More Kerr Grabowski workshop

I seem to be in a bit of a slump creatively, I haven't done much at all since I got home from the Ballarat Fibre Forum.  I have restarted classes for this term, the second half of the semester but I don't have a lot

of enthusiasm at present.

I have spoken to a few people about the workshop and realised how much I enjoyed it.  This time I am going to talk about the use of a syringe to draw directly on the screen.  We did this with black dye in the alginate and then let it dry.  Then we either just used clear alginate, or coloured if we wanted to, to wet the dye and have the image appear on the screen.  As usual, the first images were a little lighter as the dye on the screen had to take time to wet through.  But it was a fun way to do it and, as the dye got wetter, the image changed.

These are Kerr's demo pieces, as you can see, you can draw back into the image with a foam brush or add colour with coloured alginate.

This is one of my samples, it shows how the dye acts as a resist at first, then the coloured dye comes out as it gets wetter.

Here I have added some coloured alginate to the image.  It is still wet, hence the grey background.

I hope this description wasn't too confused, that you can get some idea of the process.  If you want the actual instructions, Kerr has a very entertaining DVD of her processes available on her website.

Kerr Grabowski workshop

Last week I attended the Ballarat Fibre Forum and was lucky enough to attend the Kerr Grabowski workshop.
Kerr showed us her Deconstructed Screen Print technique and I had fun with it.  I have done two semesters of screen print in my course and really loved the last part best, printing on silk with dye, so expected to enjoy this process too.
Basically, we used alginate and procion dyes to put images onto silk and cotton.  I must admit, I used silk mostly as I LOVE silk.  We had to prepare for the workshop by soaking our silk and cotton in soda ash, which surprised me as it is not recommended for silk. Kerr told us we should have it washed out within two weeks.  It gets washed out in the rinsing process after dyeing but I have some still unused, so must get that done tomorrow.
Kerr deliberately didn't talk about colour and we just made up two reds, two blues, a yellow and black. As we were learning a new technique, we didn't need to fuss about colour theory at the same time.  The dyes were mixed into a paste and added to alginate.

We started by laying low profile objects under our screen to give texture to it. Then we put coloured alginate over our screen, picking up detail from the objects lying under the screen.  We could mix the colours on the screen if we wanted to.  The screen had to dry before we could use it again - typical of screen print, always waiting for things to dry!

There are labels identifying the various textures.  Click image to see bigger.

Then we put clear alginate on the screen and pulled.  As the alginate wets the previous laying of texture on the screen, the colour starts to come through to the fabric.  It starts off relatively lightly, gets darker as it gets wetter and then starts to lose the colour.

Circles areas are bubble wrap, must be popped to get good texture. Corrugated cardboard gave most of the texture.

If there is still texture on the screen, you can put in other coloured alginate and get yet another change.

There was still texture but the colour had run out of the screen, so I added more coloured alginate.

It is a very free medium, difficult to plan, especially at my novice level.  I loved it, there are no mistakes. If you don't like what you did, you can just wait for it to dry (yes, more waiting) and then overprint.  Wonderful.

Fibre Forum at Ballarat

I have just spent an exhausting but exciting week at the Ballarat Fibre Forum, run by Glenys Mann.  I enrolled in a class taught by Leeanne Davis and we experimented with surface design on pre-felts that we made, then felted some more to make small samples. We tried a variety of fabrics, many that do not felt well, and looked at ways to make them attach to the felt as well as observe how they ruched when felted, giving some very interesting textures.
I do not like white very much but Leeanne got us to work with white on white to try the technique without getting bogged down in colour choices.  This worked well for me, despite my initial resistance (being an ex-teacher, I was able to employ many of the work avoidance techniques that I had observed over the years). Our pieces were small, so that we actually completed a few samples, allowing us to experiment and see more than if we had tried to do a large piece.

Leeanne gave us a pack she had prepared, so the initial step of making the prefelt was not done by us.  Here is my first application of fabrics to the prefelt.  Some of them will not felt but they are attached by the stitching.

Then we felted the piece to another prefelt.

Some of the stitching felted in interesting ways also, depending on what threads we used. 

Finally, we sewed more decorative stitches after it had dried.

I was not happy with my piece but Leanne gave us an exercise to do, drawing lines to show our path to the morning class, and it helped me pull my piece together better.  I am not sure it is finished but I finally declared it so.  (Actually, I have done a bit more since this photo.)

I am still to be convinced that I like white on white.  I think I need to loosen up a bit also, perhaps I can make my stitching more 3D, as Leeanne showed us on her samples.

Leeanne emphasised that this technique is for decorative pieces and might not work for pieces that are going to get hard wear.

I really appreciated the fact that we were experimenting and not expected to finish a large piece, the pressure was right off.  Some people produced more work than others but there was no pressure about that either. We just worked at our own pace and had a lovely week.