Drawn Thread Work

The colours for this chapter were chosen from the yellow and manilla paper sequence with a highlight of the turquoise blue stamps; see samples on right.
Deciding to experiment with three different weights of fabric, I used a hand dyed muslin, a natural linen and a dyed cotton, the last two of which evolved as I experimented with brusho colours used previously in paper making. 

                        

First exercise: Using the coloured muslin and linen I pulled threads into grid patterns and experimented with loops; see ref 5.1b ,diagonal sequences: see ref ref 5.1b, 5.2c and 5.2d, eyelets; see ref 5,2b and frays: see 5.2d.  

Ref 5.1a and b                                      Ref 5.2.a,b,c,d

While realising the muslin was not the easiest fabric to start this exercise on I rather liked the pucker that resulted.  The linen was rather hard and should have been washed to soften it but the stiff structure prevented undue fraying. Once the first thread was pulled things became slightly easier!  But at one stage I did think an alternative title could be, 'Pulling Strings'!
Second exercise:The colour theme was based around the paper combination of manilla and yellow papers with the touch of the bright blue of stamps.  
For this exercise the linen and the yellow cotton were dyed.  The linen by painting with yellow and blue leaving some undyed ground colour. 

                                                                                              Ref 5.3a and b
The yellow cotton  was dyed by placing on paper that was given a yellow brusho ground with orange and blue brusho sprinkled and flooded, see right Ref 5.4 a and b




  Weaving and pulling back the threads to make shapes that went in diagonals, straight lines and curves proved to be fiddly and would probably need a touch of adhesive to make the 'g', 'u' and 's' stay in position! 
Ref 5.5a
Ref 5.5a and b

 At the end of this chapter I decided big weaves would be my next ground for dyeing!