For the last two days I have been at Woolfest , soaking up all things related to sheep , wool and fibres , meeting old friends and making new friends and buying a few things too.! One thing that really struck me was the beautiful displays really showing both fibres and colour in all their glory. Here are a few examples: Great event to visit , well organized by the wool clip. I will be back next year. 🐏🐏🐏🐏🐏🐏🐏🐏🐏🐏
For the last two weeks I have been taking an on-line course called Drawing for Textiles D4T by the wonderful textile artist Dionne Swift. In the first week I had fun drawing some small objects , really enlarged , using a variety of techniques. My objects ( some family heirlooms here) and examples of the large crazy drawings I made are below. I say crazy , because of the fun drawing techniques and because they felt to have little connection with the objects by the time I had finished - I think that was the idea really. We then had to seek out gems in the masses of lines. I found quite a few I liked and cut them out, making a little book for future reference. Then came the textile part. Using sewing and embellishing to make textile lines , in order to repaint the gems. Great fun even…
This week I have had the opportunity to visit the Rijswijk Textiel Biennale with my good friend Els. For me walk, metro, train, bus, walk for Els , bike, boat ,bike , train, bus, walk and we were there . Only in the Netherlands would this degree of transport integration be possible. The Textile biennial , with 19 international textile artists is held in a beautiful old Dutch Building on a tranquil square in old Rijswijk. It's garden was a maze of beautiful wild flowers , including foxgloves, one a my favorites. A perfect place to enjoy a coffee and some wonderful Dutch Apple cake. I love the thread thinness of these pieces by Raija Jokinen from Finland. And the fragile ethereal nature of this thread thin furniture by Amanda Mccavour from Canada. These dimensional faces , made by Monica Bohlmann from Germany, are like formal portraits , with…
Well after last weeks disappearing yellow dye , I first rushed out to see if there was any hawthorn blossom left. I was in luck as the trees down by the river were still mostly in flower and I was able to easily pick some more. I do wonder if the colour comes from the petals , which are really beautiful , or for the tiny berry in the middle of the flower ? I also had a good look at my pans , and concluded they were not very clean. So I boiled them with washing soda solution which produced a ghastly pink scummy solution. I then scrubbed them with abrasive powder cleaner and finally rinsed and rinsed. In parallel with this I was making another vessel to dye . Trying Shetland fibre again. Looks a little hairy as it still here needs a shave and I am…