Hand Dyeing Silk Scarfs

Hand Dyeing.

 Been quite neglectful of my blog lately but have been a busy bee with my sewing and am planning to post up some of my projects I've been working on lately that I hope to eventually be available for a craft fair.
 

But to whet your appetite here are some dyeing experiments I've been making and having fun with.  They are 100% silk and are stitched with cotton then hand dyed.

I'm really pleased with the results and can't wait to get some more silk in so I can get some more colours going.  I love how rich the colours have come out. The silk really sets off the dye. I'm planning on some more blue colours and purple mixes in the future and doing some more variations other than just plain colour.

Enjoy,  Alice.

 

Sea Side Experiments

I went to the sea side with some family to celebrate some god news and took my camera with me so I could have a play on some of the settings it has. The camera is only a normal digital camera but I've wanted to play with the colour swap settings and accenting for a while and a bright day at the beach seemed a good time to have a go.

Lovely day out. Nice and bright and lots of colour going on but a bit boring.

After I played with the settings I got some of these:

These ones I took the vibrance out of the shot and added more grey tones. However I wanted to play more so went to colour swap and for my last shots exchanged all blue hues for greys, keeping warm hues. I think that these last two partially worked well. The lack of colour with the beige tones sweeping throughout really work effectively, especially in the last one.

While I was taking photos I also noticed the patterns on the rocks which had formed. I took some photos and loved how they came out. To me they look like charcoal drawings. 

These shots, purely accidental are, I think, the most interesting of the day. The top image has a lovely sense of movement which I try to have in my own drawings.  It also reminds me of the drape of fabric, like its about to fall off rock any moment.

Waterfront Museum Work

I stumbled across some work I did for an exhibition at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea, Wales and was struck by the quality of line in the images. Having not worked exclusively with line now for 6 months I find myself getting interested in the  forms of line and the shadows that have been created. I especially love the strong contrast between the white and the black.

For my final degree show I worked the other way round, with the black on a white wall to explore the shadows. However now, I'm thinking about how my lines, from the end of year would look against a black backdrop, but with the light still spotlighting them to create shadows. I think this could create some really interesting visuals an I'm hoping to get these experiments going soon.

Here are the starter images, where I was still experimenting with my ideas:

Here is the final piece I made in the waterfront: