stitch. print. repeat.

"I think your self emerges more clearly over time"

                                                        MERYL STREEP

Regardless of age and all histrionics aside, this quote is perfectly applicable to any stage of personal and professional growth. It seems even more pertinent after participating in a five-day intensive  workshop with visiting fibre artist Maxine Sutton (my second workshop this summer). The class was offered in late June to CTS Co-op members as part of our annual professional development practice. It was accompanied by a lovely lecture at the Textile Museum  of Canada, open to all interested in Maxine's work.

Left: Maxine Sutton during demo at CTS.
Right: Image on the cover of EMBROIDERY magazine, September/October 2008.

Skills wise, the workshop delved mostly in cloth embellishment, manipulation processes and printing. Concept wise, it presented our immediate environment as the muse. We created pages for our hand-stitched sketchbook which we were encouraged to continue building as part of our creative endeavours. I'm truly enjoying this particular process.

One of my pages (channeling Morandi), still a work in progress.

Besides our individual work, Maxine had us involved in two collaborative projects. The first one required us to hand over one of our pages so one of our colleagues could finish it up. This exercise rendered beautiful results.

Cathy finished this piece for me. What she originally received was the background cloth with the white square, red rectangle and French knots on the right. The end result is so very quiet and beautiful, the perfect memory.

A more detailed view of Cathy's lovely embroidery and superb quote.

This is what I'm finishing up for Cathy. So far, my contribution is the appliqué of the lower piece and the filling of the bird's body, plus the red French knots which will eventually to become the horizon.

I find the back extremely engaging.

The second collaboration was more ambitious. We created a still life at the centre of (half) the table and proceeded to "react" to it by picking some items to sketch on cloth. We would then incorporate our objects to a larger piece of linen to complete the group effort.

Work in progress. Each of us contributed to an area of the piece.

My selections: White sea urchin, coral and driftwood.

My interpretation of the urchin. Paper template, natural dyed fabrics and sewing thread.

I don't remember when was the last time I did appliqué.

Sea urchin with coral, drift wood and polka dot. The authorized palette: Blue, orange and yellow

We all continued to embellish and print over different areas of the piece.

Text stencils are positioned. A lot of editing takes place (in the picture, CTS members Fionna, Kerry and Cathy).

Work in progress over a small portion (this segment represents about a third of the piece). Text stencils are now in place and waiting to be printed (which still needs to happen). I'll be sure to update this last step once it is completed.

In the end, two things became apparent. One: unequivocally, we all experienced very significant and powerful moments of discernment. Two: the sense of community that was already in place at our  studio was most definitely nourished and strengthened by these collaborative projects.

On a very personal level, the impact was of seismic proportions (hence the opening quote). Besides providing invaluable feedback, Maxine's workshop helped inject vitality and freshness to  work that seemed to have plateaued due to some serious over-thinking. It offered the much needed nudge to propel what was ready to be put back into motion with full clarity of purpose. What a privilege it is to enunciate such words.

Y'all, thank you.

natural dyes, an introduction

Every term, our CTS Co-op  offers splendid workshops related to the field of fibre arts. This summer I was able to participate in three of them.

The first one, Natural Dye Printing, took place in  early June as part of the CTS's Sustainable Design Series and offered by former member Thea Haines. During these two sessions, Thea delivered a clear  and very engaging introduction to various basic, yet rich techniques within the discipline.  For a few hours that weekend we became alchemists deeply involved in the processes, discovering the gentle nature of the materials while achieving surprising and alluring results.

We started by reviewing the very important steps of pre-treating (better known as mordanting) the fabric so that it could easily "take" the dyes (1). We followed by creating very useful colour charts with the aid of "thickened" dyes (such as pomegranate, black walnut, osage orange, madder and Brazil wood, to name a few) plus iron and allum as "colour changers" (2). The last step consisted in "steaming" these charts to "set" the colours properly (3).

3-The charts were rolled in muslin, then coiled and later placed in the steamer.

Steamer. A large rice bamboo steamer worked perfectly.

After carefully studying the charts, the final choices were made, and so the printing started by using different mark-making tools, blocks and most certainly, silk screens.

Some mark-making tools and blocks (commercial and hand-made) provided by Thea.

The following are images of one design I'm just taking out for a "test drive" for which the natural dyes worked perfectly!

The first image is a close up of the screen against the window, I've always loved how light filters through the screens. The second image is of cloth dyed with logwood and "discharged" with citric acid (!!!!). The back of the fabric shows how thorough the colour extraction was. The third image is of my favourite print resulting from these two days. The perennial considerations: editing and end use.

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RESOURCES

Instructor: You may look up Thea's blog and website by clicking here and here.

Suppliers: Maiwa, of course. And from my end, while in Asheville a couple of weeks ago, I visited Earth Guild and as expected, it had pretty much everything.

Another voice: Please visit our CTS Co-op's blog, where our own Roohi Qureshi writes about the workshop while showcasing more images and a fun video of her print! A very complete resource guide is offered as well. You may check it out here.
Book: The most recommended was Wild Color by Jenny Dean.