Ahh... Fabric

I don't know what fabric to use!!!

I wanted my designs to be floaty, but my method of printing makes the fabric too stiff and it doesn't drape, aaahhhhhhh!

If I wanted to use a voile type fabric I would need an underskirt, but the fabric would float more, but I want it to be more solid and have an element of construction! So much to think about!

Bleaching Comparison

For one of my bleaching samples I had added colour over the bleached out lines to see what effect it had as well as my main body of samples which just had the bleached out lines. But when I came to show my peers the samples, everyone was always drawn more to the sample on the left. So I decided to use our facebook group to get some hard evidence on which they preferred and better represents the Northern Lights.

These responses are very important as it would influence which design I choose to do for my final outcome, but as I plan on making more than one garment, the left sample would work better it means there can be subtle differences in the garments, rather than them being completely different dresses.

Samples no.7 Pushing it Further

While I was having my little crisis about my fabrics, I decided to do some more samples to take my mind off of it, however I didn't want to do more bleaching, so I decided to push two of my bleached samples further by combining them with other processes I have used.

Both the processes I used for pushing these further were done with transfer dyes, the first was done by screwing up the piece of fabric so that it only picks up some of the colour. And the second is the same method, used to create my very first samples, and although it looks really good, I would have create exactly the same thing by creating a multicoloured colour sheet, instead of going through the length processes of dying and bleaching it, and now you can't see any of the delicate bleached lines.

Although I like them both, I think I'm just going to stick with my bleaching and silk screen process.

Samples no.6 Adding water

Because the process made the fabric so much stiffer I wanted to see if adding water would help it at all.

cotton

poly sateen

viscose polyester

voile

Although it helped make the fabric a little softer, it made the colours run and although it looks good, it's not want I want, I refined my process so that the bleach lines would be clear, but adding water just makes them blur together again, so I will just have to try and deal with the stiffness of the fabric.

Samples no.5 Bleaching

Once I had refined my process, I needed to start working with different fabrics so that I could work out what kind I would like to use for my final outcome. I tried using poly sateen, cotton, viscose polyester and voile. The biggest difference I noticed when using the different fabric is the vibrancy of colour, which is best on the cotton, however the cotton is too stiff for my final outcome, although once it has been printed on, all the fabrics stiffen up to a degree. Also the more floaty fabrics such as the voile don't hold the dyes as well as the poly sateen or cotton, it has to be hung up to dry so that the paper it's drying on doesn't stuck the colour out, but even then the colours aren't as bright as the other samples.

Poly Sateen

Cotton

Viscose Polyester

Voile

I'm going to have to think of something!

Samples no.4 Bleaching

One of the ideas we came up with for achieving the effect of my mono-prints was to use bleach, however I wasn't sure how I was going to go about creating the same effect on my fabric. When I spoke to the technician, she suggest pushing it through a silk screen along with painted on brusho dyes. Which she showed me how to do as well.

These are created by painting extra strong brusho dyes onto a silk screen, painting on the bleach, then turning it over on top of your fabric, adding binder, then pushing it through the screen with a squeegee on to your fabric. 

I have spent some of last week and most of this week refining my process, which turns it in to quite a lengthy process, and due to a limited amount of clear screens I can only do so many samples at a time. The technique has been refined in terms of everything needing to be completely dry before you can start the next stage, refined in terms of how I create my lines, and I've also started trying it on other fabrics. But this is definitely the process I want to continue with.

Digital Printing

I used some of my own images to create some digital prints, however it makes the fabric very difficult to work with, especially as the transfer paper can only be used on cotton and cotton is quite a thick fabric, so not particularly easy to make a elegant dress with.

Liverpool Research

Today we went to Liverpool to try and get some Primary Research!

First we went to the Liverpool world museum to look at their astronomy/space and time collection. I couldn't really find anything helpful although it was very interesting reading about the progression of our knowledge of space, we also watched a little bit of a documentary that was being shown. There were some brilliant images that were taken by the Hubble Telescope, however I'd already seen most of them when I was conducting my initial research.

We also went to the Walker Art Gallery, as one of my class mates said she had seen something that she thought could be relevant to my project. So we went to have a look in the new collection exhibition  where we found the work of Helen Chadwick, her collection was entitled Viral Landscapes; which combined photos of landscapes with images of cells from her own body. At first that is not what you see when you look at the images, but when you look closer you can realise what you are really seeing this being one of the reasons that I like this collection, it combines the phenomena of natural landscapes with the phenomena of natural life.

Samples no.3 Salt

I briefly tried doing some samples during salt to absorb the colour. However I think it works a lot better on paper than on fabric. The process also takes a very long time, as the ink has to be completely dry before I can brush the salt off and push it through the screen, which would make it impractical for doing large pieces of fabric.

Samples no.2 Transfer Dyes

I saw a class mate of mine doing a couple of samples of these, so I thought I would have a go. It's done by painting a colour sheet of transfer dyes, letting it dry, screwing up your synthetic fabric, putting it under the heat press, putting your colour sheet on top of it and allowing it to print. Once it's ironed, you can no longer see the creases and you are left with crisp edges and amazing random blocks of colours.

I really love the effect, but I don't think it is something I will continue to develop, however I will create one more sample that has a combination of two different colour sheets, to see how they work together. I also really love the colour combination from the colour sheet, I couldn't tell how it would look before it printed as the dyes didn't differetiate much on paper.

Samples no.1 Transfer Dyes

I wouldn't say that I was stuck with my project, I could have carried on just doing stuff in my sketchbooks, but I wouldn't really have been getting anywhere. But one of the tutors and I went to speak to our technician about how I could translate some of my ideas into fabric, something that I wasn't really sure how to do. So we had a look through my sketchbook to found some inspiration. We chose my first attempt at light trail photographs and that afternoon she showed me how I could use the transfer dyes and heat press to create similar images,

 To create these samples, I first had to paint several sheets of paper with the transfer dyes, each sheet with a single block colour on it, once they had dried, I print one of the bright colours on to the white poly sateen fabric, then I lay wool over the top in patterns that resemble the light trails. Then the black sheet is placed on top and printed, when the black sheet and wool are pulled away I am left with samples like the ones above. As much as I like my first samples, I felt they weren't complicated enough to be light trails, so I tried layering up the colours. The process is very similar to the previous one, but instead of applying the black sheet once you have placed your first lot of wool down you place down another colour sheet, and once it has been printed you make sure the wool doesn't come away as you take away the paper, you then add more wool and print the black sheet over the top.

This slightly more complicated process can be very frustrating, as the wool likes to stick to the paper rather than the fabric; I don't think I have a sample using more than one colour layer where the wool has stayed where it's meant to. But I definitely like the more complicated samples. What I also found annoying is that the colours you use to create the patterns, effect how dark your "black" layer will be, because the black transfer dye isn't completely black, which would make it difficult to do a large piece of fabric.

Light Trails no.2

Today we went to take more light trail photographs (now using the park instead of the beach, so that we didn't have to walk for an hour!). I tried to buy more glow sticks that would be colours that resembled the northern lights more than my first attempt, however the shop's stock of thick glow sticks was very low, so I could only get hold of blue and yellow ones. I was hoping that if I moved them fast enough it might create a green glow.

Because I liked the effect so much from my previous test shot, I wanted to use the light produced by the torch on my phone; I really love the crisp bright light trail it made. But because it doesn't really represent the northern lights on it's own, I decided to combine it with the movement of the glow sticks. The photo in the top left is my favourite, I used a purple filter of the top of the light and combined it with the blue glow stick, and I just love the effect; it's so pretty and slightly hypnotising! That one was produced by holding the two light sources in different hands and moving them at different spends, whereas the photo in the bottom right was done by holding both light sources in the same hand and creating trail.

Light Trails, which is better...?

I really liked the effect of the light trails, but I wanted to find somewhere where there wasn't any other artificial light, so we went to the park to do a test shot (the first image), however I didn't have any more glowsticks to do the test shot with, so I just used the torch on my phone! And when I looked back at the shot I was really pleased with the effect, however I wasn't sure if I liked it enough to start using my torch instead of the glow sticks, so I decided to take advantage of out facebook group for the final major project to get some opinions.

 

After reading the advice I decided it would be best to try and combine the effects and just take as many photos as possible. And now I have a new place to take the photographs that isn't so far from home. And the morephotos I have, means the more primary research I have, as this isn't the easiest project to gather primary research for.