags with ink Felted sample plain tea bag up Felted sample mark side up – lots of the marks washed out
Recently, I’ve been doing a bit of reading up on the science behind making felt. What we usually do is add soap to water, in my own case, I use olive oil soap which has a pH of 8. The paper I read maintained that wool fibre would felt once the pH value was moved from neutral. This meant that I should be able to felt a sample by adding an acid solution to the fibre. I was keen to try it to see what would happen.
First of all, I rinsed off all my equipment, my water bowl, ball brause, bubble wrap and fulling cloth to make sure there was no soapy residue around. Then I laid out my sample (4 layers). I checked the pH of the water, which was neutral. I then added a quarter cup of vinegar to my water and checked the pH value which was now 4. The water was tepid. I wet out the sample. The first thing I noticed was that the water did not soak into the fibre as it usually does when soap is added and it took a lot more water and pushing on the fibres to encourage them to soak up the water. When I turned the sample over, there were still dry patches so even more water was needed! That (plus the smell) were the only differences I noticed. It felted easily and shrank down 47%. When it came to fulling the sample, I heated up the water/vinegar solution in the microwave. One advantage of using the acid solution is that the ‘water’ could be used for the next project. That said, I reckon it could be very hard on the hands if this was my main way of making felt. So I am going to decant it into a spray bottle and use it to clean windows, no waste!
Sample of layout for acid experiment
Checking the PH of the water before I start
Ph of sample during felting
We have a beautiful Norweigan Spruce tree growing in our front garden. I like to refer to it as the gift that keeps on giving because it constantly suprises us. For example, last year, while I was mindlessly staring into the garden, it launched a pollen bomb. For those of us (this included myself up to this point) unfamiliar with the term, the tree released it pollen all in one go. So the whole tree was suddenly surrounded by a yellow haze. In an instant, the haze lifted into the sky and was carried off in the wind. It was truly spectacular. I have lots of allergies and pollen would be one of my nemesis but I would put up with the discomfort to see this again. Here’s a short Youtube video on the topic. Our tree did it on its own while this one was shook but you will get the picture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh2Da8Ms45M
Anyway, back to my story. I found I had lots of fallen pine cones at the base of the tree so I gathered only some of them and put them on to boil in my dyepot. The house was filled with a gorgeous pine scent during this process. Once I had extracted the dye from the cones, I filtered the mix through some muslin to remove the resin. The colour was absolutely stunning – a jewel red. I used it for four experiments; first of all, I extracted a litre of the liquid to make a pigment, then I used the remainder of the dyebath to dye some fibres (unfortunately I do not have a photo of the results and they are now added to my mountain of experiments (unlabelled – what was I thinking!). Experiment number three involved adding some of the leftover dye bath to citric acid to make a pigment. In the last experiment I left the liquid alone and just added the alum and soda crystals to separate the dye from the liquid base. Once separated, I filtered the liquid out of the pigment, then dried and ground all the results. So, I ended up with three different pigments and some dyed fibre experiments. I have inclluded a photo of the pigment made last summer and the result of the latest experiment in winter. There is quite a difference in the colour as you will see from the slide slow:
Gathered pine cones in the dye pot
Filtering the resin during dye extraction
Glorious colour from the cones!
Catching the dye colour in the sunshine!
Making pigment
I threw a variety of fibres into the dyepot
Cone pigment before it dries
Not sure which experiment with pine cones this photo related to
The filtering process with the pine cones
pigment comparison on pine cones: summer one is to the right winter to the left – same tree, different result
Pine cone – liquid extracted before using the dyebath.
leftover dye bath from the pine cones with citric acid added
pine cone pigment from leftover dye bath
There’s a back story to the last project. We have a number of fruit trees in our garden. Unfortunately we lost one of our plum trees last year. This was despite our eldest son’s (naturally green fingered which he inherited from paternal grandmother having skipped a generation) efforts to save it. Finally, there was no other option but to fell it. He also decided to remove the roots which was a big job as the tree had been there a number of years. It became the focus for my last household and garden project. I wanted to find out if the dye from plum tree bark differs from the dye from plum tree root. To find out, I decided to peel some of the bark off one of the branches. I did the same with the outer cover of the root. I soaked these in different containers for up to a week. Now, here’s what I found interesting. Whereas I needed to heat the pine cone liquid to extract the dye in my previous project, this was not needed for the bark/root projects; the dye naturally extracted sitting in its vessel and the high tannin level meant that all I needed to do was soak my fibres and fabric. It was like magic! I wanted to use the dye in some small vessels I made for the 10g challenge I spoke about in my last post. Then, I took what remained in the dye pot and made pigment from it. I found it interesting that the result from the plum bark dye yielded a lighter colour dye but a richer pigment – the root was the opposite. The fabric/fibre experiment produced is a lovely rich golden hue on the different surfaces. Also, it turned out to be another gift that kept on giving as each time I used up all the dye, I added more water to the two mixes and it kept extracting dye – I could not even notice if the dye was weaker in the second round than it was in the first. In the end I composted the bark and roots as I needed to move on with life (I got busy again!)
Here’s a quick run through in photos:
Paring back the plum bark
Paring the plum root
time to play with dyeing fibre plum root
Trying Shibori – not particularly satisfactory when opened up
sample of all the different fibres I played with – plum root
Dye -v- pigment comparison plum bark
dye -v- pigment comparison plum root
Plum root final colour when rinsed and dried – Yum!
Do you use household or garden items in your textile practice? Have they ever surprised you? I would love to hear about your experiences.
My local art group got together last week and did some experimentation with alcohol ink. If you haven’t tried alcohol ink before, it is a bit different than standard ink. Alcohol inks are more fluid and are dye based. Alcohol inks dry faster and are reworkable by adding more alcohol after drying. Alcohol inks can be used on non-permeable surfaces such as plastic, resin, glass or ceramic.
Here we are just getting started.
I had decided to use the alcohol ink on packing tape which ends up partially transparent and can be added to other artwork making layers. I started with the tape on freezer paper but then realized the tape wasn’t coming off the paper as I expected. I switched to parchment paper halfway through and that worked better. The photo is of the tape on freezer paper before I pulled it off. I am planning on using these on some of my book pages on the book that I recently started.
Here is Sally trying out alcohol ink on Kraftex (a man made fabric type material). The inks didn’t really work all that well on fabric or Kraftex as it was a very porous surface. You can definitely color the fabric but it really ends up with a very blobby look.
Here are more of Sally’s creations. The ones at the right and bottom are on photo paper. The photo paper works much better as it is non-porous. The chemicals in the photo paper also react with the ink and can cause some unusual and unexpected results.
Paula was trying applying plastic wrap and bubble wrap to the ink after it’s applied to photo paper. It takes much longer to dry with the plastic wrap and really needs more air or it doesn’t dry properly.
Next up, Paula tried adding sticks and salt to the photo paper first and then adding the inks afterwards. The salt has not been removed yet as these were still a bit wet.
I only got one photo of Louise’s pieces. Here she used a base of photo paper and then the bottom half is alcohol ink with some strings of plastic left to dry. Then the stamped motifs were added afterwards.
There are many ways that you can use the alcohol ink but it works best on shiny surfaces such as yupo paper, photo paper or tape. We had fun with our experiments. I will show you my tape on book pages once I get that far.
Last weekend I had my last scheduled nuno felt class until the fall. I had 6 enthusiastic women attending and we had a great day.
Earlier in the week I died some more scarf blanks so everyone would have lots to choose from. I use the scrunch dye technique with MX/fiber reactive dye, from Paula Burch’s site. http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/lowwaterimmersion.shtml
Everyone had fun doing their layout and being creative with fibers. It always amazes me how different they all are.
Of course, there was always all the usual rubbing.
and rolling
6 happy nuno felting ladies.
And their scarves
All in all, a wonderful day with wool and silk. Not quite as much fun as playing myself but still fun. I really like teaching and seeing the amazement on people’s faces when it really works.
I have been thinking I should do more of my stitched felt book. I have August ready to go but I just don’t feel like it. I don’t know why but I am sure you have all felt the same way about a project. So what to do, I am itchy to make something and I need something to chat about. So I went rummaging through my little bits and came up with this, It is approx 4×5 inches/10x13cm. The colours are a bit off the yellow is a bit more green and the blue is a bit more turquoise.
I decided the one on the right looked like some ground then some water and mountains in the background. If you squint I am sure you will see it too.
I started with the mountain adding some shades of grey to define the mountains I didn’t see the funny curved bit on the right until I took a picture, so, had to smooth that out too. I am not sure why our eyes lie to us.
Then I defined the far shore
Onto the trees
And that’s as far as I am. Hopefully, I will have more done by the next post, but no promises.
My art group has started a new project. We are taking old, unwanted books, deconstructing them and then reconstructing into a new creation. Paula has tons of old books, antique papers, photos and memorabilia that she has shared with us.
She found the perfect book for me. A reference book about trees that came out in 1950. It’s a great start on another tree book.
We had a session on mark making. These are tools I have made in the past for mark making mainly using turkey feathers. They give some random looking marks which was great for our project. We used different tools on different types of paper to create some random and some not so random marks. None of these are finished “works of art”, but will be used in different ways when creating the book.
These first sheets were a start using different tools and getting some lighter, thinner marks and then thicker, heavier marks.
I then started thinking more about trees, branches and leaves. The bottom right is a Japanese newspaper that my friend Louise gave us.
Then I started playing with spraying water on the pages and then adding ink to create pine trees. This is a bit tricky on figuring how much water to spray first and then draw your trunk through the water and watch the ink spread. You can add little dots of ink where you need more branches.
This was my favorite of the trees that I created.
Here’s some leaves with different tools used to create different types of marks and lines.
I have also been putting gesso on a lot of pages so that I can either draw or add painting to the pages.
I chose my color scheme from this deconstructed screen print on paper. The colors will be black, burnt siena and yellow ochre. Perhaps there will be touches of green but I haven’t gotten very far yet. This will be another long term project that will be a slow work in progress. I will update you periodically on how it’s going.
0.11) Ann making rolags on the blending board, 2 more blending boards used in the background
0.12)- Ann’s rolag is flaccid!
0.13) 4 of the 6 spinners are using drop spindles
1.1)cover of: The Spinner’s Blending Board Bible, from wool to (nearly!) worsted and everything in between”, by Deborah Held
1.2) first 2 pages of the Contents pages
1.3) Chapters 3-6 plus appendices
3)Back cover
