UNIT 1, 2 & 4 Textiles Workshop

When I was first told I would be partaking in a textiles workshop I wasn't very enthusiastic due to the fact I presumed it would be entirely fashion orientated - a matter in which I don't enjoy all that much - however I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the workshop! Kat (the workshop instructor) taught us many skills throughout the day which I found could be applied to all areas of art and design not just fashion.
The first technique we learnt was batik which is when you apply hot wax to fabric to create a barrier so that when colour is applied the wax covered areas remain colourless. Using a tjanting you would carefully apply hot wax onto the fabric following your chosen design allowing the wax to then cool. Once its cool your free to apply colour, we used different coloured procion dye, which would fill the negative space of your design. After the batik is completely dry you can iron off the wax leaving areas white. On my batik I decided to use some fabric pens to outline parts of the hand. Batik was my favourite activity of the day, I would love to be able to use it in my future work.

Our next task was screen printing, we used screens that had already been prepared as we were only being taught the process of screen printing. We placed the screens face down on top of some fabric and added a line of printing paint along the top of the screen. By using a squeegee to slide the paint across the screen it forces a layer of paint through the open areas of the mesh onto the fabric beneath. I found this process the easiest to get used to due to its speed and simplicity, I probably made more screen prints than anything else in the textiles workshop.

 

The third task of the day was paper making, this task was my least favourite within the session as I found my attempts weren't very successful and I didn't like the appearance of the outcomes.To make paper you would place the shreds of paper that have been soaked in hot water on the top face of a mesh canvas. Once you have a the desired thickness of paper on your mesh canvas you place the canvas face down on a towel allowing you to soak up water with a sponge from the back; once dry enough you can peel the mesh canvas away leaving your paper on the towel to dry. To make your paper more interesting their are a variety of things you can change or add to the paper however I was content with adding brightly coloured brusho inks onto the paper.

 

Towards the end of the day we did some embroidery over the top of a heat transfer as a relaxing task to finish of the session. We were taught how to use the heat transfer machine properly and safely before transferring an image onto on of our screen prints; we then used these to experiment with different stitches.