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Archive for the ‘Craftology’ Category

Travel Journaling

Posted in Craftology, family life, pen-and-ink, travel journaling, watercolor painting, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 10, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Today child #1, child #3 and I went to take a class in travel journaling with Donna Naes.  This was her “materials list” – isn’t it beautiful? Being such a visual person myself a list like this really speaks to me.

Another example of Donna’s work. She teaches outdoors a lot. Among other exercises she uses a “timed exercise”, where the students sketch for a very short time to capture only what is essential.

Every now and again in my life I have made an attempt to do this everyday-journaling, where you sit down and actually draw/sketch something, just a  small amount of time. And every now and again I stop doing it, although I always love the results of a visual journal. When this class came up at Craftology I thought it was time to revive the daily sketching, and take my son and daughter with me, who are both a) interested to learn these things and b) have a basic talent when it comes to art. Which, in all fairness, applies to my other daughter, too, but she opted to go horse-back riding instead.

For a long time I have admired the pen-and-ink work of Danny Gregory, make sure to check out his blog! Another one of my favorites is D. Price, a little lot whackier than Gregory, but highly inspiring in a lot of aspects. Well, Donna’s work and style is absolutely comparable to both of these artists – and she had a ton of enthusiasm and energy as a teacher. I loved it!

One of the other participants, who was more leaning towards classic watercolor as opposed to pen-and-ink sketching:

Lacking the great outdoors in a studio setting, we were asked to pick out an image from a pile of National Geographic magazines and set to work. My daughter worked on a desert landscape:

My son opted for a quite complex photograph with shiny and reflecting surfaces of all kinds:

I picked a picture from an article about recycling, changed its format a bit to long and skinny, didn’t draw ALL the canisters, but was still happy with the result:

I feel very inspired and have high hopes to pursue a daily sketch from now on, with my journal maybe on the kitchen counter, always in reach.

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Felting flowers

Posted in Craftology, felting, felting class, teaching, tagged , , , , , , on April 29, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

On Friday I taught four willing and enthusiastic women how to wet-felt a simple little flower with a leafy stem. Diana’s class description promised a whole flower wreath with 5 or 6 flowers, but we only had three hours and three of the four ladies had never wet-felted before. They were very patient, I must say, and worked/battled their way through my instructions and the wool. In the end everyone had a lovely flower and a leafy rope and knew how to produce more of the flowers at home, if they wished to. I had a good time, I love sharing with people what makes me so happy myself. Thank you, dear students, and Diana for having me!

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Dye Day

Posted in Craftology, dyeing, linen, silk dyeing, vintage fabric on February 29, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

After the mordanting, the (so much more rewarding) dyeing. Four hours straight on a blustery day. I shared the dye pots with Annette who creates lovely needle felted things. She dyed roving, I dyed my linen and cotton fabrics and thread.

This was the set-up, on the sidewalk in front of Craftology: two heavy-duty gas camping burners, a lot of pots filled with the most interesting dye stuff and a clothes line. We switched out pots, as they became too cold and rotated colors. Indigo was definitely a favorite of both of us. It is just such a thrill to take out your piece and watch it turn the loveliest blue as it reacts with the oxygen.

This is the cochineal pot in front, the only not exactly plant-dye of them, since cochineal is a tiny bug, which, when dried and ground,  releases a deep pink (sometimes red, depending on water quality, heat, concentration and other temperamental circumstances).

This is Brazilwood. It yields this perfect warm shade of brownish-reddish-orange.

This was an experiment with lichen, but it didn’t give off a lot of color at all. It could be the way it was set up or our half-hearted try, distracted by the more flashy and vibrant colors we had available.

These are other trials Diana got passed on from somebody. They certainly looked interesting, but didn’t show stunning results. Same as above, I guess.

Despite the picture being a little dark you can see the bright yellow of Osage Orange in the back. It is the bark of the Osage Orange tree that performs this trick.

A good sunny spot for drying my embroidery/crocheting thread.

Brazilwood and madder root.

Cochineal – what an amazing pink!

This is how I felt after hours of dipping things into dye pots, exchanging rinsing water in big buckets, pondering about color combinations and sequences and withstanding the wind. Thank you, Diana, for a wonderful day and such a lovely result!*

*I will have to take pictures of my washed and folded fabric, the harmony of the colors is really something else…

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Mordanting day(s)

Posted in Craftology, dyeing, linen, vintage fabric on February 22, 2012 | 3 Comments »

This Thursday I am going to use Diana’s dye pots at her beautiful crafting space Craftology. She is a master of natural plant-dyeing and I have used her plant-dyed wool felt, silk and embroidery floss in many a project before. A few years back I took one of her dye classes that she co-taught, and hosted a dyeing party at my own house shortly after. But since I am (still?) a novice at this art I found it to be difficult to juggle different dye-pots at different temperatures and with different requirements, apart from the fact that you need a certain basic equipment to do this and my two flimsy camping stoves weren’t very helpful.

Now that I have collected a stash of table linens, cotton and linen yardage as well as cotton and linen embroidery thread that I all want to use for various KlaraLuna projects in the near and far future, I asked Diana’s help with dyeing them. She instructed me how to prepare my fabric and thread in order for them to accept the dye in the most favorable and lasting way possible. So, this is what I did started yesterday.

Above is the basket of above mentioned fabric; with the help of my nearly 12-year-old we wound 10 skeins of cotton and linen thread…

…and off they went to their first out of three mordanting baths, the alum bath. Simmer for one hour, let cool overnight. I used the stick for stirring and pushing the billowing fabric back into the water, which meant an avalanche of alum water onto my kitchen stove every time, until I had enough and wedged the stick between the dye pot and the ventilation hood above it. This kept the fabric down and I could actually step away from it for more than five minutes.

This morning I took out the fabric etc., threw out the alum water and started the tannin bath. This three-step process is necessary only for cellulose fibers, or plant fibers. It is a simpler process for animal fibers. The second bath asks for tannin, which I got by boiling oak galls, and soda ash, or sodium carbonate, which I could not find in two of my local grocery stores, nor a drugstore nearby. I had baking soda – so I learned through heavy googling that I can turn my baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) into sodium carbonate by cooking it at high heat (400 degrees Fahrenheit) for a long time (1 hour). I did that last night. This is what the “soup” looked like…

The brown color of the water doesn’t dye the fabric, by the way. Simmer for half an hour, let cool in tannin bath. And this is where everything is at right now. Tomorrow morning, after thorough rinsing, follows a second alum bath, and then I’m done and can take my wares to Diana’s. But I’m sure it will be all worth it! Results will follow.

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