Taster Module 9 – Design Exercise

a) Make Coloured and Textured Papers

I had made more wax crayon rubbings of the tree on tissue when I visited the Wettern Tree Garden to take photos of the blossom.  Wax crayon and oil pastels marks were also made on photocopy paper. I gave all the papers a wash with Koh-i-noor watercolours using various colours from my colour study.  The tissue papers were interesting as I liked the backs as much as the fronts – I’ve included both and infact went on to use both sides.



























b) Paper Weaving

I tore the paper into strips and started weaving, trying to retain the horizontal markings of the tree from the original photographs and designs.  I use the camera on my phone for design work as it is a simple way to capture, crop and enlarge images so I get an immediate feel for whether a design is working.  Images 50 and 51 show my first weaving.





I decided when I looked at these images that the grey paper/small strips were too heavy (they were infact the papers made from the photocopy paper) and decided to just use the coloured tissue paper. 
The following images show the weaving evolving.













I finalised this piece of weaving (Image 58) and carried on to do another (Image 59).





I then selected selected two areas from Image 58





deciding to base my stichery on Image 61.

Taster Module 8 – Colour Stitchery

A selection was made from Image 13 of the colour studies of the tree trunk on which to base my colour stitchery.



Now, looking again at Image 35 just before I press the publish button, I can’t see the orange I’d seen in the paper printout used when doing my samples, so I’ve added a close up of the printout I used (Image 35A).
So that’s quite interesting: my samples are based on what an Epson printer thought the colours were!  I should have used the original colour study.



A group of stranded cottons was chosen.



Encroaching Gobelin Stitch and three strands of stranded cotton in various colours.





Ridge Stitch and three strands of just one colour in the needle, the overlapping of the different coloured stitches merged the colours.



Pineapple Half Drop Stitch and up to three strands of different coloured threads in the needle.



Cashmere Diagonal Stitch and one strand of space dyed rayon thread.

Taster Module 7 – Stitchery from the Rubbings…continued

The rubbings from Section 2 were revisited and the colours in Image 7 inverted (Image 31) in Photoshop.  This had the effect of making the patterns more pronounced, clearly showing directional markings and density of colour. 

Image 31 was then cropped to produce a section for stitchery.

12 holes per inch canvas was painted with Koh-i-noor dyes and stitched in various types of thread in shades of grey (see Image 33),

to produce the stitchery sample from the rubbings (Image 34).

Note:

• couching – the raffia was split lengthways in four and then twisted as it was couched to give glimpses of its shiny side
• darning/weaving – worked to mirror the directional marks and density of the rubbings
• additional raffia has been woven through the darning to catch the light and give extra interest
• curling ribbon – worked flat and twisted to give added interest and height.  Blanket stitch has been worked over the ribbon in some places, as in or nue, so glimpses of it may appear through the stitching
• use of irregular composite stitches over regular canvas stitches to build up layers.

Taster Module 7 – Stitchery from the Rubbings – work in progress

In section 6, one of the yarns used in the samples was bought paper yarn. As the design source for this module was a tree, I wanted to explore the possibility of making my own paper yarn from papers which would otherwise be recycled. 

This YouTube video looked straightforward:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKAnC1cW6zA

Cutting half inch strips from The Saturday Telegraph I started to spin the strips using a spinning wheel, with no success.  A very knobbly yarn formed that wouldn’t wind onto the bobbin and kept breaking (Image 30).  Perhaps this was because I was using a wheel and not a spindle, as in the video, as the wheel puts more pressure on the yarn being spun.  Note the bursts of colour in the yarn – Gardening Section=bursts of colour: Financial Section=black and white.



Not put off I found the following blog:
http://mademoisellechaos.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/how-to-make-yarn-or-seed-tape-from-old.html
Moisture, it seems, was the key to success.  Image 31 shows the spun yarn winding on to the bobbin.  Very exciting.



After spinning strips from The Telegraph, I tried white tissue paper and the brown paper used by Amazon for packing, both successfully. 
The tissue when moist was very delicate and had to be handled with great care or it just ripped before it could be spun.  Perhaps it was too moist.  Once spun it became stronger.
All three yarn samples, The Telegraph, tissue and brown paper were then painted with Koh-i-noor watercolours.  All yarns took the paint well.



I then sampled how the yarns handled in an attempt to produce a raised darning stitch. When using the newspaper yarn and a canvas gauge of 12 holes to the inch, due to my lap looking as though it was snowing almost as soon as I started sewing it was obvious early on that it shredded easily.  The yarn spontaneously broke as I pulled it through the canvas soon after.  It was breaking by the needle as though the friction of being pulled through the canvas at this point was too great. I persevered and produced a small warp through which I wove a tissue yarn weft.
The tissue yarn was much more forgiving and so in my second sample I used it as the warp and the newspaper yarn as the weft, so putting it under less pressure.
In an attempt to make the newspaper yarn more robust I treated it with:

• acrylic wax – made the yarn less flexible and it still broke easily
• olive oil – darken the yarn, irreversibly it would appear, also made it swell and very fragile
• beeswax – ran the yarn through a block of beeswax, as in goldwork/patchwork.  Made yarn easier to sew but still fragile.
• PVA – strengthened the yarn.  Best result.

Ideas to try with newspaper yarn:

• canvas with larger holes so less friction
• larger eyed needle so less pressure on thread at this point
• spin narrower strips
• tear the ends of the strips at an angle before spinning so less bulk at join.

To be continued…

Taster Module 6 – Canvas Stitch Sample, one stitch many threads

Though this task was for just one stitch in many threads, more have been worked to get the effect of both the smoothness and texture in Image 4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taster Module 5 – Canvas Stitch Sample