A quick walk down by the Caldew from Hesket Newmarket. Floristically rich with: Toothwort, Goldilocks Buttercup, Herb Paris, Wood Anemones, Ramsons, Bluebells, Primroses and more ...gorgeous...
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| Toothwort...and below. |
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| Herb Paris. |
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| Goldilocks Buttercup. |
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| Wood Anemones. |
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| The first Bluebells. |
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| Meadow Saxifrage. |
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| Ramsons - Wild Garlic. |
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| The Caldew. |
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| Herb Robert and a snail! |
So the schools went back today in Cumbria ....and after a dire spell of weather, obviously the sun shone! You couldn't make it up ...
Glorious sunshine made the temperature feel higher and a vibrant green begins to encroach across the peaty moss....
The final geese fly north and Chiffchaffs, Willow Warblers, Sky Lark's calls punctuate the air.
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| Blue reflections... |
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| A vibrant green.... |
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| Across to Criffel - the water level is still high ... |
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| Across to Skiddaw - in the far distance. |
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| Black-tailed Godwit..and below. |
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| Geese heading north. |
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| Spring is in the air! |
Well I have never done any 'proper' Eco-dying/printing, so this was a first for me. I will admit that I can admire good eco-printed fabrics, but it's not something that I am drawn towards. However, when I saw the sample pieces - wow!
We began by trying to print with different leaves. Given the year and the fact that we are at a reasonable altitude in North Cumbria, there wasn't a lot of choice leaf-wise! Some worked well - others less so and some not at all. That information fed though, into our final pieces. To be fair I was delighted with mine. While the samples were steaming we had to wait, so this allowed a quick introduction to using onion skins to dye fabric using the Shibori technique.
One of the benefits of doing a workshop is that a lot of the preparation by way of scouring the fabric - so it is ultra clean and receptive to the plant pigments, and any mordanting required - to help fix the pigments, was done for us. Not to mention the advice and guidance of Maggie, to ensure our final pieces were successful.
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| A selection of leaves... |
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| Tightly bound to ensure maximum contact - T shirt yarn - new to me - what a find! |
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| Variable results - the piece is symmetrical as the fabric was folded around the leaves ot contrast printing from the top and bottom of the leaf. Raspberry and Geranium sp. leaves from the garden were successful and Maggie kindly brought some Eucalyptus leaves ...Sycamore leaves worked well too - at this time of year. |
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| Shibori with onion skins...the hand left piece was wrapped at an angle around a plastic tube, the middle piece was by wrapping around a thread and pulling it down to make a 'scrunchy' type form and the right hand piece was a mixture of pegs, tied in marbles and general scrunching up. The left hand one was dulled with an iron solution and the bleached blotches are lemmon juice. |
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| My final piece ....the 'target cloth'. |
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| Detail - with stomata texture. |
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| This was the print made onto the 'iron blanket' ...which in many ways I prefer. |
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| Detail. |
Somehow, inbetween the drizzly and windy foulness of today, we managed to grab a quick walk and find a smidgen of sunshine. A visit to a new wood - Powter Howe near Keswick - a very damp, licheny, mossy and fungusy wood, which is home to Pied Flycatchers. Thanks to the birdwatcher that pointed us in their direction and together with the 'Merlin' Ap confirming their call - we saw two different male birds. No photographs of them though.
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| Not looking really like Spring yet! |
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| Bark hosting numerous species in the damp! |
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| Moss, lichen and fungus. |
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| Many trees had large numbers of Hoof Fungus. |
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| 'Space' for Pied Flycatcher! |
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| A 'summit' cairn. |
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| Looking through the trees to the floods at the end of Bassenthwaite. |
After having practised pulling threads click here and played around with seams etc - I went on to make my final piece based on the sounds of wind and rain on Weholme Flow.. ..but it's not my final piece as I want to go 'big'on this piece. I have also just been on and eco-dying workshop and discussed the use of peat for dying - but that's another story and I need to decide what I am doing!
So here is my piece - basically the holes relate to the rain drops - but the wind can blow through them...the pulled threads are the wind resonating across the moss. The base is a peaty brown and the top a stormy sky. I think I have decided how to display this piece, as the holes need to be hung so that shadows are made ....but I haven't got round to that yet.
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| A plan .... |
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| Piecing .... |
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| Painted with watercolour ...the middle row pieces are a linen scrim which is easy to pull threads from ...unless you paint it, but I wanted to paint it so that the panels linked in colour as much as possible. The top and bottom row are linen - quite tightly woven, so easier to make holes in. |
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| The back of the piece ... |
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| Finished ..I'll trim the bottom right bit....before I decide how to finally mount/frame/hang this. Interestingly, the linen scrim takes the watercolour paint differently depending on it's orientation - so the warp and weft are clearly slightly different in composition. Luckily for me, I only rotated the middle panel so it was balanced...look at the difference in the coloured threads in the pulled section. |
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| Details ..and below - the white circles are holes... |
#fibreartstaketwo #debbielyddon #sensingplace
An interlude ..in the rain and wind. So as Storm Kathleen departed, a wet day was forecast ...but the afternoon proved fair and warm, so a quick trip round Wedholme Flow. It felt like spring, with a fall of Willow Warblers and a general warmth in the air...how wrong we were - back to rain again today!
But the moss had a tinge of green and birds were singing and displaying....
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| Water is still pouring off the moss... |
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| Early Cotton-grass. |
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| Reflections.... |
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| Well it has to be said, that I didn't expect my first Wheatear of the year to be on the moss... |
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| Wheatear... |
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| Tiger Beetle. |
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| Small Tortoiseshell. |
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| Looking across to Skiddaw. |
