shibori + indigo = love

Shibori class floor

work drying & oxidising

one of my test pieces

another test piece of mine

other students' text pieces

There's nothing quite like trying something new to give you a buzz. Jo Fowles taught a shibori indigo dye workshop over the weekend at the wonderful Harvest Workroom. I went along on Sunday and helped out. Which meant I got to see Jo in action and participate in some of the fun. In short, I got my hands dirty - blue dirty - as anyone who has worked with indigo will tell you they get even with gloves on! Originally from London Jo is now based in Sydney and creates the most dreamy geometric inspired textiles based on a combination of techniques. She says she is "process driven" and this shows in her passion to get people working and trying things out. You must, must, must check out some of Jo's work here.

In the workshop we used a whole range of wonderful tools and paraphernalia to twist, tie, clamp and stuff into our textile pieces before dyeing. We then dunked these into indigo dye vats and waited to see what would result. There was quite a bit of excitement happening as each person untied, unwrapped or unclamped their work. There were lots of surprises and part of the learning was about letting going of expectations about what we thought would result to play and experiment and let the process show us what was possible. The indigo cloth spectacular at the back of the Harvest Workroom by mid afternoon was really something to be seen.

I'm told via a reliable source that Jo will be back at Harvest Workroom in January for more textiles fun. You can find all the information about that here. I think yesterday may have ignited a little fire for me. If only I could get my hands into an indigo vat on a regular basis!

botanical and textile happenings

I've been drawing. Without realising it I've been absorbing the garden and the summer weather resulting in the production of botanical sketches. Which then morphed into a set of three botanical cards printed on post consumer recycled card stock.

And this morning I was able to hear and meet Clara Vuletich speak at Harvest Workroom. Clara's the designer in residence this week at Harvest (visiting Melbourne from London) where she's focusing on the idea of 'local cloth'. She showed us the ideas that she's worked through over the week in both visual and verbal forms. We were also able to hear her talk about her interest in social innovation in textile design. Really fascinating and inspiring stuff! Clara's blog 'love & thrift' can be found here. Enjoy the rest of your stay Clara and thanks Harvest for a fab session!

linen

This is a beautiful film by Benoit Millot about linen, a fabric I simply love for all kinds of reasons.

"......linen is rather like wood. There's a structure. It's a living material."

I hope you watch it and enjoy it as much as I did. Thanks to Lena for helping me find it.

BE LINEN MOVIE from Benoit MILLOT on Vimeo.

three

The succulent blossom design is back.....
This time I've printed it a bit differently with 3 succulent blossom motifs to one block so it's quicker. These were block printed on natural linen and will eventually become tea towels.

aizen kobo

In Kyoto last week I went along to Aizen Kobo, a natural indigo dyeing workshop in an old machiya house, located in the Nishijin textile district. Owned by indigo dyer, Kenichi Utsuki, this place was a real pleasure to visit. Ken-san is very passionate about natural indigo dyeing and will patiently talk you through the difference between what he does and chemical indigo dyeing processes. His kobo (workshop) is located in a very large machiya which is pure bliss to explore with Ken as he shows you samples of the fabrics he has dyed and his wife Hisako has designed into finished products.

The white fabrics in the top pic show Japanese style shibori before it has been dyed. Check out those tiny little knots!!!! Underneath those fabrics sit ones which have been dyed a rich indigo blue using the natural dyeing process. I asked Ken how he was able to make the vivid green in the scarf (2nd pic) and to my surprise he said by combining indigo with the dye from gardenia seed.
Check out these vats of indigo dye in the process of fermenting! I won't lie - they did smell a bit as you would expect from a natural fermentation process.And here is the front of the machiya where Ken's kobo is located. He has a lovely shop in the front where you can go crazy looking at all that gorgeous shibori dyed fabric he has on offer. Needless to say I did not leave empty handed.

repeat

The resulting print: 3 colour repeat screen print on calico of my slightly deco influenced flower motif. Do I have table envy of what after using that lovely long one again at I&S? Try as I might I can't replicate this amazing set up at home.

Thanks again to the lovely women of Harvest Textiles - the workshop was fab. There was such a lovely buzz around the studio yesterday. Very inspiring!

a little bit deco

My design prep for a 3-colour repeat screen printing workshop with Harvest Textiles at I&S studios tomorrow. I think I'm going to use this motif I designed and put together using luscious black sumi ink. The repeat you can see in the background is what it looked like once I scanned it into Photoshop and played with the colour. I wanted to get an idea of how it might look in repeat before I committed to it big time on fabric. I'll be adding one more colour to the mix. Should be so much fun!

threads

This delicate embroidery work by East London artist Susie Cowie takes my breath away. There's a great picture story of her in the studio here. I've never embroidered before but if I could I would need the blessing of angels to produce beauty like this.

succulent flowers in red

Succulent flowers in red block printed by hand on cotton/linen blend fabric.

I had a lot of fun printing this piece. Unfortunately the light in these pics (especially that third one, what's going on there I wonder) makes the base fabric look slightly pink. Rest assured it's not. Instead it's a lovely natural shade. More like ivory. I have a piece printed with the succulent flowers in black ink that I'm tempted to sew into a skirt. I like the idea of using it in one panel at the front and perhaps the rest of the skirt in a dark light-weight denim. Sewers out there - is this idea a bit crazy?

layers - day 2

Day 2 of workshop - more layering of the prints we started on day 1. It was really freeing and playful to work like this. No plans, no expectations, just experimentation with a range of stencils we'd cut.Day 2 repeat print - when I signed up for the workshop I decided that I needed to loosen up my usual design style a bit and that this would be a good chance to work quite differently. Get out of my comfort zone if you will. I usually work quite tightly and on a fairly small scale. So working with the banksia ink drawings I'd done on day 1 I decided to design a fairly loose abstract repeat pattern print with some of those ideas. I used a cotton base cloth that was 'stone' in colour. Choosing and mixing the right coloured ink to print with was challenging though. I think the colour I made was too light in the end - a pale pistachio. It think this design might look quite different if printed in black.

I can't recommend this 2 day workshop enough. It's run by Harvest Textiles and they're just so lovely. Lara, our teacher for the weekend was as patient and knowledgeable about printmaking as they come. And we got such a buzz from being a small group of people doing this together. If you want to learn some basics about textile printing then this is the place to do it.

hozuki cushion

All finished as of this morning: hozuki screen print cushion cover. Printed on a natural cotton/linen blend fabric. I know the hozuki pattern is quite bold and might not be to everyone's liking but it sure does give that old green arm chair of ours a lift. We've been meaning to get that chair (and its pair) recovered for several years now. See this previous post for an explanation of hozuki.

hozuki love

I think I'm starting to get my printing mojo back. It's been missing a bit these last few months and I think it's because I've had so much writing to do for my other work that all my creative energy was going in that direction. So no mojo left for printmaking. But lately I've been getting out my tools and playing again. This makes me so happy.

Tonight I tested this screen print design. I hand cut the design on drafting film and did this wee test run on a scrap of natural cotton/linen blend. The design draws from a previous woodblock print of mine called 'hozuki', or Chinese Lantern plant in English. I think these plants are an exquisite, magical gift from nature. This lovely pic of one below is from jam343 on flickr.

test run

A test run of the succulent design block printed on a natural linen/cotton blend. Pics are in B&W but I did use black ink. I still have to work on removing some of those textural bits that pop up with lino printing although I kind of like what it adds here. When I see a whole lot of the succulent images together in black like this it reminds of how the Australian bush can look after a fire. Have to go rest now as still not feeling super great and it's very hot today. No fires though as far as I know.

the challenge

This is my sewing project for the weekend. I'm using a pattern from the Japanese sewing book Sewing Talk by Machiko Kayaki. I think I've found the perfect fabric for it too. This red seer-sucker Japanese patterned fabric (pic 2). It feels a bit like paper to touch and has so much texture to it. The problem is the fabric is so beautiful I'm quite fearful of cutting into it and making a start. I've never used a Japanese pattern book before so this will be interesting. Hopefully I'll be reporting back with pics of the finished frock in a few days. Fingers crossed.

hanabi shirt in chocolate brown

I know it must seem like all I ever do lately is print hanabi in different ways on different fabrics. One of my work colleagues even suggested I could keep going and make a whole range of clothes with hanabi. But that would be kind of wacky. In my defense I will say that I printed this one a while ago when it was called particles but today I sewed it into this shirt.
I'm calling this one hanabi shirt in chocolate brown. Now for all you super nifty sewers out there I have to let you know something - I made this without a pattern! Yep, that's right, I free-wheeled it and just cut the fabric out around a shirt I've had for years and really like. It was definitely scary to do this. I kept thinking, oh man you are going to mess this up. And I will say it's not perfect. BUT it does have lining inside it! I've never put lining in anything before so that was kind of interesting. I bought this super soft light-weight natural coloured cotton lining because I wanted the shirt to feel really soft against my skin. It took ages for me to work out how to do it so that it looked as nice on the inside (well almost) as it does on the outside (I'm talking stitching here) but I got there eventually. And I made friends with my iron. I had no idea how useful an iron can be with sewing.
This pic is just to prove my story about the lining. Just in case you thought I was fibbing or something.

hanabi print in grey

This time I printed hanabi in grey on a new black light-weight denim skirt I made yesterday. I decided to print the motif down the centre of the skirt and I think it works. I had a few issues with printing yesterday but I'm pretty sure I've sorted it out now. These things are all trial and error :)

I made the skirt a bit loose to allow for the 4% shrinkage when it's heat set. Fingers crossed it will fit more snuggly once that's done.

tessuti fabrics

I've died and gone to fabric shop heaven. I swear. This place is gorgeous. No more Spotlight or Lincraft madness for me. This is how finding beautiful fabrics was meant to be.

Tessuti in Flinders Lane, Melbourne, near Russell St. Plus they also have shops in Sydney.

And they have a cute blog too.

I'm in the process of making 2 new skirts in light of my success with sewing and printing hanabi. So I've purchased some luscious dark, dark denim (almost black) and some cherry red 100% linen. I could have bought a lot more fabric in that gorgeous shop but kept myself in check. I am proud to say this as I am known to go overboard with these things. My new challenge is going to be learning how to put a lining in the red linen skirt. That will be interesting.