A more serious study of surface design

Fifteen yards of cotton fabric arrived yesterday, along with some opaque textile paints and a few more T-shirts.  I’ve been meditating on what to do next.  Now that the practical considerations (new clothes + quilting fabric) are taken care of, I think I’m going to do a more serious study of surface design techniques and composition.  Jane Dunnewold’s Art Cloth is going to be my guide during this study – the (excellent, excellent!) book has instructions for most surface design techniques AND some guides to composition!

So the question becomes, how do I break things down?  I can focus on a single technique, delving into the depths of discharge printing or dyeing – which is good for studying technique, not so good for composition – or I can work on a single piece from start to finish, using multiple techniques.  Better for composition, not so good for technique.  Also involves more mixing-up, since many of the materials don’t keep well.

I suspect I may take a combined approach – do one technique at a time, but use them in a variety of compositional approaches – subdued vs. bold, “busy” vs. “quiet”, small designs vs. large, etc.  to see what effects I get with each.  I will probably put together a matrix of things to try, not as a hard and fast rule but as a general guide.  I’m sure I will stray considerably from it, but I’m more comfortable having a plan.

I’m still deciding what size pieces to work on.  I think I will either work in fat quarters (22.5″ x 18″) or fat halves (22.5″ x 36″), mainly because my dye/printing table is only two feet across!  This will let me keep the fabric flat without resorting to more complicated measures.

The four design materials I will be studying are: dyeing, discharge, paints, and foil.  The six application methods will be:

• bound-resist (tie-dye, shibori),
• chemical resist (wax resists, paste, etc.),
• stamping
• stenciling
• screen printing
• painting.

That is a lengthy list and most of these items are worth a lifetime of study just by themselves!  But I am not after a deep understanding, just a general idea of how and when to use them.  That is somewhat less daunting.

Anyway, dyeing is the first step in surface design, so that’s what I’ll do this weekend.  I need to read up on different dye techniques this week, so I can experiment as broadly as possible.  Fifteen yards of fabric sounded like a lot until I started thinking of all the things you can do with it!  Now I can already see that I’ll need more.  (But not for a few weekends, perhaps?)

Meanwhile, since every blog post should have a pretty picture, here is my latest quilt square:

It works reasonably well from a technical standpoint, but compositionally it doesn’t work at all.  The pale pink is too pale – it stands out like a sore thumb and doesn’t look related to the darker magenta elements at all.  So it stops the eye and the block degenerates into visual chaos.  If I do it again, I will do it in single colors.

Next up is Dutchman’s Puzzle, which I am hoping to complete today.