Rusting and Felting

Sometimes I need to take a break from all the weaving and do something a bit more physical.  I've purposely avoided doing much felting while in grad school since I've done so much of it before, and because its so low tech and I feel I need to take advantage of all the great facilities at SCAD while I can.


A couple weeks ago I just got tired of staring at a computer and at my tapestry warp and had to do something different. I did some early experiments with felting and steel wool, and I wanted to get back to that and try to have the rust appear in just portions of the felt.


I'm not to sure of the forms these are taking, it was really just the first shape that came to mind, one that I've made in felt in the past.  But I'm happy with how the rust and the color turned out, and I think this process will come up again in some future work.

Prepping for PMA Craft Show

I'm super excited to announce that I'm going to be exhibiting at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show next week.  SCAD is sending a handful of fiber grads and metals and objects students to the show to share a booth.  I've been busy for the past couple weeks getting some of my weavings prepped and ready to go.  A few of the pieces I'm bringing are samples that I've shared before, spruced up and framed, but a couple are brand new pieces from earlier in the semester.  If you're going to be at the show come by and say hello!

Reeds. Iron Wire, Cotton/Linen Yarn.  Woven on a Dobby Loom.

Reeds. Detail.

Arguta. Iron Wire, Cotton Thread. Woven on A Jacquard loom.
Custom Steel Frame.

Arguta. Detail.

Tangential Section. Iron Wire, Cotton/Linen Yarn.  Woven on a Jacquard loom.
Custom Steel Frame.  

Tangential Section. Detail.

Undulations. Iron Wire, Cotton/Linen and Bamboo/Silk Yarns.  Tapestry Woven. 

Undulations. Detail.

This last piece is a sample of my lastest explorations, using an iron warp on a tapestry loom.  It's a much slower process, but I can control the threads on a whole different level.  Having the threads cross the warp at an angle and on a curve for example.

I've also purchased a new camera since my last post, hopefully you can see an improvement in the quality of the photos I'll be posting from now on!

New Weaving

 I got a chance to work on the Jacquard loom last week to try some new designs with steel wire and rusting.  By allowing the steel wire to float in front of the piece in large sections I can control were the rust appears and stains the cotton.

Steel and Cotton. Woven on a Jacquard loom, then rusted. 40" x 28"

Capillary Action - Final installation shots

Its finally done!  It ended up being just over 11 feet wide, 9 feet tall, and took over 6,000 yards of yarn.

Here's a picture with me in front of it for scale.  As a side note: my dress was dyed at the workshop a couple weeks ago, which I blogged about here. It was a light yellow to begin with, and I over dyed it with Iron and Tea to give it this nice grey/green.

I leave Paducah tomorrow evening. Its been a great, busy, productive, fun month. While I'm excited to get back home to my kitties and a certain bearded fella, I will defnitely miss all my new friends and the lovely studio here!

Coming together

Getting closer, about 3/4 complete as of yesterday:

And the poster I made for my reception next week:

Day Whichever Progress (I've lost count)

Here's a Progress shot from a couple days ago, at from outside last night:

Another fun thing about the studio is there are always toads outside at night.  I almost stepped on this little guy when I went out to photograph.

Natural Dye Workshop

This weekend I hosted a natural dye demonstration/workshop in the A.I.R. studio here in Paducah.  On Saturday we started out by mordanting our fiber - treating it with Alum or Iron in order to help the fiber take up the dye and make the color more permanent.

Our fiber after they came out of the mordants.

We also cooked our dyes on Saturday, using local Blackberries, Black Tea, Brazilwood and Turmeric.

The dyestuffs

The dye baths

In order to keep the blackberry dye from going grey we didn't simmer our fabric in it, but let it sit overnight. On Sunday we dyed the rest of our fiber.  The participants were able to get a wide range of colors depending on the choice of the Alum or Iron mordant, the amount of time in the dye baths and the fiber they used.  Many people brought natural wool roving but we also had some silk scarves and some recycled material from wool coats.

The range of colors for each dye were:

                                Blackberry: Light purple to lavender to grayish purple

                                Tea: Warm tans to grays

                                Turmeric: Bright yellow to gold to brown

                                Brazilwood: Mauve to magenta to dark purple

Our dyed fabric drying outside

The two tones from the different mordants are easy to see in Tina's samples

Showing off the difference between silk and wool.

Georgia knotted her silk scarves before putting them in the
dye bath in order to get these beautiful textures.

Day 6 Progress

It's Growing...

Progress Report

Day 2:

Day 4:

Paducah is lovely in June...

I'm spending the month of June in Paducah, Kentucky at the Paducah Arts Alliance Artist in Residence Studio.  I arrived Monday night and got settled in yesterday.  The studio is huge and open and super bright. And there's an entire shelf of tools and left over bits to play with.

 My goal is to create a large scale installation based on my slime mold studies.  Here's my large study hanging up in the store front gallery in Paducah.  Not such a great color combination with the walls...

So I'm planning on making this new installation with natural white yarn on steel wire instead of aluminum and strategically rusting some sections, which ties the work back to my more recent explorations in the studio and will fit better into the site. Here's yesterdays test piece.

I'm planning on updating my progress every few days so check back soon.  

Also, there is an amazing tree outside the studio with leaves bigger than my face!

Muslin over rusted metal with masking.

Before:

After:

More Rusted Weaving Experiments

Details of the different samples from the piece in this post.