Here we go, here we go!!!!

At last Chapter 3 'Transform and Personalise' took a while but here it is. the idea was to take materials from my stash and transform them using some unusual colourants. although the colourants i used were not so unconventional they were certainly messy!

i love this paper its a sandwich wrapper that is slightly glazed on one side.

 

1. creases made with a ruler then graphite and coal dust worked in.

more sandwich paper

2. More graphite, chalk and coal dust. chalk worked through a mesh of holes.

shoe box tissue

3.and more of the same, sample on the right has oil worked into it to make it transparent.

brown wrapping paper

4. using old type stamps with ink, turmeric, coal and oil with a strip of aqua wax at the top

brown paper and plastic

5. brown paper folded with metal pieces i found on the pavement by a bus stop and rusted with vinegar, i have then printed with coal dust in 'water effects' using creased sausage skin as a carrier. the piece of plastic is what was left from my rusting process, so it does work on plastic!

an old drawing and brown paper

6. i used an old drawing i wasn't happy with to work more rust and the lower sample was rusted with oil and ink blots added after.

aleut bird skin parka looks like ink blots

not quite recycled but i didn't buy it recently!

7. i was thinking of the transparency of gut and thought of devore! i still have some mix in my fridge from way back and as you can see it still worked! the sample on the left was soaked in turmeric before the process, again i was thinking of the bits that are put into the seams on gut parkas and i have a thing for the bits of paper that are left when you tear file paper off a sheet so used them as masks. sample on the right was stitched and gathered then printed with the gunk, dried and stitches removed.

Chinese character practise paper

8. more ink blots and sausage skin prints

scrap of note pad and old baking parchment

9. more inkblots with 'water effects' and coal etc

old bank envelope and calico

10. i made some egg tempera with coal dust and more shibori, the sample on the right was soaked in turmeric before, the stitching was removed after printing through a screen. i like the shiny quality of the tempera but not the smell! afterwards i was reading other recipes which mention putting something in to stop mould growth which i wish i had done considering how wet it is down here!

all in all this has been quite a smelly chapter, oil, coal dust, turmeric and egg pleased i didn't use compost. 

Chapter 8, mainly option A or perhaps not after looking back at the post!

Foolishly perhaps i mentioned to Sian in my tutorial at summer school that i really wasn't sure which option to choose for this chapter, option A transferred images or option B heat set shibori. she suggested i could do both! so i came home thinking 'why had i opened my big mouth' and decided to go with option B only, however i kept thinking of the shibori and so the following is inevitably a mixture. Option A, make a slip from a printed image using transferred or direct digital printing. I have Maggie Grey's book 'From Image to stitch' so i have already tried direct printing onto Japanese tissue and organza. For this i chose a method which uses a bonding agent as a transfer adhesive with a printed image. I enlarged my slip slightly for this chapter. basically a piece of Bondaweb is ironed onto fabric, then the printed image face down is ironed to the Bondaweb and then the paper sponged gently to absorb water and the paper rubbed off (i used my finger) to reveal the print layer. care has to be taken not to wet it too much as the ink will bleed and the image can also be rubbed off if you are too heavy handed. i chose initially 2 pages from my sketchbook seen in the photo above. i used cotton organdie and silk organza. i liked the process of this method and can see myself using it. the slip on the bottom right was from a shiny photo print which gave a duller image so i applied a layer of varnish which showed the brush marks too much.
it was at this stage i thought of shibori, i liked the idea of a series of slips all lined up like growing flowers. i experimented with a few 'methods' thinking how to achieve a slim slip with just a stalk so image 2 and 3 is my 'wrapping a parcel' method! the finished slip is in image 1. i cut a wooden slip which afterwards i thought should not be wood as it could transfer staining in the 10 minute steaming process. i was lucky.
once the slip was dry i undid the cotton ties and voila it stayed put but i did find the silk organza worked best.
# 4 and 5 i then made an experiment of stitching round the image, placing the wood slip inside and pulling it tight and then securing the reverse like a seam.
and then steaming.
#6 i decided to make a series based on the stitched paper i made for chapter 5. with the lettering i had to remember to flip the image before printing otherwise the letters would be back to front. the plan was to superimpose the slips onto the original photo.
#7 shows the slips on their sides and the thickness of the form. with these slips i applied a layer of PVA to the image which made it a bit fresher looking. i also tried colouring the silk before transfering the image but that didnt look right!
#8 the actual slips had added hand stitch which was basically a looped back stitch worked along the original stitch lines of the paper. i worked this while the slips were still tied to their wood form. the stitching was continued on the same lines on the background photo but just a simple over under.
#9 the best way to keep the slips in their correct places was to suspend them on fishing line from a frame above the original print some are slightly out but it wasn't easy to get them in the exact place. i was helped by an amazing book 'Memory on cloth Shibori now' by Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada its well work the money.