Soft Sculpture Vessels

Having sat with Rob and slow stitched the sampler of various natural fibres. I then wrapped the sampler around some iron pieces and put the whole into a strong black tea solution. The iron in the bundle darkened the fibres considerably - in fact more than I had intended. I left the bundle in the tea solution for two days before removing and allowing to dry at room temperature. I decided I didn’t like the sample with the saddened colour so I decided to make it into soft sculptured vessels. I had some dried out beech leaves from the back lawn and I soaked these in water overnight and then sandwiched and stitched them between black organza. In doing this I found the process worked well and wondered if drying the leaves first and then rehydrating them was like drying natural weaving material that needs to be dried first and then rehydrated to prevent shrinkage of the original material. I am keen to experiment a bit more with these concept.

When I think about it Susanna Bauer who does amazing work with leaves and crotchet always dries her leaves first. A lightbulb moment perhaps.

These vessels are softer than the earlier sand covered vessel as I didn’t want to cover up the stitching and the applied leaves so I used gel medium to provide body to the vessels. I measured around some pvc pipe and stitched these into a tube and then used the base of the tube to create a pattern for the bottoms. For a bit on fun, I stitched feathers around the top of one vessel. The taller one is a piece of crotchet that I just mounted on some fabric and then rolled and left in the same tea solution but for a much shorter length of time. The fabric used is recycled cotton sheeting from the thrift store

Soy Milk as a Mordant

I have learnt a lot about the use of soy milk as a fixative and as a mordant during my study of earth pigments. Primarily to use soy you must use fresh soy milk that has been made that day from beans soaked overnight and blended with water prior to use.

I had tried soy milk as a mordant in earlier eco dying attempts but never been very successful. That was because I tried to use off the shelf store bought soy milk. So i decided to give this ago.

The example above was made using scoured cotton and soaking the cotton in fresh soy milk for about 30 minutes before making a bundle and steaming it. I omitted to give this fabric a tannin bath before using it so the liquidamabar leaves have not printed well but the maple, cotinus and forest tulip leaves have all transferred successfully. The cotinus leaves were fresh but the others were taken out of my freezer and rehydrated before use. I think a tannin dip would have further enhanced all the prints.