My Final Surface Design Piece.

Last Thursday was my final critique in my Surface Design class. It was bittersweet, because while I'm exited to be done and focus on my yarn full time, I am going to miss several things about school.

This was my final project. I decided to go back to three-dimensional projects in the end, because my two-dimensional pieces this semester have been pretty meh.

If I put this in a gallery space, I'd want to cover a whole wall with these. In the meantime, I think I'll put these up in my studio (away from cats!) when I finally move.

Fiber Field Trip: Material Science.

Last week in my weaving class we took a trip over to the Material Sciences department at my school to see how that polymer fiber I was working with is made.

This stuff is just polymer, not the stuff that will break down on the body, but I believe it's the same process to make both.

 These get melted down...

 ... in this crazy-looking machine called an "extruder".

 Pictures to help us artists understand what's going on. This stuff is the "thermoplastic".

 Lindsay putting some of the polymer beads in the extruder.

The fiber will get pulled through this icky water after it's melted down and spun around this screw thing inside the machine.

 

 It first comes out this end (and smells like hot glue).

Into the nasty water.

And pulled out and rolled onto a cylinder thing. The speed of the cylinder determines the thickness of the fiber.

So I obviously still don't understand the science-y stuff behind all of this, but it was really interesting to see.

-- Laura

FO: Military Cardigan.

I'm in an advanced weaving class this semester, but because I've taken plenty of weaving and my professor knows that knitting is more applicable to what I'm doing post-graduation, she is letting me use the knitting machine for my projects.

My overall focus this semester has been the history and culture of knitting. For this project, I researched knitting's roles in war, specifically the two World Wars. After reading about how women would unravel old wool garments to make sweaters for the soldiers, I decided to make my own military-inspired cardigan using recycled wool.

This was my first garment on a knitting machine. To be honest, I don't really enjoy the machine, but I do like how quickly I was able to whip this up.

All of the light gray is machine-knit, and the dark gray pieces are hand-knit.

This will be critiqued in class tomorrow. I'm really happy with it, so hopefully I'll get a mostly positive response.

-- Laura

Screenprinting Project 5.

My 5th screenprinting project is due Tuesday, and I just finished it this morning. This project is a portfolio trade, so everyone in the class will get one copy of everyone's prints. I did an edition of 20 + 3 artist proofs. Finished paper size is 11x11.

I had good intentions of taking pictures after each layer, but I forgot to do that for the last 3 or 4 layers because I was in a groove this morning.

From beginning to end:

 *insert a few layers here*

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. If you're wondering, the first few layers are knit stitch shapes, and the circular things are abstracted yarn balls. I need to get it properly photographed so I can include it in my portfolio exit review next week (ahhh!).

Also, I noticed today that my third screenprinting project was in one of the cases outside the class today. I don't know how long it's been up, haha.

P.S. Are you celebrating Wovember? It's still a bit too warm for the most part for a lot of wool here in Texas, but I wore (handknit) wool socks today!

-- Laura

Knitting Machine Woes.

I was asked by my weaving professor Lesli if I would help her with a project she was working on involving knitting experimental fibers on the knitting machine."Experimental fiber" intrigued me, so I jumped at the chance. I've also been working a lot with the knitting machines this semester, including completely taking one apart, so I figured it wouldn't be too difficult.

Tip: Don't take apart a knitting machine if you want to keep your sanity.

Oh boy, was I wrong. I believe what this fiber is made out of is biopolymer (I need to double-check but I'm pretty sure) and it's biodegradable.

This stuff breaks if you look at it the wrong way.

The people developing it are going to be doing testing on it as a fabric to see what it can be used for. Right now, they are considering medical uses. Where Lesli comes in is to turn this thread into a fabric to be tested. She had already been doing samples and working with it, and brought me in to do some of the samples.

 This is one that Lesli did. The red on the top and bottom is just cotton.

This material was so difficult to work with. It stretched out very easily and would snap. When that would happen, the whole thing would fall off the machine and the dropped stitches would immediately unravel down to the bottom row. What I thought would have taken me 30 minutes to do ended up taking me 3 hours, and they don't look near as good as I would like.

It was actually going well at this point....

Nevertheless, I got my three very wonky and small samples done, although I don't know if they're usable yet because I wasn't able to do very big sections.

 

Who knows, I might be back in there next week trying to make new ones.

Screenprinting Project 3 and Netting Workshop.

My third screenprinting project turned out much better than the second, but still not without its major flaws. I don't know why I can't keep everything clean! I've gotten a lot better though, and the only critique I got from my instructor was about technique.

There were two new techniques introduced: working reductively and split fountain. Working reductively is where you work in the same screen for each layer, just blocking out more and more area and getting more detail each layer. Split fountain is printing using two or more colors at once to create a gradient effect.

My first layer was one of three I did split fountain on, but its the only one you can really see it on. I didn't want a crazy rainbow print, so I did very subtle split fountains for the other two required layers.

I had every intention of taking pictures in between each layer, but I kept forgetting because I would get in the printing zone and just completely forget.

Here's the finished product. I'm still not good at putting enough pressure when I'm printing large areas, resulting in uneven layers. Meh. At least I'm improving.

In other news, if you follow me on Twitter, you may remember I said I was going to a netting workshop last Sunday. A classmate went to Penland this summer where she learned how to make nets, so she was kind enough to teach the rest of us.

I don't know if I'll ever use this skill, but it was kind of cool to make a little sample. I forgot to take pictures during the process, and this photo is the only one I have of the workshop:

I caught my friend Katy's (we were at her house for the workshop) kitten with my net sample! She looks so much like Othello when he was a kitten!

-- Laura

Fun With Cyanotype!

The first process we were taught this semester in my Surface Design class was cyanotype. Cyanotype uses two chemicals, ammonium iron citrate and potassium ferricyanide, and when exposed they turn the fabric they are applied to blue. The unexposed areas, when done correctly, stay white (or the original fabric color).


I had big (literally) plans for my cyanotype project, but they didn't turn out as expected. Luckily, I'm quite used to my first idea not working out, so I was able to come up with an even better project.


For the process, we first coated our fabric with the mixture of the two chemicals and let dry in a completely dark room.

Mixing chemicals in a small, dark room.

 Once dry, you can expose the fabric with a stencil covering the areas you want to stay white. I drew on some thin plastic I found in the supply closet with Sharpie, so that the light would be blocked out of the areas I drew. I was trying to draw little knit stitches...

At this point I should have known I was doomed.... they look like hearts!

Time to expose! You can do this in the sun, but as the sun can vary so much, I used our exposure table at school.

Yay for UV lights!

After it's exposed, you wash it out immediately so that it doesn't expose further. Even though my design was bust, the actual exposing process worked perfectly.

   

So what should I do? Well, soda ash takes cyanotype out of fabric, and leaves it looking a little yellow. So I washed the entire piece of fabric with water and soda ash, re-coated it, exposed it with no stencil so it was just blue, and screenprinted with soda ash mixed into print paste.

Click the image to see it bigger.

I printed close-up images of things that I've knitted throughout my life for myself and others. I ended up being very happy with the outcome, and I got a lot of positive feedback in critique as well.

Now I just have to figure out how to make my next project better (or at least on par with) this one. I'm totally stumped right now for ideas!

-- Laura

Vat Dye Discharge Workshop.

Although a few days late, as promised I have the full post on the Vat Dye Discharge workshop with Janet Taylor.

Essentially, what vat dye discharge does is take out the color where you apply it and drop in a new color at the same time. For example, the picture I already posted:

Here, the red was dyed first, and then I stamped on the gold. It took out the red so that the gold would show up. This was on charmeuse silk.

Another scarf I did is on habotai (or china silk):

The difference here is that the discharge part of the process moved faster than the dye, leaving a halo effect around the shapes.

We created big stamps the size of the scarves to make the patterns, but you can also screen print with it. We rolled our concoctions on...

And then stamped them on the fabric...

From here on out will be miscellaneous pictures from the workshop. If you're interested in learning the process yourself, Janet will be teaching the process at Penland in April and possibly at Arrowmont in the near future as well. I'm seriously considering going to Penland so I can explore this some more.

That's all for today. Coming soon, I finished a pair of socks that I can finally show off!

Picture Post - Sneak Peak at What I've Been Doing Lately.

My Printmaking Project and I'm Finally Seeing Red.

As promised, here is my poorly-executed printmaking project. It's definitely better than my first one though. That means my next one will be flawless! (ha)

Today I spent most of my time prepping things for the workshop I'm assisting for this week. We have a visiting artist at my school, Janet Taylor, who was actually my surface design professor Amie's instructor when she was an undergrad. Janet came here to teach us about vat dyeing and taking out color while simultaneously adding a new color. I am beyond excited to learn about all of this!

One of the things I did to prep today was dye some silk for samples. I got to choose one of the colors, so I jumped at the chance to dye them red. I have a love/hate relationship with the color red. Red is my favorite color (my car's even red), but I have never successfully dyed something red. It always comes out pink, no matter how much dye I used or tweaked the ratios of color. I hadn't tried to dye red in over a year, so I decided that this would be the perfect opportunity as I would have not one, but two fibers artists over my shoulder who could help me.

Amie told me for about the millionth time that to get a good red, I should use a 1:1 ratio of scarlet and fuchsia MX dyes, and that I should use a lot. Janet agreed with this, and even though I swear I've done all of that before, but I did it anyway, hoping for a miracle. Well, no such luck. I was staring at hot pink once again in my dye bath. As I was admitting defeat, Janet came up and said that we weren't going to give up until we got it right. I took the silk out, and she added a good amount (about the same amount as one of the other dyes) of sun yellow. I was afraid it was going to be too orange, but to my delight after stirring it up and putting the silk back in, it appeared red! Real red, not pink-red!

And guess what? After washing the silk, it was still red!

I'm pretty sure my friends in my weaving class thought I was weird for running around showing everyone how red the fabric was, but I couldn't help it. I felt like my life was finally complete.

-- Laura

I'm Not As Good At Screenprinting As I Thought.

This weekend has been a busy one for me. I'm trying to get ahead in school because this next week on Tuesday and Thursday I will be the assistant in a dyeing workshop given by a visiting artist (I'll talk more about that in a later post).

This workshop is all day Tuesday and Thursday, meaning I will miss my printmaking class those days, or in other words, 6 hours of studio time. Our current project is due the following Tuesday, meaning I get no class time to work on it.

I actually would rather work outside of class time since it's a lot less crowded, so it's not an issue for me. I've been screen printing for a couple of years now in my fibers classes and had gotten pretty good at it, so I figured I could crank out the five layers I needed in a few hours yesterday. That was not the case.

There are a lot of things different about the way the fibers screenprinting goes and the printmaking screenprinting goes, and so I feel very clumsy and out of my element trying to get used to everything. For one thing, I have a much smaller workspace than I'm used to. I cannot keep anything clean because I'm not used to everything being so jammed together. In fact, I actually had to go buy more paper yesterday because I ruined so many sheets.

 I got to spread out a bit because there weren't as many people in the studio yesterday.

I ran across the street to one of the off-campus school supply stores that stocks the norm (textbooks, pencils, UNT shirts...) but also has a large art supply section. I figured that since it was Saturday, I could run in and out fairly quickly and didn't even bother taking off the apron I was wearing since no one would really see me.

I walk in and there is a very long line. I had forgotten that it was game day. Not any game day, but the first game day of the year and the first game ever in the brand new stadium. Everyone was buying UNT shirts. I sadly got in the long line so I could ask for my one sheet of Rives BFK. While I was in line, I kept getting a lot of weird looks and I didn't know why. And then I looked down.

I took this picture while standing in line.

I had forgotten I was wearing the apron. This apron isn't mine, but a classroom apron, so there's no telling how old it is. Hardly any of the actual fabric is showing on this thing. I took a full picture later so you could see how I looked:

It doesn't help that the apron was longer than my shorts and it looked like I wasn't wearing pants from the front.

The guy in front of the in the line buying a - surprise! - UNT shirt turned to me and said, "Uh, so do you, like, paint a lot?" to which I responded, "Oh, no, I'm in printmaking." I think that confused him because he didn't look like he understood what I meant, but he turned around after that and didn't try to say anything after that.

Finally when I got back to work I started getting in the grove of things a lot better, but my prints still aren't perfect. If I had a perfect print on one layer, I'd get a drip on the next layer on that sheet. At least the craftsmanship has improved since my first project last week.

I only managed to get three layers done in the three hours I was in the studio. At least I'll be able to finish the last two today and be done with it. I'll take a picture of the best one and post it... maybe.

-- Laura