5.05.2010

stretching one's area

last saturday the guild meeting was focused around the textile artist, barbara james, whose speciality is in surface design through dyeing and printing. it was interesting to play around with the different ways of creating texture on cloth. i'm kicking myself for getting rid of my screenprinting frame from when i took a printmaking class in college. i really want to play around more.

my first dyeing attempt went well. this photo is of my second piece of fabric. i decided it would make a lovely tea towel; so i hemmed the edges. i'm not quite sure of the first one i worked on, as the design is agreeable but the colors are very loud and not quite to my taste. i may take a photo of it anyway, though.

we used the procion mx dyes which got me thinking again about getting into dyeing. it would be a good focus as i eventually would like to create my own cloth; weaving, dyeing, and printing. i think that where i will go from here is to experiment with natural dyes and the screen printing process. the procion dyes were easy enough to use and clean up, but i'd rather be truer to my own feelings about my impact on the environment. plus, i like how natural dyes age, it's really very wabi-sabi.

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