New felt making project beings with a bit of art making to music. Dance Macabre to be exact. Very halloween. Lots of high energy fun and enthusiasn and a fair amount of drawing and painting on the lino. As soon as the school holidays are over these artworks will be cut up and collaged to make our take on a Kandinsky homage. Or rather several Kandinsky homages to be exact. Can't wait!

Golden glow

Here are the insipid fabrics after their over yellowe over dyeing bath. The pieces top and bottom with the white in represent the 'before'. They were the best of a bad job. Pleased with the results now.

Disappointing Dyeing

I was less than pleased with the children's last lot of dyeing when it emerged from the washing machine. No fault of theirs. They were given supplementary instructions (not my be me, the dog, but by someone barking themselves.) They were told to secure their tied fabric with lots of plastic bands and make it as tight as possible. The tighter it was, the better it would be. Wrong. The tighter it is, the more difficult it is for the dye to penetrate resulting in a greater percentage of dirty white.

This is the first time that I've been delighted that children quite often don't do what they are told and some of the batch was quite acceptable.

I has been decided to over dye one quarter of each class room's output so the four groups in each class can have a different colourway. This dyeing disaster gave me a chance to experiment with a bit of over dyeing, albeit rashly and without much forethought. (Yes, that sound like the kind of thing I'd do.)

I decided to over dye this group's yellow fabric which weren't very yellow. I squished them all into a cut off water bottle and submerged them under some yellow dye solution. Then it dawned on me that this will kill all the white and they might look a bit odd. Errr, ummm, yes...right enough.

Sooooooooo, for the official over dyeing session I've decided both to tie (but not too tightly) and to squish in order to retain some of the white.

Woah!

Here’s a great felt making video which I thought would be great for the school kids. Real subsistence felt making in Mongolia. I’m going to have them in groups doing the big fat sausage rolling thing but I don’t think they’ll be allowed to bring their horses into the classroom. Bought some long lengths of pipe insulation foam to roll it around.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ0uojUHYdA

Heart felt stitching

Here's my stitched piece of felt. Part of the children's learning outcome from this could be how to embroider running stitch, filling stitch and detached weaving, not to mention sewing on buttons. The buttons could be functional, used a as a joining mechanism between smaller pieces if we decided to make it that way.

And here is use number 567 for a vegetable net. Make a soap fish. Good way of preventing it from shooting out of little hands and becoming a projectile missile.

Kandinsky revisited

As fate would have it, another school had asked me to help with a cross curricular art/music Kandinsky project. This time the medium is hand made felt. I used to make a lot of felt once upon a time. So much so that I completely sickened myself and eventually gave away all my equipment and materials and swore never to soap up another piece of bubble wrap in anger.

That was about ten years ago and olive oil soap has not sullied my hands since....until tonight. Half an our ago it was into the workroom and on with the dance. The idea is to make mosaic felt with the kids by soft felting one piece, cutting shapes out of it then re felting it into a new background along with various other kinds of surface decoration.

I'm pleased to say that after about half an hour's ham fisted fumbling, roughly equivalent to a twelve year old's first attempt, I had an acceptable piece of mosaic felt.. Phew! Relief! You'll have to excuse the dodgy colour palette. A small amount of merino tops managed to escape my cull and I had to use what was to hand. I'm going to stitch into it next to try and work out what other delights the kids could manage.

If anyone out there has experience of felt making with children, please mail me. You'll find my email in my profile. Thanks chums!

Pass the salt

I asked the second class of children to soft pedal on the mixing of their tie dyes. Not sure I like the results so much. There is certainly a lot more white, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Can't help feeling that someone somewhere forgot to add salt. Colours a lot more muted.....and where did the red go?!

The devil is in the detail

Some of the kids have a fairly loose interpretation of 'write your initials neatly in one corner'. I thought it was the fault of the pens. I rushed off to Tescos and pesuaded a very helpful chap to rummage about in his store to find the unsold laundry markers from their back to school promotion. Now half price! How could I resist?

But was my problem solved? No, my problem was reversed. We now have tiny, illegible initials. I can't tell if they are actually in the corner because I can't see them!

It certainly is magic!

Wow, what can I say! This is the work of 12 year old children. I'm just gob smacked.
The only problem I can foresee is that we won't want to cut it up to make anything!

Magic Dyeing

24 hours after the first class had their tie dyeing experience my bath is full of little sheep's droppings of promise.












Ooooh, tiny glimpses of colour emerge out of the murk!



Full of eastern promise. Ironing tonight. Can't wait!

This is a great way to dye with kids (from Magic Dyeing Made Easy by Helen Deighan). No matter how limited their manual dexterity they cannot do it 'wrong'. Whatever crumples or folds they manage all result in beautiful and individual patterns.

Projects where you cannot go wrong are always good confidence builders, for them and for me!

Flat pack and multiples

No, I'm not talking about Ikea. I'm talking about pop-up. I have the most wonderful book about how to make pop-up

which I often stroke but have never actually done anything with. Some of the kids are struggling with three dimensions and I thought simple pop-up might help.

A school boy said to be recently that he wouldn't copy a photograph of a Rolls Royce jet engine because it was too complicated. On first glance yes, but really it's just a series of multiples, repetition of single units. Easy when you know how!

What do you get when you duplicate your simple pop-up elements? Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

Neither of these but it might be a way forward. Off to school to find out.

Three's the trick

Hurray! It worked! You would hardly believe all these fabrics, both natural and synthetic, have been through exactly the same dyeing process, but they have. Proof positive for the little darlings that fibre reactive dyes only work on natural fabrics.

These are supposed to be self coloured but even distribution of dye was not an issue so we didn't spend a lot of time squishing the plastic bags about in case we stuck out little fingers through them, which would have been an issue. Tie dyeing next. That should be even more fun.

Good dyeing or bad dying?

It's bath night for the fabrics after their first busy day at school.

'Today we're going to do dyeing' I told the class.

'Is that good dyeing or bad dying?' asked one little boy so we had a spelling lesson.

Good dyeing I'm pleased to say.

It was all fairly trauma free thanks to maniacal, meticulous preparation. We won't talk about the fact that I forgot my elastic bands.

I had sweated over some Power Point presentations. Some helped and some didn't depending on the activity. In the time allocated we managed to dye a natural and a synthetic fabric in fibre reactive dyes. With a bit of luck and a following wind the dye will wash out of the synthetic leaving it white as the driven while the cotton will be as blue as the moon, as yellow as the sun or as red as a boozer's nose......er, sorry......rose. Tomorrow will tell!

Cheating at applique

I've been doing another wee bit of pretend applique with the soldering iron to add to my samples for the next velvet workshop. You just put two synthetic fabrics on top of each other, draw round your chosen shape and rip away the excess. The flowery nylon curtain works well. The surface is a bit rough and ready but you could always stitch into it to stabilise.

Thought this would make a nice little clutch bag.

Shirts? What Shirts?

We paused for another little bit of velvet recently on a beautiful day in the East of Scotland. This time it was the batteries for my camera that let me down but Elspeth kindly took a picture of work in progress.

It looks rather as if it might be a domestic science lesson if it wasn't for the soldering iron in the foreground! How to ensure your better half never asks you to iron his shirts ever again. Cover the iron with dye and have all kinds of red hot pokers to hand. It works for me!

Keeping a lid on it

I had a flash of blinding inspiration when I was mixing the dye for the schools project. Paint the lids to match the contents! Makes the colours more easily identifiable and the chances of the right lids going back on the right bottle sightly greater (although I wouldn't like to give you odds).

When visiting the school recently I was looking at the last dyeing project completed about six months ago. This was disperse dye which I knew was light fugitive but, man, they're not kidding! If you click back to March you'll see the way it used to look. Sadly today it's washed out pastel.

Lesson learned. Disperse dye is not for posterity.

Triumverate

Hi! Just thought I'd stick my head over the yoga parapet to show you show the tricoloured shrug is progressing. The recent deafening blog silence is due to the fact that I'm up to my a---- (not, not in alligators) in yoga teacher training. This happens in the Buddhist centre. Very spacious and airy and welcoming....but not very warm. For two days on the trot we sit on the floor, a difficult thing to do at the best of times, giving our undivided attention to our lecturers. Not easy when your catching a draft on your thoracic spine. (You impressed I now where that is?)

Anyway, hence the shrug.

I was told off at a yoga seminar once for wearing black. Not nearly life enhancing enough. You can see I've taken this to heart and am using all three cones of my charity shop finds in combination, mixing and matching as I go. The very loosely interpreted pattern is from Amazing Crochet Lace by Doris Chan. An excellent book I would certainly recommend. This is my second garment from this book and I still want to make more. How often does that happen?

Now excuse me, I have triangles to revolve. Namaste.

Yogaga

I've just spotted this lying on a table and it kind of sums up my life right now. I recently began a two year yoga teacher training course which involves gazillions of homework. Meanwhile life goes on as I prep for two up coming velvet workshops in amongst my schools project. Oh yes, and did I mention I'm a shopkeeper? Argggh....................

Corking idea

I'm collecting kinetic bits and pieces at the moment to help me give my science/art kids ideas for making their artwork move. My brother Dave sent me a spring loaded woodpecker that wobbles up and down it's pole on a 'now I'm stuck, now I'm moving' kind of basis.




Here's my version. Mrs. Corky who wobbles up and down her knitting needle in a similar fashion - and no wonder after all the champagne she must have had to drink in order to secure such a curvaceous body!


Her head is a bead from from one of those back massaging car seat covers that used to be all the rage. I drilled a little hole half way through and glued in the spring. I tired lots of experiments with angle and length of spring. The shorter the spring, the faster she goes.It has to be pointing straight out at right angles to the knitting needle if you want her to b-y-o-n-g obligingly both up and down.




Come along now Mrs Corky. No need to loose your head....

Sharmanka

I went with my art/science kids to visit the fabulous Sharmanka gallery. Even they were captivated by the amazing show of kinetic sculpture.

When I came home I made this geezer from some dyed fabric molded with PVA.

New Camera!

Whoopee! I have a new camera! A Panasonic Lumix. Now I have to read the blinking book. Don't you hate that bit? Anyway, here is jacket I made at art college this summer taken by someone so smart he has no need to read the manual. The straggly bits are not me being delibately art, just things that still need hemmed.

Summer school

Just back from my annual summer school at Edinburgh College of Art. Costumer design this year with the wonderful David Wilcox. Only eight of us in class concentrating deeply on our own work so it was a very calm and quiet atmosphere all week. Now that I'm back I realise what a gift it is to be able to concentrate on one thing for days on end to the exclusion of all else.

We began with something called dot and cross paper designed for pattern drafting and a book of basic pattern blocks all written in numbers. Arghhhhh! Maths!!!!! We transferred the numerical information into lines and angles on the dot and cross paper and a pattern appeared as if by magic. I honestly thought I wouldn't be able to do it, but I did.

All the other people were serious students of historical costume who went on to make period toilles in calico but I just wanted to make a jacket, which the tutor knew and was up for. David is an excellent tutor who susses his students strengths and weaknesses very quickly and knows I'm a ram stam, let it hang as it grows kind of gal, not big on accuracy.

I wanted to take a pattern from an existing jacket and had absolutely no idea how to go about it. The way David showed me was very simple and suited my nature. Taking a panel at a time and working systematically I pinned calico onto my jacket, sketched round the pin marks in pencil, unpinned it and cut it out. Then to correct any stretches or mishappings I did the dot and cross measuring thing, straightening up what I knew should be straight, matching angles etc. When I had my pattern I cut it out in calico and make a toille. This is where the fun begins and you can start playing at Project Catwalk.

I took a trip to Harvey Nicks and checked out all the lovely wool coats and jackets around this year with wonderful broad lapels and integral scarf collars. With a few stolen ideas under my belt it was back to the studio to play with my toille until I has something I thought might work. Finally I cut it out for real from the lovely Loch Carron fabrics I found the the scrapstore a few months ago and a jacket was born.....and a camera died. Typical. Promise to post pics soon,

Salt anyone?

I wanted the bottles of salt and soda solution for the schools dyeing project to be clearly labelled so I used red (or black for soda) electrical tape. No chance of it smudging into illegibility.

But why, you might ask, was I to be found caressing these bottles with best baby talcum powder yesterday morning? When you take off the paper labels there is a sticky residue left behind. Latex gloves tend to stick to this making all manner of spilling disasters a distinct possibility. Give them the baby's bottom treatment and they're fine.

Nothing to get bent out of shape about.

Would you consider yourself a scissor bird? If so, check this out.

http://bentobjects.blogspot.com/2007/07/scissor-bird-yeah-i-said-i-wouldnt-be.html

What it is, is....

Here is one of the projects I'm currently driving myself daft with while I wait for the school to restart. It's big, fat crochet from Doris Chan's book Amazing Crochet Lace. I also need big arm muscles to lug around the three cones of wool I'm combining to make it. They are shown here stuffed into the foot well of my partner's tiny sports car leaving not a lot of room for feet, as you can see.

This is all very well but what it is, is (ahhh, must just interject here to tell you that in my profession, shopkeeping, any tale preceded by 'what it is, is....' is bad news. This is glaze over time, breath into your back time, make a mental shopping list time and resist the urge to shout yes, yes, what is it? Spit it out but just get ON with it!!!!!!!!! Perhaps I'm in the wrong profession?)

Anyway, what it is, is I want to make tiny, delicate proper crocheted lace but somehow I seem to be going in the wrong direction. A friend was wearing a fab crocheted cardi of this ilk the other day and I have asked for a copy of the pattern. I'll probably produce it in rope and turn it into a yurt instead.

Well seasoned

Nothing like a bit of salt and soda for making your fibre reactive dyeing successful! Here's what should have happened last time. These are the results I want my 80 little would-be dyers to have. Feeling more confident now that it might actually happen for them as planned. The thing that always amazes me is that these three pieces of fabric all had the same red, yellow and blue dye applied to them but in a difference sequence and in different quantities. I'm sure you can guess which was immersed in the red, blue or yellow first because remains the predominant colour. The red one was in a concertina fold, the blue one just scrunched up and the yellow twisted. All were secured with elastic bands.

I dyed some t-shirts for myself to wear whilst explain the process to the children. These will also help me illustrate the fact that fibre reactive dyes don't dye synthetic fabrics. Why is it that our cotton T-shirts aren't stitched with cotton thread? See how the thread remains undyed on both t-shirts?

So that's me, ready to rock 'n roll. I have an introductory dyeing session scheduled with the science teachers on the 22nd of this month.