Day 22! My Stripe Library 30-Day Challenge! 30 days is seeming like a crazy long time to be doing this, what was I thinking??? Took Saturday off. Then I had a lovely time designing this sample on Sunday. More development of the gathering idea. The tassels off the edge of the fabric can be used as fringe or they can cut off at the edge. I like the idea of stitching lines with felt, will do more of this!

Back

Detail of gathering abilities

Materials: Paj Silk Fabric Tamarillo. Hand dyed superfine Merino tops: Tamarillo, Nomad, Black Current, Smoky Amethyst, Tumeric, new soft Coral colour not named yet.

Back to the ‘Classic’ stripe idea. I so enjoyed creating this sample! I think the essence of stripe creation is combining good spacial sequences with good colour sequences. Those of you who know me, know how much I love spending hours playing with COLOUR! So I was in heaven with this sample. By the way, these are some of the trending colour for 2018 (not that it matters, but it was fun working with some new colours Treetops is dyeing right now). I also played with the idea of gathering – I can’t wait to make this into something wearable!!!

Materials: Tissue Silk Fabric: Mule. Nuance superfine Merino top: Cumin. Hand Dyed superfine Merino tops: Red Dog, Slate, Nudie, Toast, Straw, Tassie Salmon, Sage, Allspice.

I wanted to explore combining more traditional stripes with blocks and lines of colour in Silk Hankies. I achieved a subtle Ikat-like effect, which I really like and will explore more in the future… so many ideas spring to mind, it’s very exciting! Unfortunately, my Silver Princess Colour Harmony (subtle Eucalyptus greyed-off blue-greens) is very hard to photograph well, I just didn’t do it justice and didn’t have time to photograph the materials. Which are: Silver Princess Silk Mesh, hand-dyed superfine Merino tops in Silver Princess, and five hand-dyed solid colours in Silk Hankies.

I wanted to explore the idea of a 2-D stripe. I also played with a more organic stripe but didn’t like my execution of this very well, technical issues need to be resolved. It was kind of a fun idea that could be explored more.

Detail

Materials: Natural Tissue SIlk fabric. Coloured Nuance superfine Merino wool tops: Mule, Stone and Sea Spay. Hand dyed superfine Merino tops: Merlot.

Well, you have good days and then you have bad days…. Not happy with this one. It had a lot of potential but failed to come together in the end. Will try a few other things tomorrow to see if I can make the concept work better. Don’t think the black wool was the way to go this time around.

Day 18.5 – This is a continuation of playing with of a few left over pieces from Day 18. I thought I’d try to simplify the design elements, and adjust a few technical issues. Upon reflection, I think I should have put the darker red on the left side and let the other lighter red grade toward the right. Oh well, a few more questions have been resolved, which is always good. Do you like the red better than the black background?? These two stripes are the same as the far left stripes on Day 18.

Detail

I wanted to use my Colour Harmonies (multi-coloured tops) to make simple stripes and play with colour movement. I have also been holding out to play with silks and stripes. So, here is the first attempt using Silk Hankies. I love the rick-rack effect! I used Silk Mesh on the back and once again, great effects to be had here, and great drape. There is only one-layer in the stripes, hence the Silk Mesh to stabilize its structure. Do you like the stripes running horizontal or vertical???

Silk Mesh in colourway Regrowth has been used on the backside. Plus detail photo.

Detail showing highlight stripes using Silk Hankies. Love the rick-rack effect that happens because of the wool shrinkage.

Materials: Silk Mesh in Regrowth. Hand dyed superfine Merino tops in Colour Harmonies: Heartache, Regrowth, Kimberly Blue, Red Earth, Sea Grass, Southern Seas, Lavish, Tamarillo. Silk Hanies in Heartache, Sea Grass.

So I got side-tracked today when I had an light-bulb inspiration moment to play with the idea of shadows. Everyone had been enjoying the backside of the samples where the nuno felted tissue silk fabric toned the colours. So I set about trying to achieve having that effect on both the front and on the back at the same time. Somehow I got away from stripes – I set off to making shadows of a fence and because of a technical challenge I ended up having to put a line along the spine of the fence line – which I think turned it into a leaf. Plus I got the scale wrong – the perspective was difficult and needs more work, it all needs more work – but hey, its just a sample….

Backside is almost a complete mirror image of the front side.

I tried creating the fence-like effect again but used needle-felted prefelts (to give more precise lines) for the frontside and wool tops on the backside (covered with the tissue silk). Detail photo below.

Materials: Tissue Silk Fabric: Tarnish. Hand dyed superfine Merino tops: Midnight Blue, Merlot (should have a bit more blue in it)

I’m not a quilter, but I love some of the visual effects and play on colour that quilters are able to achieve! So I set myself the goal of making a small stripe/quilt sample today. What you can’t see if that in places I only left the tissue silk, so you can see through it in places. I’m more of a Gee’s Bend quilter, if you know what I mean…. Will work more on this idea tomorrow, it needs heaps more work but I like the potential and want to take it further.

Nuno felted tissue silk on the back creates a very interesting effect.

Materials: Tissue Silk Fabric: Peri Peri. Superfine Merino tops hand dyed: Straw, Terracotta. Colour Nuance Woo: Urban, Cumin, China Blue, Turkish Red.

Another day for technical challenges… Starting to figure out what it takes to keeps lines where and how you want them, plus how to create backgrounds that shrink without distorting your image. I always resort to landscape when concentrating on other problems….

Detail….

Materials: Nudie Tissue Silk Fabric. Hand dyed superfine Merino Coastal Heath. Colour Nuance Wool: Stone.