Geezo, how distracted am I! I can’t seem to focus for a minute on anything without spinning on my heals back to the computer for another peek at Facebook. This networking business is seriously consuming and I think I had better find a way to be sensible about it otherwise I’m doomed. 5 minutes at the beginning and end of the working day is apparently the recommended quota – whhhhugh – that’s going to be hard but I’ll try.
In betwixt the messaging, comments, uploads and fits of face book giggles (see comments around the picture of our barn)I have been attending to the commission of a client who has waited patiently through all the wedding blitz for her blind.
This commission gave me an opportunity to dig out my rusty dye pots to create fitting colours for dog wood and cornus twigs:
These dyes have accompanied me through many a studio and still endure - the metal tins haven't though.
Cornus Twigs
The roller blind is to represent,in some way, Cornus/Dog wood twigs..with a leaf or two thrown in.. First step. Habotai silk:
Silk and inspiration and time to figure out best dye combinations for desired colours.
I would like to suggest that the next part of the process is measured and carefully applied with studiously compiled colour charts and highly sensitive measuring devices. Heck no…Keith Floyds approach to dying – a little speck of this and a peppering of that and Hey presto – a colour, that I can’t repeat!
and only the finest white wine vinegar will do!
Fabric goes in white...
and comes out different. Here are the five colours in their rinse water.
Silks, dry and ready for applique.
Now time to figure out how this design is going to take shape. I do a preliminary sketch,
but there's only so much you can gauge from a medium as different as pen and pencil.
So I swiftly move on to fabric samples…trying different approaches, applying colours, shapes, notions, to see what is and isn’t effective. Kind of like a fabric sketch pad:
The mental image of how this blind will look is starting to form.
Some things work, others don't!
and so the process continues (around face book frenzy) until I have a firm enough image in my mind as to the forms and colours that will make up this blind.
I’ll keep you posted!