Fibre arts

Today's session was a good extension on what we had been doing previously. We looked largely at transferring, and I spent a good deal of time working on using transferable wax crayons on paper and using a press to transfer the wax colours from paper onto the fabric. The results were surprisingly good, at least on the artificial fabrics, where the colour transferred very cleanly and smoothly, almost loosing no detail in the texture.

Above are the wax on paper originals, with lettering done in reverse on the first example so that lettering comes out in the right direction on the print. With these pieces, there wasn't much attachment in my mind to the notion of using sewing objects as inspiration, and I decided I would rather pursue a different direction. I decided to use a stencil and reproduce my date of birth, tying the work at least superficially to myself in a direct manner. I then used other elements of the stencil to create solid lines and blocks, and using the underside of buttons to create reproductions of the four holes, in turn creating a pattern of these. I tried to keep the colour usage minimal, so as to be high contrast and to work blue shapes around red numbers, and vice versa. This was actually the second plate I produced, the first one being the second image above - which is mostly freehand drawing with button relief, and where I started experimenting with the pattern of the four dots from the underside of buttons.

Not the best quality image but good enough to show that the colour and detail has not been lost in transferring from  paper to fabric, and the reversal of the image has produced the numbers in the correct orientation. Further prints from the plate became weaker as the wax was transferred repeatedly.

The first plate as transferred onto organic fibres, resulting in a more washed out, less distinct transferring.  Other attempts at transferring onto organic fibres were less successful than this one.

Further work still needs to be done with transferring, as I did not have time to use ink transferring.

We were also shown how to use bondaweb to bind fabrics together, and continuing on with the motif I used earlier with my date of birth, I created a sort of collage piece using bondaweb and a selection of different fabrics, and using the sewing machine to link fabrics together solidly. I also rolled up a piece of gauze tightly and sewed through it on the machine straight onto the fabric, an then chopped at it with scissors to created a rough effect but with the material still tightly bound to the backing fabric. Lastly, I folded and sewed together another piece of material, and then sewed this onto a corner of the collage to create a hook, as I thought it would look interesting if the piece were able to hang freely.