Of beads and pearls and memories of St Ives

Today I have been mostly stitching and beading - with a little felt making thrown in for good measure.  I have been finishing off some pieces which have been sitting around for a while, awaiting the final stages in the transformation from fibres to art.  Also the silk I dyed recently with onion skins has found its home, layered with (and glowing through) some cobweb felt in dark teal.  Bronze sparkly beads in a drift were all that was needed to make a piece that feels 'just right'.  Autumnal felt (wool and silk) was stitched with toning threads of cotton in feather stitch to evoke harvest, and an experiment in undyed organic merino and silk throwsters waste, which I have been looking at for a while knowing that it wouldn't do as it was, no matter how much I loved it, suddenly sprang into life when I selected a small part of it in a 4 inch square mount window, and added some tiny Japanese beads.  I even did a little feltmaking - I was inspired by some salvaged freshwater pearls, and my notebook with sketches taken off the quayside during a visit to St Ives two years ago, to create an aquatic scene with ripples, seaweed and sand (in silk!) and the pearls drifting across the bottom.  Very satisfying to see several months of creativity finally coming together.  Off to the framers tomorrow, as I want to take these to the Summer Art and Craft Fair at Craft Renaissance Gallery, near Usk, where I shall be selling on Sat 14 July.

These pictures aren't as good as I'd like, as I have had to do them indoors with flash because of the continuous rain and gloom outdoors, but they give an idea of the work.  Each picture is 4 inches square,  mounted in 12x12 inch mounts, which are then framed in narrow, dark wood frames.  Unless I am framing a complete piece of felt or weaving (ie attaching it to the front of the mount, with the edges of the work showing) in which case the shape of the mount and frame is dictated by the shape of the work, I often choose a square format with a wide border (with these pieces, the border is as wide as the aperture in the mount) as I find it draws the eye into the work, and gives it more impact than if the frame crowds in too closely.  Having a framer with a good eye helps!

Seashore 2012

Sky 2 2012

Teal and gold abstract 2012

Harvest 2012

Natural dyeing - my first attempt at dyeing with onions skins

Having collected prodigious quantities of onion skins, I finally got around to my first attempt at natural dyeing.  I had some pongé silk and also a piece of vintage French linen in rather bad repair, which I wanted to dye and incorporate in my work.


I followed the instructions in Jenny Dean's excellent book, and mordanted the textiles overnight in a solution of alum crystals and Cream of Tartar (the stuff you bake with!).  Mordanting helps to make the dye fix more permanently.  Meanwhile, I prepared a dyebath by simmering my onion skins in water, and then leaving to steep overnight.  Next day, I sieved the dyebath to remove the onion skins, and then removed the fabric from the mordant and transferred it to the dye, which was by now a wonderful port-wine colour.  Brought to simmering point and kept there for 45 minutes, it yielded the following rather amazing colours:

The silk is slightly darker than the linen, which is what I would expect (animal fibres like wool and silk are structurally easier for the dye to penetrate than vegetable fibres like cotton and linen).  Interestingly, the linen is a bit patchy - running my fingers over the fabric, it appears that dye uptake has been better (and hence there is a deeper colour) in the parts where the linen is worn and the surface slightly roughed up - presumably breaking down the surface smoothness of the fibres has made it easier for the dye to 'take'.


Warned that excessive heat might lead to the silk losing its lustre, I used my jam thermometer to ensure that the temperature of the dyebath remained below 80 degrees C, and as you may be able to see from the pics, there has been no loss of lustre.  It would seem that I now need to have two jam thermometers, as it's really not a good idea to use the same implements for dyeing and cooking!


Being able to dye my own yarns, and especially the scrims, linens and silks I use in Nuno felting, will add a whole new dimension to my work, and I fear that I am, after just one foray into the wonderful world of natural dyeing, completely addicted...