April 2005

1st April
The last week or so has felt very disrupted in terms of studio working. I have just about fought off the Wallpaper Virus although from time to time stragglers from retreating viral hordes undertake a spiteful skirmish with whatever bits of me function half way down my throat.
Then the weather has been very good, so I have been absorbed in continuing to clear our new veg patch and chuck the megaliths I find within it into a mounting cairn which in turn will find its way under the patio area we are also planning. I think gardeners are the stone’s way of getting themselves moved around from one place to another. Maybe Stonehenge was just a great big trellis for growing runner beans and the Pyramid of the Cheops housed early potatoes... Well, I suppose it is April Fool’s Day.
And another thing. I am beginning to realise that a lot of my work is certainly looking more wall-based than wearable. This is partly due to the artificial fact that if “correctly” priced they would be very expensive scarves for the market I inhabit, and not because they are, in actual fact, unwearable as images , patterns, designs etc. Some of the work can only be properly appreciated when it is flat and not draped, and these pieces thus seem more at home on the wall.
This means I need to have a serious think about what I am making. With Art in Action approaching fast in “making” terms, I need to ensure I have a selection of items at medium buying prices, some ultra-special pieces where price doesn’t matter and some lower-end-of-price-range work.
If I am to create some wall-pieces, my market for these will be very different. Wall pieces take up valuable selling space and galleries think twice about taking them on. I also feel that the way I create them needs review because they are happening on the silk and I would prefer that at least some of the planning happened on paper first. So, maybe, I need to do preparatory paintings nowadays to make sure I know what I am doing. I am happy for things to just “happen” but I like to combine some planning with the accident.

2nd / 3rd April
More gardening, less studio. In went the spinach and rocket seeds with potatoes threatening to take over the plot from the opposite end. No sign of germinating parsley yet. It’s a long time since I had enough space to sow seeds and I am impatient to see them come up.
I made a step-by-step demo of images showing how the twisted scarf on the January Denman course went as I have had a few online requests for instructions. The demo part went fine but the resulting scarf is not an exciting one and my students did a lot better. Possibly I blended the colours too much and they should be more distinct. I will make a page with the images this week. Promise. Here’s a taster.

The scarf has been twisted, halved, and then bound using dental tape. Dyes are dripped on economically, using an eye-dropper. You must be patient and wait for it to dry before opening and steaming!!! But I am going to try to steam one bound up to see whether I can retain the wrinkles.

4th April
I tried to improve the scarf I did yesterday by doing a simple rebind, and re-dyeing with a darker colour - and it looked awful. So I re-twisted it and put an all-over blue into it at mid-dilution. Although it is subtle rather than sensational, I now quite like it.

5th April
Experimenting with some more twist-dyed scarves. Another of them refuses to come good - very sludgy colours - and I will try one last twist and try Lumiere paint on it. I’ve heard it said .. "There aren’t any bad pieces of hand-dyed fabric, just unfinished ones..” Well, I’ve got news for whoever said it.

6th April
Steamed some of the big wide shawls scarves I made last month, and the succesful twist-dyed ones from the last few days. With the twist-dyed scarves I am basically preparing some ideas for a course I am teaching in Oxford in June, but also searching for a new formula for some inexpensive pieces to sell at Artweeks and Art in Action. I have tried something new which is beginning to work rather well and I will post a pic in due course but I am going to keep the method to myself until I teach it in Oxford. Steaming the scarf tied up does produce a slightly wrinkled scarf but I don't think creases will stay in so I am not going to bother with this again.

7th April
Another student from Robin Paris’s course last month has sent me the images below and has kindly agreed to my putting them on my site. Thanks, Nancy!

8th April
Getting in to the “mass production stage” of the year. This doesn’t mean churning things out like a factory but taking the coming exhibiting periods seriously and producing sufficient work across a large price range, in different weights, colours etc. To do that it often makes sense to make several pieces the same way and even in the same colours so that dyes are used economically and I don’t have to keep changing the studio set-up in terms of frames, wax etc.
Currently I am working on new “Scribble” scarves using a new set of movements with the tjanting. I try to work 2 / 3 colours into the piece plus black.

9th April
At the same time I’m experimenting with an amendment to the twist-dye process I’m teaching in Oxford in June. Here’s an image below: if you want to know how it’s done you’ll have to come on the course!

For the simpler method I taught students at Denman last January, click this link.

10th April
More experiments with the twist-dye method using a pre-dyed ground before tying. Not all are interesting and it isn’t always possible to know why. But some basics seem to be emerging. One of them is to redye the bottom section below the final tie, otherwise the dye-line looks ragged and uncomfortable.

11th /12th

Continuing experiments with twist dyes; completed three steam sessions and a lot of stitching-in of care labels. Dry-clean scheduled for next week and then there'll be a lot more labelling to do! Not my favourite job.

13th / 14th April

Started a commissioned scarf using gutta. I haven't used gutta for quite a while as I have been concentrating on work with wax. I am also preparing a swatch sample for the Surface Design Association. It has to be done onto a square, so I have decided to do a simple letter f, as from the Freedom series. The letter is outlined with gutta and then texture built up using slashes of wax and dye in layers. This week I have enough work for a dry-clean as I have been hanging back until the commissioned scarf and SDA sample are ready. In the dry-clean batch is the first Freedom scarf I completed some time ago. I want to examine it in its finished state to see how I've done before I do more scarves in this series. Technically they are tricky.

15th / 16th April

Another day with twist-dyes, and a walk on the beach.

17th - 20th April

Sorry I've got a bit behind with updates. Working flat out on various projects plus keeping an eye on the dog and her forays into the parsley seedlings hasn't left much time for writing the studio log. I have a lot of new pictures of recent work so please come back for a look in a day or so.

21st April

Some of the things I've been doing over the last week: more twist-dyes with variations; dry-clean; wash out dry-cleaned work; meetings; write reports; photography of my and students' work; preparing CDs of images for various people and for various purposes; sample swatch for SDA; finish commissioned scarf etc etc.

So here are some images of work.

Above: twist-dyed scarf bound when wet. This enabled a much tighter twist. I sprayed it with a mister (as opposed to a Mrs..oh, sorry, it's been that sort of week) before binding: it wasn't sopping wet.

Below: At last: the prototype Freedom scarf. Not a bad result, although disaster loomed this afternoon. It had been dry-cleaned, so the wax and the gutta outline had gone. It just needed a rinse and wash so it went into a Synthrapol solution. Intense dye on a white ground is always a worry as any loose dye can migrate onto a light surface as it dries. I took it out of the Synthrapol and rinsed it: all seemed well so I lightly wrung it and then put it flat on a sheet to dry. And then went to hang up some scarves on the line outside and forgot about it for at least 15 minutes. When I came back to check freedom was bleeding - very symbolic - in the form of red dye into the white ground. Freaky moment and very, very disappointing. So I thought, what the hell, I'd put it back into the Synthrapol in case the dye was still floating and not attaching. I left it at least two hours more, agitating gently and even rubbing affected areas gently. It seemed to do the trick and there is now hardly anything to see.

When I rinsed it this time I put it straight onto the white sheet and rolled it inside, then walked on it so that the moisture was mostly absorbed- then I hung it on the line in the sun and held it out so it dried at maximum speed.

For more about the reasoning and thought behind this "scarf" please click to the January Log.

Below is a clamped scarf that went through several dreary and unsatisfactory incarnations before arriving at this fun result. It's on georgette.

April 22nd

Phoned Alex on Berrimilla satphone on 22nd to wish him Happy Birthday. Wind whistling very effectively down the line somewhere supposedly north of Rio, so if they are really in a disused quarry in New South Wales and the whole trip's a big sham the Sound Department is doing a grand job.

A regular correspondent asked me whether I felt liberated after completing the Freedom scarf more or less successfully. I forgave her the pun.. Having finished it, I replied that I don't feel liberated exactly, but it's been one of those projects that doesn't allow for the technical to be bodged. So, for instance, if something had gone wrong (like the bleeding nearly did) there would have been nowhere to go in rescuing the project. For this reason I do feel rather pleased because I know it can be done. Most of my work can be resued, or the objectives altered in some way and although work does sometimes go in the OOPS basket, usually I managed to salvage something. But with the Freedom scarf there was no way I could have done that. Somewhere along the line I created a mucky mark on the white, but that's carelessness rather than a technique that isn't ever going to work.

April 23rd

I have managed to find somewhere to teach just down the road. Brilliant news. It's in a beautifully restored Georgian house run by lovely people who are sympathetic to the needs of those-who-may-splash-dye on the floor. So I have just published details of the course I hope to run this October. Click here for details. The venue is also a Bed and Breakfast, so students visiting from elsewhere have very instant access to accommodation. And a very waggy dog to greet them.

April 24th

Wrote an article for Journal of Silk Painters trying to sum up how my work shifts with my environment and how techniques influence each other and blend together.

April 25th

Major diggings started in the garden today to create a patio and try to deal with an area we have nicknamed the Slough of Despond. Need more be said? Yes, it need, because it also started raining in a manner that would have been familiar to Mr and Mrs Noah and we were startled by the pairs of wildebeest and springbok leaping up the garden queuing for Ark Tickets. Mirth is the only way to deal with the mess that has become the garden after an hour or so of dumper truck and digger. From my studio I can see little of it so I have been hiding up here pretending to work so I don't have to look.

Dumper and digger - before the Ark set sail.

April 26th

Very nice e mail from Surface Design Association acknowledging receipt of my swatch sent last week, and being kind about it. . The rain it continueth in Biblical mode and things aren't looking good as removing tarmac in one area revealed the concrete base for an old farm building - and it'll have to come up or we can't carry out the plans we had to plant more trees. More money..sigh. Donations to the Whitworth Garden Fund may be sent via any convenient method. Textiles aren't going to make me rich.

April 27th

More heavy rain. Got to midday and decided to send the diggers and dumpers back to the hirers and wait for better weather. I think I have two students for the October course already - wonderful feedback so soon. Started painting a large shawl. I don't have a frame large enough so am using two parallel lengths of wood clamped to the table, and stretching the shawl between.

April 28th - 30th

Impending arrival of guests (or should I say gusts- an "in joke" for anybody who reads my brother's website..) has involved a certain amount of clearing of the room we normally eat in, which is where I play around with clips, dental tape, seam pickers and twisted bits of cloth and all my hand sewing stuff. I have recently labelled up about 40 pieces of work, sewn in the little thread loops from which price tags hang, and have generally got some work ready for Oxfordshire Artweeks. I am also producing a leaflet - or little brochure - with the help of a local graphic designer. She has done a really great job. I used photos in my archives or took new ones specially. I spent many days in photography studios years ago when I was working on crafts and games and it's strange doing the same thing for my own work, making sure the light is in the right place for the thing you want to see, ensuring fingernails are clean and that nasty splodge at the top right isn't going to show. We didn't have photoshop then, of course, and retouching wasn't the option it now is because it was so expensive.

In the 80s I remember our print buyer gleefully showing us a glossy issue of a Christmas publication, hundreds of thousands printed, with the whole caboodle of turkey, sausages, stuffing, roast potatoes - and it had passed through all checking stages. But no-one had noticed that a large nail was visible, fastening a sausage in place to the side of the turkey. They had to scrap the whole print run.