Exhibition has received fantastic feedback

The art textiles group I'm part of SAlt (South Australian living textiles) is finishing up its first exhibition in Melbourne today. The exhibition has been on in the Exhibition Building at the Carlton Gardens for the last 4 days.

We have had fantastic feedback from a whole range of people. It always hard for people to know what to expect in terms of the quality of an exhibition when they have been unable to view any of the work prior to the opening. All in all it has been a great 4 days and I can't thank the other 4 members of the group enough. Thanks Judi Bushby, Julie Haddrick, Suzanne Gummow and Francie Mewett.

Below are some photos of the exhibition as a whole. Closeup photos of some of the works will follow in the next post.

Over-dyeing indigo

This was just a small piece of left over indigo dyeing that didn't work overly well so I over-dyed it with red procion dye. I actually quite like the result.

Indigo dyeing yet again

I'm not sure what it is about indigo dyeing but it sure has an addictive quality for me. The pieces below were dyed using the same vat I made up a few weeks ago.

This is one of my pieces above while it was oxidising on the clothes line.

Here is a section of the piece above after finished oxidising and having been ironed.

Another piece oxidising above. 

The piece above has finished oxidising and has been ironed.

I clamped 2 pieces of wood on the fabric above after folding it into a tight rectangle. I was disappointed when I opened it up to find there were some little spots on the white area. When I looked back at my wooden blocks I realised one of them had a little hole on it so some dye creeped in. 

Woven Fabric Basket

I made a tiny little woven basket today out of old scraps of my indigo dyed fabric. Below are photos of the steps I followed. 

First I cut 1cm wide strips of my fabric (with interfacing for stability) and laid them on a flat piece of paper. I then wove the strips under and over to create the base.

So that my base held its stability i then ironed a rectangle of thick interfacing on the back. It could also be stitched if you wanted. 

I then started weaving my first strip around the base of the basket. I used a bit of fabric glue to hold it in a few spots so it was easier to get started. 

Because the fabric wasn't overly stiff it made it a bit hard to get the edges to stand up. I had to add a few more dots of glue in a few places so I could work faster.

I then kept weaving strip after strip around the sides to build up the walls.

Once I'd made the walls of the basket as high as I wanted I folded some of the top strips down and cut some of them back. 

The photo above makes the edge look a bit messy so I decided it needed an edge to neaten it up. I cut a wide strip of dark indigo fabric and applied lots of glue. I then simply folded it over the edge of the basket.

I neatened up the dark edge on the pic above and so the finished basket is below. 

Indigo dyeing

At work last week I mixed up an indigo vat for our certificate 3 students. The vat didn't have the right Ph level and was playing up. This week I got it working perfectly. Below are some of the photos of the vat and the dying in progress. It is synthetic indigo, I use my own recipe if anyone wants a copy.

This is my very messy looking indigo vat. Works brilliantly!

Below are some photos i took of my work unwrapping. I love the beautiful green colour you get when the fabric is oxidising. If only you could keep the colour mix.

The red tray in the photo works quite well, it was really just there to catch the drips.

This is a photo of one of my students work just hanging on the line.

Now that most of the students have had a chance to do some dyeing, I think I'm going to try and do some myself. I just need to find the time is the trouble. I've done it in past years but I would really like to do some more pieces.