The grand unveiling <.....trumpet fanfare please.....>

After a rather jam packed week of stitching and various school events I have managed to finish my quilt of the Century! Whoo hooo for me!!

I think I've had an out of body experience with it all. Setting such a huge challenge, arranging with a very patient Head of the school and All of the staff, fitting in with numerous special days and school trips, I have not had time to think about it too much.

I started this on the 22nd of May with Yr6's dyeing the yards of fabric and it had to be finished by  the 13th of July for the school Parade.

This is the final layout of panels, before stitching the long lengths and binding.

 Mr Webster wanted the children's memories of New Bradwell incorporated onto the quilt somewhere, so we decided that each class would have a panel of the squares to draw on. These 16 panels were then stitched together to make the final quilt.

Some of the detail was amazing and each year group have certainly had a full and inspiring year of activities!

F1 - these are 3-4 year olds: lots of gardens and butterflies a hot cross bun and some frogs.

A year 1 class: a visit to the church, a visit to a Safari Park and the lifecycle of butterflies.

A year 5 class: a visit to the RAF museum and the theatre and the O2 arena for the young voices concert.

So here I stand rather warm and exhausted with  the finished quilt. Overall the colours and details work well I think. There will always be bits I would have done differently given time to think and the benefit of hind site, but it's up and every child in the school took part in the project.

Detail of the 435 squares:

There were no great trauma's and every child took great pride in their work, what a pleasure this was to make this with them - honest! 

Thank you New Bradwell children and staff for letting me loose in your school.

Jane x

(Mrs Charles)

Just tying up loose ends.......hardly!

So this is the final instalment of 'making the squares'.

Printing patterns caused my the most headaches I think, the little dharlings were more interested in painting the letter and around the letter rather that a bit of both. Given simple tools to print with, the prefered to daub the paint on. Some did well, like this one below. Others made a great pattern and then got carried away and painted all over it again. I think I was making it too much fun!

Also, perhaps if I had given them something hard to print with they wouldn't have been tempted to sponge the paint on - I will never know, not in this project anyway. Perhaps next time!

Year 2 was a quick but effective 'design a letter and then paint round it with dilute ink' technique. It gives a lovely light contrast to the other very colourful squares, but really effective results.

Foundation 2 - the 4-5 year olds - agh. They did well, the technique was simple, but the chats we had were priceless. This little lad drew a cupcake and a volcano next to his letter, who knows why? But I was not going to get in the way of his creativity.

Sp here they are, the Super Severn piles of squares. 5 weeks ago this was 5m of plain calico.

 And just because I like to pile things up and take their photo, here is the pile.....

Next stage - the children think of their memories from this year at school, this will be a challenge with all age groups I think!

A speedy update

After the dyeing came a quick day of Shibori and indigo dyeing with Year 5's. As you can imagine, shibori even in it's simplest form with 60 children was a challenge. 'Make sure you have a knot at the end of your thread before you start stitching!!" was my mantra of the day. 'Keep the designs simple' and 'draw them in your art books so you remember which one is yours after it has been dyed and all look the same'. I didn't shut up all day. 

The children had done some research into indigo dyeing, so they knew more than me about it, I just knew it was magic!

After the stitching we went outside in small groups and gently put the samples in the dye bath. I say we, I was the one doing the work, they just watched and wooed with wonder.

Needless to say, with a day of dyeing in rubber gloves, I have no photo's of the work on that day.

However!

The next stage was designing their letter and drawing it with fabric crayons. Looking good.

Then some could stitch round if they wished, some did some didn't. I find it depends upon not whether they are girls or boys, rather which was the wind is blowing and what lesson they might be missing as to whether they are keen to stitch.

Give them credit though, they are all keep to do their best and the work looked lovely.

 Year 4's, I was planning some sun printing, but didn't manage to book the sun for that day so had to think on my feet.

Some salt sprinkling came to mind and the salty squares were born.

Love this, they give a great contrast with the other techniques going on in the quilt, the children added African inspired letters which I will appliqué onto of their squares - appliqué? Was I planning to do that? No, but hey ho, for the good of the quilt, whats 60 appliqué letters to add to the pile of work.

Fun with Year 1's. I shall leave it at this photo, we had great fun. Dripping, swirling and STOP! I need to take a print of that one! Great fun.

A few of their squares drying, they add brightness to the quilt. 

My biggest quilt yet! Stage one.....dyeing fabric with Yr6

A few short weeks ago I came up with a great idea to make a quilt with children at our local school to celebrate their Centenary. It would involved every child in the school, a combined rather large school of 420+ children ranging from 3-11years. The Head very kindly agreed that it would be a great idea and after a couple of meetings I came up with a plan. Did I mention that he wanted it in the school Summer carnival, which was only 6 weeks away from the start date? No pressure there then....

I shall keep my blog sketchy with details, I am still in the middle of it all, so actually don't have time to blog much anyway. I'm also planning to write an article for a magazine, so need to keep some surprises for that in the Autumn!

Anyway, lets start: Year 6's helped me clamp, bind and dye the fabrics. These fabrics would be used later by different year groups and also to frame and bind the quilt.

I love to ooh and aaah when fabric appears from the dye baths. I thought the children might not be as excited, but I was wrong. They oohed and aaahed with gusto at the colourful fabrics we had created.

Drying on the line, never had my garden looked so sunny and colourful!

I couldn't stop looking at them.

Their next task, using the letter of their first name, was to design a complex pattern which they then inked onto their squares of fabric.

And then they stitched around their letters. Only 45 in this year group, so progress was made quite quickly in the scheme of things.

 Really lovely work, even the most challenging of child took pride in their letter and did a good job.

These are pictures of lovely designs and very neat stitching. 

Yr 5's and indigo dyeing in the next posting!!

Jane x

Playing with thickened dye.....at last!

Printing with thickened procion dyes, lots of words here, no pictures until the end.

I've been wanting to try this technique for well over a year. I liked the idea of being able to dye fabric and then print it with the same quality of colour and fabric finnish. I have been trawling the internet and looking in books for the perfect ideal recipe and instruction for my home textiles setting.
My shopping list was not extensive, but I did have to get organised and find everything at the same time which is a challenge I often face.
This was the shopping/finding list I used from ArtVanGo.

UREA

hygroscopic agent to keep moisture in the fibres which is necessary for the setting process. 

CALGON

neutralises the metallic salts of tap-water. Particularly necessary in hard water
areas, though worth using everywhere to increase the dye uptake. Available easily and cheaply from the supermarket. I used a supermarket equivalent that was half the price.

SODA ASH, WASHING SODA or BICARB

causes a chemical reaction in the presence of heat and moisture to fix the dye. Washing soda and bicarb are available from the supermarket. I use 2 cups of soda to 8 cups of water for my sollution.

METAPEX or SYNTHRAPOL

detergent which prevents colour contamination during the rinse process by consolidating the remaining dye so that it will not set into other areas while rinsing. Also can be used to scour the fabric prior to dyeing instead of standard detergents. I did not bother with this, just threw in a colour catcher with the wash in the end and that seemed to do the trick!

MANUTEX or SODIUM ALGINATE

a thickening agent to convert Procions into a paste for direct painting, screen- or block-printing. In powder form.

SUPERCLEAR

a thickener based on tannins, available already made up in a jar. Again, I didn't bother with this one.

Art Van go also gave very useful instructions for the process, but there was not clear reference to quantities I should make up. So I cross referenced with Jane Dunnewold's Complex Cloth and halved the mixture. I did not want a whole heap of fabric paint that I did not have time to use and might not work. 

Combining the two instructions was fine, until you think about the Soda ash.....

a) As soon as the Soda ash is mixed with the dye and chemical water it becomes active and will only do it's job for about 4 hours. Which is kind of the way I was going with the Artvango method.

b) The Jane Dunnewold method used fabric pre-soaked in the soda ash  (and left to dry I think) so your thick dye mix will keep for ages in the fridge and you don't waste any.

Doh

But I had commited to the ArtVanGo slosh and slop method of measuring so away I went.....

Not one for wearing gloves I soon looked like Violet Beauregard so didn't take any photo's - slap on the wrist.

This was the procedure:

1. I made up my thick paste with the chemical water and manutex and left it in the fridge overnight - 1ltr of liquid shrank down into about 500mls of thickened liquid.
2. I mixed up a large pinch of dye power with some warm water with some of the thick paste. 
3. This of course made the paste sloppy so I sprinkled in some more manutex!
4. Then I set to work printing.....
5. And some more..... I just went for colours on top of each other, was that the right thing to do? I don't know, but I didn't fancy waiting for each colour to 'batch' so I went for it.
6. After my trial and two large 'oh lets go mad' samples I was done.
7. Now for the next dilema of 'batching' - ??!!

*Batching is the wrapping of the still wet fabric in plastic and old towels and leaving it to 'set' somewhere for at least 24 hours if not 48! And then you just wash the fabric!! No ironing to set the dyes!! NOT NEEDED - oh my goodness this is freaky. I also felt that the dyes were looking pretty dry already and I was working in a large cold drafty warehouse (!?), but thought I would carry on anyway.

So I batched with the help of a friend who was passing.....

24 hours later - this was the first sample I decided to drag out of the towel wrap, I could not wait any longer:

Not my best of designs, but I  was just looking at the clarity of the print with different types of block: magic blocks and soft cut-lino to be precise.

Slightly less that 48 hours after the batching, I could not wait any longer and took out the rest:

The inks were still wet, gloopy even and the process is to rinse and wash.WITHOUT IRONING!!

So I carefully put them into the washing machine and rinsed them. Then washed them all on a 40' cycle with a colour catcher.

Fingers crossed.

Whoo hoo! I'm rather happy with the results. The fabric is soft, the colours opaque which is the effect I wanted

So that was that, phew!

I still have the thickened paste in the fridge so next time (!!) will will prepare the fabric with soda ash solution and let it dry first.

I have also been in contact with the lovely Beth from this blog, I commented on one of her posts that I found all her work and thoughts very entertaining and useful and we've started emailing. I shall also have a go with her 'just fly by the seat of your pants' way of dyeing without ALL the chemicals!

PS while all this was happening on the line, I was planning a pitch for a meeting in the afternoon for a new project and doing some sun-printing with Dye-na-flow. That worked rather well too and I got the pitch right for the project so that was a good day.

Will sun-print report later....

Bye for now x

New textile mini project for me

As part of my teaching the City and Guilds Level 2 course I have been experimenting with some interesting techniques and materials. 

I wanted to try out free motion embroidery with painted quilting, appliqué, collaging dyed fabrics....and anything else that came to mind.

 Working on Egyptian cotton I painted a rough background for the soil section with Koh i noor intence dye colours. They are not washable in fabrics and the range of colours is not extensive within the 24 offered, but they are very easy to work with and rich. They come in a cute set of palates too, so that always appeals to me. The paints bleed here and I used this too my advantage to blend colours, I then added detail with a thicker paint when the wash was dry.  I used some dyed vintage linen type fabric to make the houses and bondawebbed them on too.

 I knew I wanted to use some of my colour catchers gathered from the washing machine, they collect the colour and dye spinning around in a regular wash and save the whites from going grey, so they are subtle shades of greys, blues and pinks - perfect for my Northern sky. I set some bondaweb strips in the sky to catch some of these cut strips of colour catcher. I also stitched through some white organza so that I could burn away some sections later if the mood took me.

I had sketched out out my ideas for detail with my Frixion pen, the one that irons away later. and set to work going over the lines with free motion stitching. I backed the work on a piece of Ikea blanket for a bit of cheap wadding and depth.

Back to the painting: I painted in the quilted sections with the Koh i noor again. You have to be careful that it is not too wet for this bit, painting away from the stitching also helps cut down the bleeding of the colours. I decided to make it washing day and also thought that their quilts and rugs needed a good airing so they hung on the line too.

This picture is quite a jump now, I've added some dyed braid, started with some embroidery over the vegetables and painted the field behind the houses to set off the laundry on the line.

There is still work to be done I think but I am quite liking the overall effect now I spent some time with this sample.

You can just see some more painting at the bottom of the picture, I am now thinking how this might work with blending the next section of my quilt from below.

Coal. 

But thats another story.....

Fabric collage

This was a project started a few weeks ago with some idea of collaging fabrics and techniques together to make a larger piece.

I played around with  Brusho to create a mottled background and then stamped my tree print over the top.

I had some houses that had been printed with a thickened procion dye with mixed results also a large piece of brown fabric that had been dyed after a batik demonstration. All too often I end up with a dodgy sample so this seemed the perfect base for a collage and rather lended itself to a collage based on the large group quilt from last year. The curly lines looked like smoke from the chimney and that was enough for me.

So here is the first layout with cut pieces attached with bondaweb.

In the stocks I had some marbled fabric, not bad for a change, but they needed to do something other than sit in a box so here they are.

I have had a free motion foot for my machine for a while, but not had time to play properly so here is a bit of playing around with shapes and fillers.

I went over the basic outline and then as confidence grew, went in with more detail.

Not wanting to be held up with technical details, if the bottom bobbin ran out I just threw in another colour without thinking about it. It was a good way of using all those odd colours and gave me a rather nice reverse that I could not have planned......I was lucky the tension worked though, could have been a bit of a mess!

So time has passed and I wanted to work on the sky. Leaving the dots and stars and the twirls as smoke I played around with some more stitching and then filled in the gaps with abstract decreasing shapes.

There is a windmill in the top left hand corner too, I had not got a decent print of one so decided to make it very much in the background and a shadow on the the horizon.

I was stitching this last year in the season of the big flood in the UK. Thankfully we were not too affected by the waters that surround us, but the River Ouse rouse high out of its backs and caused great excitement for the children who's playing field was underwater for 2 weeks or more.

So this will be called the 'Near flood of New Bradwell' 2012.