Colour Trend Spring '14

Now that I know I would like two colours in garment I've been looking at currrent trends of colour for spring 2014. I have done some research and found that Pantone was a reliable source for advisers of season's colour trends.

I think I'm most interested in the white with placid blue additions or placid blue with violet tulip. I wanted to keep my colours pale and pastel as I think too strong a colour would distract or take away from the form. 

I have been in the workshop for the last two days learning how to dye fabrics. I've been playing with the concentration of dyes in order get a match closest to placid blue. 

Dyed Folded Fabric Pt.2

I carried on with dyeing my folded fabrics but this time I coloured the fabric yellow first and then dyed the folded piece with blue making it green but darker on the edges. This was much different than I expected as I thought the inside would be yellow and the outside areas would be blue or green.

Dyed Folded Fabrics

I have been feeling a bit stuck yet again so to try to overcome this I have been in the workshop to expend on my folded fabrics for what else I can do with them. I have attempted a new process of making them by sandwiching the fabric between folded paper and then pressing it. This has made it so much more easier and faster than before. My only ponder is how thick can I have stuff in the heat press, if not very much then I wont be able to make very wide pieces. I was able to make three folded samples in the morning and after lunch I made up some procion dyes to try dip dying them. When I get the folded samples wet it washes the starch off and it loses its form.  So to stop this I have to pin them and starch them after they are dry and press them again. I'm thinking of trying to steam them into their form like shibori. When they are pinned together the dye only effects the outside areas and leaves white sections inside. I made one completely blue, one white with blue edges and a yellow one I am going to do blue edges tomorrow morning. I quite liked the blue colour with the folds, I might want to try a more grey colour. I still want to try different processes with the folds to see what I can create.

Fabric Leaves

After exposing my screen I began dyeing some fabric the make into stitched leaves in case I wanted them in the layers. Later after making seven leaves out of some scrap cotton I realized that I didn't want to use them within the layers, thinking it would be too much. Instead I decided to make a sample out of them for one of my other quilt ideas by stitching together loads and loads of these leaves.

Fabric Dyeing & Screen Printing

I've been producing some screen printed samples to test out the best use of my print design. As my Idea for my quilt is to print onto a dyed fabric of my natural colour themes I started with dying some fabric in preparation. I also dyed some plain colours to test for subtle printing. I mixed up some paint for the green and brown and printed on the same plain coloured fabrics and I really like the subtle addition the prints give rather than something incredibly bold. I also did a streaky print of green and brown on a light green dyed fabric, where I splatted brown on the screen with a normal print of green giving it a subtle hint of colour change in the print. I really like this and want to try it with the yellow i want to mix up and on the multicoloured fabric.

Quilting

Carrying on from my dyed fabrics I had decided to cut them up into hexagons and stitch them together on a fabric backing giving a quilted effect. I really like this but I feel like this needs adding to but it's certainly my favorite sample yet. I could use a different shape to hexagon and try segments of leaves

Natural Fabric Dyes

I spent my morning boiling the most unusual foods in an attempt to dye fabrics with natural dyes. I was surprised to see how it worked so well. I got some really strong colours and some weak. This is my first great addition to my 3DSP. I think i may need to redo some of the ones that didn't turn out so well but it was a good first attempt.

Fabric Dying

I skipped cultural studies because I was having too much fun in the textile workshop playing with fabric dyes. I took the colours from my colour scheme from the plants at Berrington Hall and autumn leaves. I'm going to then cut them up and stitch them together in a quilt form. I could try to recreate the the shapes in the segmented leaf I painted or reuse my theme of hexagons. Oh an idea I could create leaves out of them with stitch. I'm going to try that after I've done patches.

Textile Mark Making

I joined the first years today int he textiles workshop for some mark making. I wanted to try these processes for 3DSP anyway so it was good that I got the chance to tag along.

I revisited dysperse dyes again as a resist with photocopied images. Where the photocopied image was on the sheet it wouldn't pick up the dye. I experimented with my hexagon prints and layering.

I also got to return to procion dyes as well but by painting it onto screen and using binder to transfer the image onto a fabrics or paper.

I tried emulsion printing that I've been waiting to attempt for a little while now. Printing onto fabric or paper using emulsion paint as a transfer. I reused my hexagon photocopies and looked at how different colours effected it.

I'd like to try some of these techniques again but with my own drawings of leaves.

Batik

After doing reliefs with dysperse dying I got the idea to try batik. I started just testing how the wax worked with different shapes and the procion dyes for 3DSP. I then tested using metal shapes from the metal workshop to make perfect squares and circles.

Once I'd got the idea for how it works I created leaf shapes and played with different layers and colours to get autumn leaf effects. I really liked how it turned out I'd like to do some more and work out some of the kinks. Try mixing up some colours and make it darker.

Dysperse Dyes

I was advised to possibly look at dysperse dyes and how they looked using leaves. I collected a range of leaves to try disperse dyes with. The dysperse dye are used in dry layers under the heat press to transfer them onto the fabric. I created leaf shapes on different materials. I tried painting on leaves and printed with them onto the materials which created different effects in the print with the leaf textures that I really liked.

I really liked how the dysperse turned out with the layers I'd like to see what other techniques i could then layer on top of this like stitch or other print.