Chapter 3: Fabrics and threads

The aim of this chapter is to organise my fabrics and threads in my chosen colour scheme. Looking through my stash I was actually quite surprised to find just how much I already had. OK, to be honest I was more than a little shocked by quite how much purple I found there!

 Fig. 1

Fig. 2

 

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Fig. 7

There was slightly less of the yellow spectrum but still, quite enough. I've included photographs of the relevant parts of my bead collection too in the above photographs, along with some metallic threads (I do love a bit of bling and have attended a couple of goldwork workshops in the past - my favourite by Llinos Spriggs, shortly before she sadly died, so count myself very fortunate indeed, but that does account for why I own quite so many beads and metallic threads).

 Fig. 8

I had never used Procion dyes before so sent off for a starter pack from Colourcraft and spent several very happy days with those and Helen Deigham's book.

Fig. 9

The results of the purple are slightly disappointing though I have since bought a pot of purple dye and have overdyed a couple of the more cerise coloured samples in Fig. 9 and am now much happier with the colour. All the fabric pieces were just scrunched up randomly and I shall be printing onto some of these with my gelli plate.

 Fig. 10

This piece (Fig. 10) is not quite as pink in real life as it appears to be here and I overprinted it with bright yellow fabric paint through a stencil, both positive and negative images. I'm really pleased with the result of this and shall certainly use the technique again as it would not only make an interesting background for stitch but also just as a fabric for a sewing project in the future.
 

Fig. 11

Figure 11 shows another experiment with my spiral stencil where I sprayed through the stencil with a yellow shimmer Brusho spray. The yellow has actually sunk into the fabric (which looks quite brown on the reverse) and left behind the shimmer on the surface. I love the effect of this even though it isn't yellow and plan to use this for one of my stitched samples in the next chapter, when I shall use yellow threads to stitch into it.

Fig. 12

I dyed some muslin, scrim and silk pieces too, though only seem to have taken a photograph of the muslin (Figure 12) for some inexplicable reason. These I wet first then dipped just one end of the fabrics into a coffee jar filled with my dye solution to see how the colour might wick up the fabric. It is interesting to see how the colour has separated out as it did so so that the end of the muslin furthest from the dye is actually pink, rather than purple. The end that was in the dye, however, is a very pleasant berry shade. The dye didn't wick up the scrim at all but the section of that fabric which was in contact with the dye is a very dark purple (which is the colour I was actually expecting for them all). The silk on the other hand did soak up the dye but the end that was not in the dye is a bright cerise colour. All very interesting!!!