Certificate Module 5, chapter 8: Paper Relief into Fabric Relief

Someone wiser than I once said something about best laid plans - well mine certainly went agley!  Despite my best intentions of working and posting regularly, life kind of got in the way, with a lot of family business to deal with.

I have been working away little and often since the spring, whenever family duties allowed.  I was doing a lot of time-consuming, labour-intensive hand stitching - most enjoyable and relaxing but painfully slow, so that it has taken a long time to have something finished to post.

Despite not posting since October, I am still enjoying this module and this chapter is fun and challenges my ingenuity to try to interpret in fabric the textured paper collages based on my original photos of texture in nature.

In this chapter we had to select five of our textured paper reliefs from chapter 3 and use fabric manipulation to interpret each of the five in two different ways.

While I haven't yet finished the chapter, I have completed two of the paper reliefs in two different ways.

5.8.1

In 5.8.1 I have chosen the image of thin branches hanging from a tree with little buds or shoots at intervals.  In the paper relief, I have used twisted and knotted paper to represent these knobbly buds.   I used tracing paper on a black paper background, pushing it around while the glue was wet to represent the foliage in the background.  For my first sample, I have used Bondaweb to fasten thin strips of  chiffon onto a calico background to represent the background foliage.  This has been a bit disappointing since it doesn't show up clearly enough.  To represent the knobbly branches, I used twisted strips of muslin couched down, pushing the fabric up to make bumps to represent the knobbly buds.  For the second sample, I again used Bondaweb onto stiff-ish silk dupion,  I laid habotai silk over this, pushing it around to make creases and folds.  On top of this I stitched down knotted strips of silk dupion.  Below, in 5.8.1a and 5.8.1b, I show the samples in close up.

5.8.1a

5.8.1b

5.8.2

For my next image, 5.8.2 above, I chose a picture of a small stream, with a gravel bank in the foreground and a rocky bank at the far side.  I turned the picture upside down so I could concentrate on just the textures.  In the paper relief, I had interpreted the rocks with pieces of tissue paper, coated with glue and then rolled into rock shapes.  For the waves in the stream, I again used tissue paper, manipulated into folds and pleats while the glue was still wet.  To depict the gravel I used an acrylic medium dabbed on to give the effect.  In the first fabric sample, I used trapunto to depict the rocks, with two layers of cotton fabric.  To depict the waves, I hand stitched little random pleats in the cotton fabric.  To try to capture the texture of the gravel, I used the technique which Colette Wolff calls "furrowing" in her book, "The Art of Manipulating Fabric" (Krause Publications, 1996),  The fabric to be gathered is cut to twice the size of the base fabric.  It is then stitched down around the edges and then secured at random places with tacks to gather the fabric.  I made these stitches very close together to get the texture of  gravel.  This took a long time to do, but I was pleased with the final result.  For the second sample, I decided to take a freer approach to the rocks and used Suffolk Puffs of various sizes.  While fiddly to stitch, especially the smaller ones, I love these little shapes and was delighted to be able to use them again.  For the waves in this sample, I used random kantha stitching at right angles to the waves and pulled it tightly enough to gather the fabric slightly.  I tried a bit of a step into the unknown with the depiction of the gravel for this second sample.  I remembered that years ago I had bought some heat shrink fabric which I had put away and never used.  I thought that I could use the principle of "furrowing" in a less laborious way if I laid a piece of it onto a piece of cotton the same size, stitched them together with random free machining and then ironed the whole thing, that the heat shrink fabric would shrink and produce the furrowed effect.  That was my theory  anyway!  The first piece of good luck was that I actually managed to find the heat shrink fabric.  The next piece of good luck was that it worked beautifully!  The two samples are shown in more detail below in 5.8.2a and 5.8.2b.

5.8.2a

5.8.2b

Having felt tired and run down for so long, I am starting to feel much better and am getting my old energy back enough to really enjoy this challenge.  I have three more images to choose and interpret in fabric and I am really looking forward to it.