The place where I live

I should have written posts at stages of making the dress for the Weaving Narratives Project but was too busy getting it finished ready for exhibitions!

The cotton sateen fabric from Offset Warehouse was dip-dyed in recognition of the dye-works at the end of the site, then discharge dyed to replicate the factory wall at the end of my garden (shown behind the dress drying on the line!)

Then it was screen-printed with a design based on Commer cars chassis from their catalogues.
The top layer of cotton voile was printed with a plan of the current residential estate.
























It can still be seen in Flitwick library October 13th - 15th along with a wealth of other textile art inspired by Bedfordshire Archives

Weaving Narratives

I am taking part in Weaving Narratives, a textile-based community art project celebrating the history of Bedfordshire's towns, in conjunction with Bedfordshire Archives.  I am hoping to design clothing with fabric designs that reference the history of the place where I live, for more on this see the blog post I wrote for the project.

The wall at the end of my garden is the remains of factories previously on the site which I will use for my colour palette.






Then I think I will use chassis patterns from the vehicles built here to form a stripe pattern.










I had a play at some samples during a recent workshop with Clive Barnett at Art Van Go. He showed us how to create layers of pattern using mono-printing and screen-printing techniques and Procion dyes thickened with Manutex. Great fun - but not all the techniques will translate to larger pieces of fabric!

Fair Trade Fortnight - Day 6

I attended the first session of a series of workshops in Bedford Archives today as part of a Textile Arts project entitled 'Weaving Narratives'. We had been warned it might not be warm so I was searching out thick clothing and realised I knitted this jumper with handspan wool from Botswana. This was a newly set up project for local income generation when I was there in the 1980s. Here it is worn with a pair of bamboo Monkee Genes and my comfortable blue Conker buckle shoes (looks like they don't make this style any more).
There is debate about the ethics of bamboo fibre - it grows fast, but does require energy and chemicals to produce - it is a 'regenerated cellulose fibre', which basically means the plant is chemically mushed down and then extruded to create the fibre. However the plant grows fast and doesn't require the pesticide use or water supplies of cotton and the fibre does hold colour and shape well - these jeans haven't worn on the knees .... yet! Bamboo Clothing are in favour, Patagonia are not.