Threads of Moirai: 13-23 March Castlemaine State Festival 2015

Since moving to Castlemaine I've come together with a bunch of talented local textile artists and started a textile collective, check out the Cobolt Textile Collective here. Our first group exhibition has just opened as part of the Castlemaine State Festival 2015. If you happen to be in the area, come to our opening party on the 17th March, invite below. 

For the exhibition I've been enjoying experimenting with finer-than-thread metallic yarns, degumming and spinning wild silk cocoons and getting Victorian silk spindles made for me as part of my piece. It's always amazing how much you learn from devising and executing any art project. This steep learning curve is the thrill of making art.

In response to our theme on the Greek Myth about the Three Fates: Namely Clotho, spinner of the thread of life, Lachesis the one who allots the length of that thread, and Atropos who severs the thread; I started to knit cocoons. I was inspired by the Urodid Moth Cocoon which is an amazing piece of natural architecture found in the Amazon - see it here.  My knitted cocoons attempt to take the form of this beautiful cocoon. They are knit on tiny double pointed needles in stainless steel and silk/wool yarns and linen/copper yarns. These fibres have a memory so that they will hold a 3D form, they are super fine and presented a few challenges in the knitting. 

This little one is knit in a superfine copper filament. It's almost invisible in some lighting. 

Enclosed within my knitted cocoons is the real spent cocoon of the Cricula Silk Moth, a wild silk moth cocoon from Indonesia. 

I eventually managed to de-gum these cocoons in order to spin them into silk which was quite a tricky process, not much information available online on degumming wild silk cocoons but I had success with a little tiny bit of caustic soda and washing soda in water.  I had a local Master turner make me these wonderful Victorian Silk Spindles which were a pleasure to whirl on. 

The cocoons hang from a flat handstitched circle of pressed Cricula silk cocoons.

Here I am ironing and stitching these together over the course of a day. The golden cocoons are a wonder to work with and the spun fibres shimmer with natural golden threads.

And if you're wondering how they take their shape after coming off the knitting needles, there's a little final magic with a balloon which is quite fun to do.

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The show is on until the 23rd of March. Shed 5. Castlemaine Woollen Mills, 1 Walker Street, Castlemaine.

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Check out the wonderful work of my fellow textilers in the

Cobolt Textile Collective at www.co-bolt-textiles.com

Christmas orders

Happy New Year! Just a little eye candy for my first post for 2014, here are some of the guys I made up for Christmas orders, hopefully they made their way into the stockings of a few good children...

Woven blankets and blanket stitches

A friend collects old woven woollen blankets and makes hot water bottle covers from them. I was lucky enough to receive a bag of the scraps. I'm often too precious with bigger pieces of textiles that I collect and find it difficult to settle on a worthy project for them. So I love finding little scraps because you can be sure whatever you do with them it's going to be more worthwhile than sending them to the tip!

The blanket scraps were just big enough to make into a skulk of foxes. There is something very foxy about plaid, maybe it's the story book illustrations of foxes dressed in tweed. Anyway I think these guys look pretty dashing...

The blanket stitched edging around these blankets is just too special to discard and thankfully my friend had not been able to bring herself to throw them away.  Rolling the edging into little scrolls makes gorgeous coloured rounds that I have been stitching together into interesting brooches. 

Christmas is just around the corner now and I have my work cut out if I'm to complete all the projects I've started in time. For a maker Christmas always brings with it a sense of urgency and pressure as if the world stops buying handmade for another year. But like this little scroll below the world still goes around and around, as does the desire to continue to make and mend.

Reclaiming the Nights

Gosh, this year has flown by. It's terrible, I haven't posted since my February wet felted chair fiasco for a number of reasons. One being that said chair is like a thorn in my side, sitting there unfinished, slowly un-felting itself and unravelling into a ball of fluff. This was an experiment that needed a little more time than I currently have what with a wild one year old in tow.

 

Said one-year-old is the other reason I haven't posted in a while. Above is a portrait of him by the 4 year old and that is the child himself. You can kind of see what I mean can't you.

So I have reclaimed the nights for creative expression and moved my studio into the living room where I currently work by night after baby is asleep. I'm loving my view from the window which I rarely get to enjoy since it's usually dark out by the time I get to my desk.

This is a little Christmas needle felted Angel that I've started working on. She hangs by the window and I love how the sunlight glows through the wool and mohair and catches in the gold beaded halo.

Because Christmas is approaching I've been working on more woolly polar bears. I've started tailoring clothes for the bears too.

This guy is listed on Etsy already and there will be more joining him soon

Now this is a curious device that I can't wait to try out. I found it on the shelves of a charity shop in one of my favourite English towns Hebden Bridge, North Yorkshire. It has the original post label on the box which reads "Scotia Wools Ltd, 158 New Bridge Street, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1. Mrs Gardner, 32 Hodgkin Park Road, Newcastle upon Tyne. Date 10/11/1948. " It has a 9 pence stamp on the box.

I'll take more photos of the thing itself soon. I'm looking forward to trying it out. Who knows maybe I'll start making rugs next. Has anyone ever come across one of these? 

Textures

Just catching up on some of my favourite artist's blogs (Sophie Munns & Kathryn Clark)  and was really taken with the beautiful painterly quality of these two works that were brought to my attention.

white rag quilt by Barbara Wisnoski

This beautiful pieced quilt by Barbara Wisnoski is made up of hundreds of tiny fragments sewn together in a method she describes as "Happily freed from precision, this is cutting and sewing as mantra, as pure, riotous activity." This idea is incredibly comforting, to be freed from precision, from the fear that everything must be precise to be of value, to put aside doubt and just be present in the doing. Barbara's work has also really validated my inability to throw away even the tiniest piece of fabric.

07-D122 by Chun Kwang Young

The other artist I came across was a Korean artist Chun Kwang Young who wraps tiny blocks of foam in mulberry paper and creates these incredibly intricate works that resemble by their micro geometry a kind of 3D matrix over a landscape. I find a lot of similarity in their works and their methodology. I love the way they have built up of layers in an informal grid to create such a beautifully ornate yet, from a distance, visually simple aerial landscape.

Eco-printing linen with copper coins

I tried my hand at a bit of dyeing/eco-printing inspired by India Flint's bundle technique where you tightly wrap found plant matter or objects in fabric and soak/heat to transfer the colour on to the fabric (a slightly simplistic description I'm afraid!) My first attempt was using a jar of copper coins that I had to hand in an attempt to create a more regular design on some pieces of an old linen sheet that I had left over from another project. Here are the results which I pieced together to make into a top to wear because I was quite in love with the fabric.

From everything I've heard, I think I must get Second Skin.

Ye Olde Haberdashery circa 1805

We came across a wonderful museum to the old village store in Mid Wales recently, called The Thomas Shop which was restored as closely as possible to resemble the ambience and proper convenience that a village store in the early 19th century would have provided the local community. I especially loved the haberdashery "department" which occupied half of the shop with its wonderful collection of antique lace, velvets and woven Welsh blankets as well as all the beautiful old sewing notions. It was a real treasure trove, well worth a visit if you're travelling through Wales. And to top it all off there is a Wool Emporium upstairs and wonderful tea and cakes by the river. It was just heaven, a real lucky find.