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

Wet Felting a Bent Wood Chair

I'm working on a little experiment at the moment, covering found furniture with wool. On top of a smooth wet felted surface I then plan to add texture with knitting, needlefelt and other needlework techniques. To begin with I have removed the wooden seat round and entirely wrapped the chair with wool rug selvedge yarn. The seat is surprisingly comfortable and stable with just a figure of eight wrapping around the seat circumference.

The chair looks surprising good as it is but I would like to create a very durable and smooth felted surface that I can then embellish with other textures. The seat pad I plan to work separately with wet and dry felting and then attach to the seat and felt it in. 

So far I've started by wrapping the covered chair in fibre that I have prefelt with dry felting and wound wool around it to keep it in place and then started the wet soaping felting process. I'm just experimenting at the moment to see what problems might come up. So far it has been difficult keeping the fibres from separating when shrinking and the prefelt has been helping with that. 

After the chair, I intend to felt a small coffee table that I found and a very sweet little foot stool with worn patches of tapestry that I intend to "restore" with needlefelting. Stay tuned. Any tips or suggestions welcome! 

A little bit of a beautiful thing

On the weekend just gone, I had the most wonderful experience at the Battersea Arts Centre annual One-on-One Theatre Festival. This is a theatre festival where each performance is performed for you alone. It was incredibly intimate and at times challenging and at first I felt very nervous indeed but that didn't last long as I came to realise this was entirely the point of the festival.

The festival goers could choose from a number of set show menus. I chose Menu 9 - Reflective.

The piece I want to write about here was a lovely little history lesson from which each participant came away literally with a little slice of the past. It was called "A little bit of something beautiful" and was by Barnaby Stone actor/cabinet maker.

In the room there was a large oak beam, it was a 700 year old piece of oak that was once a beam in the attic of the beautiful Elizabethan Hardwick Hall. After sharing some facts about the beam and contemplating the past as it may have resonated in this piece of wood, the artist began hammering in a wooden nail that I was asked to choose from a pile and sanding and polishing the surface. Then he pulled across a ban saw, that was set up on a track along the floor and cut off a sliver of the beam punched with my initial and presented it to me as my little bit of something so beautiful. Held up to the light you can see evidence of the other wooden nails that have been hammered in representing other participants. The nails are in a range of woods from cherry (the redish wood), walnut (the dark one) and I forget what the light one was, ash or something. It was a truly charming performance and this piece of wood something I will forever cherish.

Nesting Elephant Puzzle

I just love the Made By Joel blog, he's a dad who makes lovely simple toys for his kids on an almost daily basis! Lucky lucky children. Anyway, I was inspired to make one of his Elephant Puzzles for Merlin. I wanted to try my hand at a bit of woodwork. I had memories of doing this kind of thing at Montessori school, drawing a design and cutting it out by hand with a children's coping saw. I remembered it being quite easy so I was surprised to find that actually cutting through an inch thick beech Ikea chopping board was not the gentle carving motion I had in mind, but actually a sweaty, curse inducing labour of love. Anyway, with cutting over, I sanded it well, and gave it a couple of coats of Danish tung oil (which is a beautiful natural wood oil), and I was quite pleased with my efforts. Oh, and so was Merlin for whom I was actually making it, umm I think, or was I making it for myself? I get muddled sometimes.