Thursday, 16 October 2014

Stitched Rust Marks

I've just unwrapped the parcels of stitched fabrics wrapped around rusting items that we prepared on Saturday afternoon as part of CQ Winter school workshop with Alice Fox . After a busy morning wrapping up items , wetting them with tea, it was nice to have  a change of pace, digesting our delicious lunch!  Alice shared some of her samples showing how she'd stitched into the fabrics before dyeing with rust and built up layers and textures. The picture below shows 'before' and the results above 'After' (these are the more interesting ones)
 
An intriguing idea was to incorporate a piece of metal between 2 layers and stitch around it, the idea being that the metal remained in it ( might be a useful way  to  weight a quilt) I prepared 2 samples with washers- one with linen , the other with cotton organza. In both cases I placed the fabric on top of some watercolour paper  and then put a silk chiffon layer over the top - hoping to catch any marks  above and beneath ( the photo below is after a days soaking in  tea.)

 In the case of the cotton organza ( above) with  stitching out from the centre, it was the paper beneath that gave the most interesting marks
For the linen, all 3: paper, linen and silk chiffon over-layer  provided interesting, sand ripple like marks. It's my aim   to  combine all  of them in one piece and also investigate this  particular method further

1 comment:

Heather said...

Wow, what a workshop that must have been! Very interesting results. Does the rust weaken the fabric over time or do you use some kind of neutralizer?