tie-dye chances

My other half asked me to dye his jeans back to blue again (that shows our age), so I bought some hot-water dye and did the job.  When I took the jeans out of the dye, I gathered some assorted bits of fabric and a pale peach t-shirt, left to recycle in some way due to - what?  Couldn't find stains, no apparent holes from cat claws, so anyway I put it in the dye and didn't move anything around so I could get some random effects.  I knew it would be pale because most of the dye molecules would have gone into the jeans (everything was cotton).   After an hour, I rinsed everything out.  The odd bits of fabric were actually quite dark blue but the t-shirt was light, with terrific tie-dye effects, couldn't have got this effect if I'd tried.  Even the back came out great.

t-shirt front

t-shirt back

Art journal colour

After reading a blog post from Aloquin, I started browsing through one of my journals and rediscovered a page I really loved - painted with gouache, from a little starter pack of colours, when I was experimenting with colours.  I haven't decided on a name for it - is it a fire, a solar flare, a Eureka moment (an idea moment) ..... I think the Eureka moment does it for me.

©Christine Linton

Aloquin's blog post's on art journals can be found here.

New to me

How fantastic are these works of art:
from Helen Suzanne
and this one too.

Saatchi online

I discovered this website when looking for weaving, and we had a Saatchi travelling exhibition in Adelaide last year which was fascinating.  The only thing is the images are slow to load so look in the middle near the top to click on thumbnails instead of full images; the search does bring up some textiles and weaving but this one http://www.saatchionline.com/art/Mixed-Media-Paint-China-Ghost-Town-Abandon-Building/71560/1365926/view was interesting and does evoke a ghost town effect with mainly paper and appears very simple to good effect.  So you don't have to get complicated.

Weaving a rock formation

I've become fascinated by some rock formations near home.  This is one of the photos I took -

and I decided to try some experimental weaving to interpret it in fibres/textile.  So I took a mesh bag that held oranges last week, and some wool I bought for 50 cents at the op shop, and some dyed string in small pieces from the dyeing I did last year  where I had to cut the string off the pole-wrap shibori because I couldn't undo the knots; also a bit of tapestry wool from a bag of them also from the op shop.  I love recycling and everything in this is - or in fact upcycled, made into something better instead of languishing in the back of a cupboard.  Here is the result -

Experimental weaving on mesh bag, 100% recycled stuff 

©Christine Linton

Originally I had it facing up the other way to better reflect the curves of the rock formation but when I dropped it and picked it up upside down, I immediately liked the effect better.  Never mind accuracy, it's effect I'm aiming for.

There are two blogs I follow that have inspired me to try weaving:

http://windthread.typepad.com/windthread/2013/02/maybe.html

http://avisualsensibility.com

both different approaches and both very individual, and both worth looking at.

Embroidery - hand or machine?

I think the answer is both, because each has it's own beauty and use.  For instance, I bought a home-made cushion cover in a local charity shop purely because I think it is lovely; it is hand-embroidered with little shisha mirrors and satin stitch, back stitch, buttonhole stitch.   The dye from the thread had run when it was washed which I expect is why it was given away because it is so lovely, and the running dye adds to it's charm, making the person who washed it human (or the person who dyed the threads).

Then you've got machine embroidery like these leaves I made last year:

Machine lace leaves 

©Christine Linton

I've always loved hand embroidery and I have found I love it even more now because I can use it as embellishment in new ways; I also learnt to control machcine embroidery much better.  Another textile artist with some very useful information on machine embroidery is Linda Matthews - see this link for using the decorative stitches on your sewing machine and how to get the best effects with them.

Working with recycled threads

One of the things I want to focus on this year is using a lot more recycled stuff - threads, fabrics and other textiles, as well as recycling paper by dyeing and painting on stuff I already have.  Less wastage on my conscience.  I've been looking out at Op shops, charity shops and plain old second-hand shops, for threads in particular, as they don't seem so easy to come by.  I realise they lose strength in time and may be too breakable to use if really old, but some must be ok, I've had threads for years before using them myself and they've been ok.  For an exhibition piece I'm working on, I've used as much recycled textiles (and plastic bread tags) as possible and for the next part I intend to use almost entirely recycled threads and yarns as bought from op shops or given to me.  This is a pack I found at the local charity shop for $1.

Upcycling to a wedding dress

Listening to the radio this afternoon, while having a break from pinning net (a whole different story), I was actually reading but my ears pricked up when I heard the words "bread tags" - regular readers will know I collect them to upcycle them into art.  Apparently this lady, Stephanie Watson, from Victoria here in Australia, made her wedding dress from 10,000 bread tags - cool!  Look at this link bread tags to see the story.  Apparently she has been collecting them for 10 years, though she did use some unused ones according to the story on radio.  I think it shows real flair to use them for a wedding dress and I was surprised that the machine needle went through them.  Well done Stephanie!

I prefer to use mine curled up with a heat gun so they become beads, like this:

Bread tag beads 

©Christine Linton

Safety first: Wear a mask against the fumes and heatproof gloves against the heat.

Ice crystals

After enjoying this blog entry from Sweetpea Path,  I was inspired to do some stitching depicting ice crystals.  I did some research on how ice crystals form, and found this cool YouTube video:

Another face

I found this face when I opened my bag of paper towels that have been used as mop-up cloths for paint - fabric paint, acrylic paint.

Face in paper towel paint mop-up cloth 

©Christine Linton

Can you see the eyes, maybe they're even sunglasses because of the strip joining them, then a nose and a small round pursed mouth underneath, all in the right places?  All in a purplish blue.  With red hair at the top.

Atlantis

Atlantis - encaustic wax  - 

©Christine Linton

This experiment just asked to be called Atlantis.  A mythical underwater place with strange things growing.  Techniques were shuffling, lifting, dripping, tissues twisted into little strips.  Worked on free glossy photo paper.

The pleasures of plain sewing

I've been doing some plain sewing today, which is really a big change for me after so much experimenting the last few months.  It's been quite restful.  I have been asked to assist a group to make a textile book which I designed and made for dementia patients a few years ago.  I always meant to do more with it but after selling the original and donating the other one to the same Residential Care home, I went back to work full time and never did contact any other group about it.  So now my daughter was talking about it to someone in a care organisation, and they have asked me to assist a group to make their own.  So I have been cutting out calico and sewing it together, embellishing it - it will be different to the originals because I like to work with what I have as much as possible, rather than keep buying new stuff all the time.  There's so much wastage that I try to minimise my own.

The original book looked like this:

"Treasury of Experience" closed  

©Christine Linton

The idea is to stimulate and interest dementia patients with items they can relate to, especially stuff from their own lives such as their old jewelry, a mothers day card, feathers for touching, bells to listen to, and so on.  It is designed to be used with a carer to provoke memories and talk about what they see and feel.  I'm so pleased I've got time nowadays to participate in something like this.

Quotes about life

I just found a site which has all sorts of quotes, some that you may know and some you don't; you can research a particular author or subject or just browse:  it is called thinkexist.com.

The quote below that I found there is synchronistically a follow-on from my thinking about the post of 31st January, which was -
"In this week's Sunday newspaper I read an article about how the author feels guilty for not wanting to go off and do adventurous activities on her holidays, "

because sometimes we forget that what we were doing, was exactly what we wanted to do at that time, and it's only later that we wonder why we didn't do such-and-such instead.
The quote is
“No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day. This is all practice. None of this matters. We're just warming up.”

 Chuck Palahniuk quotes (American freelance Journalist, Satirist and Novelist. b.1961)from 

If I'm feeling restless, dissatisfied or that old one, like there was a page in life that I seem to have skipped somehow, I find nature to be very soothing, and puts me back on track - or at least accepting that there is a track even if I can't find it right now.  I will go out looking for a feather.  In this photo I made a feather in the shape of feathers .....

A feather made of feathers, stitched to hand-dyed sheeting 

©Christine Linton

I'm going to start collecting together my favourite inspirational quotes - I have put a few in lately in my blog posts including my own such as

this one.