Sunday 12 May 2013

Ashton - textiles piece

This textiles piece has been quite a rollercoaster of a design process, things have not gone to plan more than expected, but I am happy to say that I'm pleased with the final outcome.

I constructed the 'skeleton' of the piece with strips of plastic, to give the piece rigor and structure in order to hold a solid shape. The plan was then to cover the plastic strips with naturally dyed silk:
1) to contrast with the linear form of the plastic
2) to make the textiles piece completely eco-friendly as it is made with natural fabrics and recycled plastic strips (that were originally used for wrapping packages)

I thought the eco-friendly aspect would give it a slight concept twist and also enable me to experiment with a brand new process of dyeing that I haven't used before.




Once the structure and composition was decided on, I could then begin to experiment with the dyeing process.


Natural dyeing process:
I bought a great second hand book by Eva Lambert & Tracy Kendall that is incredibly user-friendly and helpful. I had no idea how to do natural dyeing, but over the course of the past few months this book was my bible.


I began the natural dyeing by using Weld (left) and Logwood (right), both of these dyes are wood chips soaked overnight and strained to use the coloured water for dye. This is the basic process for most of the ingredients used.



The next process of dyeing was using your basic, everyday onion skins. I got a lot of strange looks in the workshop when I marched in with a bag full of crispy brown onion skins and started weighing them out, but it was all worth it when it worked!


These dyes were used on light habotai silk and Paj silk. The Weld produced pale yellows, the Logwood navy, blues and purples and the onion skin dyed the fabric a rich yellow, that almost looked gold.

My favourite of the dyes was the Cochineal (that also made people's faces skew when they discovered it was dried bugs bodies ground up - it makes the pretty colours seem quite morbid!)

I hadn't collected any visual colour research as I wanted to experiment with the natural dyeing process to discover what colours were available to me, which I could then develop and experiment with.

In my final project in my second year of university I experimented with tie-dye techniques, which influenced my project this year, as the shapes and patterns I managed to create really excited me, so I began to toy with re-dyeing the fabric, using resist dye techniques and gradients.

I found that my eye was most drawn towards the pinks and purples, so I decided to create this on a much larger scale to begin my final piece!
 


I was extremely thrilled with the outcome, the colours were so vibrant and rich, which until now I thought was only possible with Acid dyes.

However, other people in the university seemed to find my fabric quite attractive and as luck would have it, part-way through making my final piece - my fabric was stolen from my cupboard in the workshop, leaving my piece a quarter made and the rest of the piece missing. I was deeply devastated that someone would do something like that and a few of my lovely classmates raided every room looking for it, but there was no sign of it.
So this then set me back quite a bit and I had to buy some more silk and try and get this aesthetic once again, which was frustrating as it was not possible as I found natural dyes were extremely hard to control.

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