I love the ethereal, transparent qualities of these Indian silks.
I’ve used Indigo, Persimmon and Logwood natural dyes, followed by machine embroidery.
Author Archives: mary
More Scarves with Natural Dyes and Shibori
I’ve been working with silk from India, experimenting with combinations of Indigo, Persimmon, Rust, Logwood and Pomegranate natural dyes and various Shibori techniques.
Indigo/Shibori/Silk
This Indigo/Shibori/Silk Scarf is a good example of a few of the reasons why I fell madly in love with “Textile Arts”.
Silk is definitely my fabric of choice. The transformation by silk worms of mulberry leaves into the delicate gossamer yet amazingly strong threads of silk is magical.
Indigo is most certainly the queen of natural dyes. How can you not be in awe at watching the change in colours of fabric that has just been removed from an indigo vat change slowly from greens to those gorgeous blues? Pure alchemy!
Hollyhocks
Hollyhocks, in bud, before they have bloomed.
Last year in early August I spent some time in the village of Caseneuve in the Luberon in southern France. Hollyhocks were growing everywhere, a riot, an exuberance of Hollyhocks (Rose Tremiere in french). They seem to have the ability to grow anywhere that there is the smallest bit of soil, amongst paving stones, beside houses, between broken bits of pavement.
Silk gauze
I’ve started working with silk gauze. Dyeing it. Sewing it. Learning how to manipulate it. The silk gauze is so fragile it feels like working with air. The transparency and luminosity is wonderful.
In October I took a course at Maiwa from Kyoko Ueda from Japan who taught me how to begin to work with this amazing fabric.
My Creatures
My fabric creatures are very excited about the upcoming Artists in Our Midst exhibition.
They are hoping for many visitors.
Jamdani Dyed with Indigo and Rust
Jamdani Silk Dyed with Indigo and Rust
Silk Jamdani dyed with Indigo and Rust.
This is a piece of silk Jamdani fabric that I brought back from Calcutta last February. Jamdani weaving is found in Bengal and Bangladesh. It is a supplementary weft technique of weaving, somewhat similar to tapestry. The standard weft creates a fine, sheer fabric while the supplementary weft with thicker threads, in this case metallic red and gold threads, adds the pattern. Each supplementary weft motif is added separately by hand by interlacing the weft threads into the warp with fine bamboo sticks using individual spools of thread. The traditional art of weaving Jamdani has been declared by Unesco as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Indigo
During my recent trip to India I bought a number of exquisite silk scarves, mostly from Calcutta and Bengal. I’ve dyed them with Indigo plus a bit of Iron Rust and Lac.
I made an organic Indigo vat using rotting bananas as the reducing agent.
Michel Garcia’s recipe. It works well!
Persimmon
Lately I have been working with Japanese Persimmon Dye. It produces a gorgeous chestnut brown that combines beautifully with Indigo.
Persimmon Dye involves a lengthly process to achieve the darkest colours. The dye is painted onto the fabric and left to bake in the sun. During the first day in the sun the fabric turns a very pale pinky brown. With each succeeding dye and sun exposure the fabric becomes increasingly darker.
More Scarves
I’ve been dyeing more scarves using a combination of logwood and pomegranate natural dyes on silk/rayon devoré and a silk/cotton blend made in India.
Some of the scarves are now for sale at Circle Craft on Granville Island in Vancouver
Silk Scarves with Natural Dyes
I have been dyeing a series of silk scarves with combinations of Indigo, Rust and Blood Root/Sanguineria Canadensis.
DETAILS
Indigo
I spent an amazing 10 days in May at Bryan Whitehead’s in Fujino, Japan. japanesetextileworkshops.blogspot.ca
During my stay with Bryan we visited the workshop of Noguchi san, a Katazome master in Tokyo, who hand prints lengths of indigo fabric for kimonos (13 metres X 36 centimetres). He uses traditional stencils cut from mulberry paper, hand prints a rice paste resist onto the fabric and then dyes the fabric in indigo vats. Pure magic!
Embroidery: Dappled Things
This embroidery sampler is based on a drawing I made in my garden. It was inspired by the poem “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:
Práise hím.
November Hydrangeas
I’ve finally finished the painting “November Hydrangeas”, oil on canvas, based on an iPad drawing I made in my garden over a year ago.
Landscape Paintings
HERE ARE SOME PAINTINGS INSPIRED BY THE ITALIAN LANDSCAPE. I SPENT A MONTH STUDYING ITALIAN IN TODI, A GORGEOUS LITTLE TOWN IN UMBRIA. THESE ARE VIEWS FROM THE CITY WALLS LOOKING OUT OVER THE COUNTRYSIDE.
Women and Gardens
SOME PAINTINGS INSPIRED BY WOMEN IN GARDENS
January
The witch hazel is blooming and it smells divine!
August
Such a contrast at this time of year between the dark shadows and the intense sunlight.
More Encaustic Paintings
I’ve been working on a series of small (6×6″) encaustic landscapes.
Encaustic Paintings
I have recently begun to paint with encaustic wax. The hot, liquid wax must be painted very quickly onto the wood support. I’m enjoying both the spontaneity of the process and the deep saturated jewel tones of the encaustic pigments.