Wangaratta Textile Project

Well, I was full of good intentions….. A funny thing happens when there is no deadline any more. I imagine that this occurs in the case of many artists, not just me, but I’m so much less focused and easily distracted when there is no timeline. I have had a very  busy year to date and had started to be more relaxed about work but now I have a good exhibition offer for Dec/Jan and that has got me going again. Getting around to blogging is even harder so apologies for the big time delay between posts.

I am working on the jacquard wires idea that I have posted about before where I am sewing very close rows of stitching in the pattern of the wires. See previous entry. I am learning a great deal in the process. Like, even when sewn en masse a thread which looks super contrasty to the fabric it is to be sewn on, when viewed as a few threads on top of the fabric can take on an entirely different appearance when you sew zillions of rows of stitching parallel to one another. Instead of increasing the punch, depending on the colour of the background fabric, it can look very watered down or just not at all  how you would have expected. Of course, you don’t really find this out until you have sewn many rows!

The interesting thing is that it is a bit like painting on a wash of colour but the colours can mix in unexpected ways. I have sewn rows of bright orange thread on deep purple and they look bright pink. If you did this with paint you would have brown.  I’ve oversewn this with rows of turquoise which then created light purple which seemed logical.

I think the deepest colours are achieved, not surprisingly, when the background colour is related  to the thread…. mind you you don’t probably want all the background that colour but a bit of reinforcment is good. See my photo of the green/blue pieced stitched with the jacquard wires pattern below. Having said that, I think that the piece I refer to works because the fabric is dyed in analagous colours and I have chosen one of those for the stitching. I am so far from figuring out “the rules” here.

Different lighting conditions give very different effects. I am using polyester threads which have a sheen and so the massed stitching can look different when viewed from various  angles which I find very attractive. It also follows that if the stitches are stitched in different directions, the light will reflect of them to create various shades of the colour.   Anyway, I am aiming to have three pieces which can be shown in conjunction with each other and in which most of these points will be evident.

Having sewn (over many days, including a very long unpicking session) my piece on purple fabric (pictured)  and being not particularly pleased with it, I have started a new one on a bright olivey green. I am using flouro pink thread which looks like a golden brown (pale) wash over the area I have sewn already. Need to unpick a few rows of that too so I’m held up at the moment. Normally I don’t unpick much at all but mistakes show up really plainly in these pieces and can’t really be ignored.

Have printed more of my time card slots lino print on strips of hand dyed fabric, also the jacquard wires linocut with  a view to creating something else. I think I originally printed these (only last week) to audition for strips between the warp roller end strips that I was looking at in my last post, but now as you can see I am confused!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I have launched into exploring another idea. I took a photo in the ACS shop of some wools stacked up in various colours and would like to use this as the basis for another piece.

SO….after stitching a design loosely based on balls of wool and being quite pleased with that, I have made a few lino cuts of the same design with slight variations and in two different sizes. More on that next time. As you see, the mind is going a lot faster than the hands can cope with, especially since I got a sewing machine needle stuck and broken off in my finger 10 days ago and had to have a little surgery to get it out! Not recommended but certainly not the first time for me. Beware of the foot pedal controlled needle and take your foot off the pedal when rethreading is the take away message.

Having finished my piece I was feeling very motivated to go back and follow the “threads” that I started exploring in my development process. However, there was a slight hitch in that I had an impending solo exhibition on a large scale to get under control. The exhibition was of selected pieces my work from the last 20 years as well as some current work. It was presented by the local arts council with whom I have had a close relationship with over two decades and was a kind of farewell as my husband and I prepare to leave the area and relocate to the Bellarine Peninsula. It was an enormous amount of work but the exhibition was a great success running for four days over the Queen’s birthday weekend. It’s now over and I’m looking forward to completing another piece of work based on Wangaratta’s textile industry. I have done a substantial amount of work and really only need to figure out how it will go together. I have found the project really stimulating and I feel that I may need to go on and complete another couple of works as well. That’s my guess at this time at least. I wanted to work with the collagraph and linocut prints that I was developing early on in the project. Also the image of the wires from the jacquard loom were a very compelling source of imagery for me and I had completed a trial piece of stitching based on them before I got stuck into my exhibition preparation and thought it had great potential. Here are some of the pieces of the work that I have so far:-

At left, the collagraph block I was using earlier is repeat printed on turquoise hand dyed cotton fabric to form a long narrow panel. Yellow fabric has been inserted to represent threads and also to link it by colour to the panel at right. A base of breakdown silk screen printed cotton fabric (the yellow) was printed with my warp roller end inspired linocut block in two colours and then quilted to create a second long, narrow panel.

Here another long, narrow panel was created by printing the warp roller end onto sheer brown fabric. This was laid over turquoise hand dyed cotton fabric which had been repeat printed with a linocut block inspired by the wires controlling the heddles on the big jacquard looms at Bruck. The piece was  free motion quilted and then the areas between the “roller ends” was cut away revealing the criss-cross pattern of the “wires”.

Below, hand dyed cotton fabric  has been quilted with bright green polyester thread to represent the appearance of the wires of the jacquard looms at  Bruck. The intention is that this will form the central panel of the proposed piece of work with narrow panels such as the ones above placed on either side. I love the shimmery effect of the threads, though you may not be able to get the idea so well on screen.

Since I began this post a week or two has gone by. The Stitched Up Festival has been on in Wangaratta and I had a busy time helping to hang two exhibitions I had work in, attending three different openings in a week, participating in a great Maker’s Market and, of course visiting all of the other exhibtions on offer! The festival has been revitalised and was really great. I suggest that all textile lovers make a note  to come to Wangaratta when the festival is on in 2013. Although the festival is over, one of my exhibitions is still up. Bundled and Bound is on at the LiTTLE art space next to The Olive Shop on the Snow Rd at Milawa. It runs until the end of July and three of us have work on display. My friends Kathy Beilby and Kate Martin and I have created works using eco-dyed and printed fabrics. Kathy and I are showing small textile hangings and Kate has made a wonderful range of jackets, vests and wraps. Milawa is also a great place to visit for wonderful produce, wines and eateries. Also, I now have a website up and running. It is a bit of a work in progress but there is plenty to see there. Check it out at www.susanmathews.info. Hopefully I’ll now have some time to get back to my piece and show you my progress soon.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been working non-stop on constructing the table runner and hand stitching details on it. I abandoned you all for a while but there wasn’t much to say except I was stitching and sewing together the table runner.  

Before I show you images of the stitching and the finished work, I want to show the work of a couple of textile artist’s that I find very inspiring and beautiful.

Marianne Kemp

Some of the techniques are very interesting and I have tried them in the process of designing this work, and some I just find inspiring for no particular reason.  

Jo Owen

Lesley Woodward

 Either way, these and other images have influenced my work in different ways and I thought I would share them with you. 

Deepa Panchamia

Dianne Swift

Now to the point:     

After printing and doing some trial embroidery and stitching I started working on the final piece. Sometimes it can be hard for me to take that step and start working. I get carried way with the sampling process and it’s difficult to know when to stop and work on the actual piece. During sampling many new ideas turn up, which is good most of the time, but it can also be a distraction from what you had in mind in the first place. I tried embroidery the way I’ve always done it… but it didn’t quite work for me so I looked at some other techniques which I wanted to try for a long time and were relevant to the project. Quilting was one of those techniques. I had never done any quilting before and wanted to give it a go. I just love the texture you can get from stitching layers of fabric and wadding together. Screen printing can be very flat and the work needed some volume and texture. As a quilting beginner, my technique is far from perfect but to tell you the truth I like my naive stitching combined with the printed pattern. It definitely suited the concept and represented the ideas behind the work perfectly.  

I also researched a particular quilting technique where objects are inserted between the fabrics and held together by stitching around very close to the object.  

Diane Savona

Since I didn’t want to introduce too many concepts, styles or shapes to the piece, I chose metal and wooden rings in two sizes, continuing with the circle motifs that represent the production at the mills as well as the “cyclic” relationship between the inhabitants of Wangaratta and the two textile factories.   

From one of my initial croquis (representing the heddles of the Jacquard looms at Bruck), I hand painted, pleated and stitched at both ends of the table runner to show the motion of the heddles. I also cut and attached 4 stripes of the printed fabric and placed it between pleats to signify other production processes at the mills. The rest of the croquis and concepts were translated into stitches throughout the piece. 

To sum up, each end of the table runner represents one of the mills and their production, and the central panel represents the city. The central panel’s rectangles signify the people of Wangaratta and the city itself, and their connection to the mills is represented by the circular motifs (warp rolls) scattered through the panel and “touching” almost every rectangle.  The table runner is 3m long by 56cm wide. I am including separate images of details.   

I am pretty happy with the final result. The work is visually quite minimalistic, simple and clean and I believe tells the textile story of Wangaratta…  

I want to thank Wangaratta City Council, Wangaratta Gallery, Craft Victoria and Culture Victoria for this wonderful project. Chris, Justine, Eleanor, Rita, and everyone else involved. Thanks to Susan Mathews for her comments on my work and for her fantastic posts and work. Thanks also to Julia Raath, Ilka White, Rachel Halton, Libby Noblet andDouglas McManus at RMIT for their help.  It has been a fantastic experience full of historical, personal and technical discoveries… I hope you all enjoyed it.

Yesterday I finished the stitching on the outside edges of my piece and then cut some batting just a little smaller than it and layered those two with some black felt (for the backing). I safety pinned it to some extent (some areas are quite difficult to pin through) to hold the layers in a stable fashion. Free motion stitching through all layers around the dark lines and shapes was the next process. I attached the edges of the top stitched layer to the felt with zigzag stitch and monofilament thread which is basically invisible. After that I trimmed the edges of the felt to 1 1/2in beyond the stitched surface and then folded them to the back and herringbone stitched them in place. It only remains to make and apply a rod pocket and a label and I am done. Unless… I am thinking about stitching some more lines in the surface to suggest motion and the movement of the threads and subsequently the fabric’s passage through the mechanical processes. I think I have decided to go with this but I seriously need a few days off as I have been slaving away for about 10 days straight. I consider the piece finished without that added touch in any case.

The finished work.

To recap what I hoped to show in this piece:- In the top right hand corner is a grid and this represents Bruck House specifically but also more generally the cultural contribtions made to the town directly or indirectly though the textile factories. Bruck House and the other Robin Boyd designed buildings in the vicinity of the Bruck factory are hidden gems of Wangaratta. http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an13959123-11 The grid represents the arrangement of the wall of glass which faces onto Bruck Ave (and presumably north). Stanley Arms who managed Bruck over quite a long period was, it seems, an educated man who made great contributions to the cultural life of Wangaratta. Then there is the wonderful sense of family and belonging that was engendered in the workforce of the textile factories, social and sporting clubs being such a feature of the lives of the workers. Due to a large influx of migrants and other workers there was also a  need to build housing and this  lead to Co-Operative housing ventures in partnership with government and much building activity.
The circular shapes are derived from the huge metal warp rolls that we saw at Bruck. Enormously long warps composed of thousands of threads are wound onto these rollers and then the threads being the warp through which the weft is woven to create the fabric.

Photoshopped image of warp roll ends.

I have used the warp roll ends to reference the entire process of manufacturing the fabric from the making and preparation of the threads to the point at which  it is distributed to the wider world.
The shapes in the bottom righthand corner are derived from a photo I took of the time card holders at Australian Country Spinners . I have used these as a reference to the workers who are so essential to the factories and the town itself. I may add some lines of stitching to make them read a little more literally but  I quite like them as they are. When I printed them onto the fabrics I thought that they looked like spines or vertabrae. I felt that this was appropriate as the workers are really the backbone of the industry and to a large extent the town.

The vibrant colours I have used reflect the nature of the industry over time and what it has meant to the community of Wangaratta.

This has been a fantastic project to be involved in. As I have stitched I have sometimes imagined how it could be extended and “grown”.

It would be great if, as an outcome of the interest this project has promoted, the the historic and archival materials could be properly collated, sourced and indexed. I’m sure there is some wonderful material hiding away in dark corners. I have become aware that so many of the artists of all kinds that I know in Wangaratta have personal histories that are entwined with the textile indusrtry in Wangaratta and it would be great if they had an opportunity or were inspired to make work which related their individual stories or expressed how they felt about the industry and it’s part in their lives. The other aspect I thought about was that it would be interesting to see what some of the high profile textile artists who have work in the Wangaratta Art Gallery collection would come up with on this topic.

I still have plans to work with my collagraphs and linocut prints to create another work. I feel I have done a lot of groundwork in that area and would like to see it through to a finished piece of work in the near future.

Many thanks to those who have enabled this project, especially Dianne Mangan, Justine Ambrosio and Chris Dormer and also to my talented colleague Andrea Komninos.

Well, after yesterday’s warts and all expose I’m trying to claw back some credibility by showing you how it has all come together.

All four panels comw together.

Today I joined up the fourth panel and decided that another warp roll end was needed to break the strong diagonal line that the shapes were forming. I made a half warp roll end shape and trialled it as per the photo below by pinning it in place. When I printed the pattern for the extra warp roll end I also printed extra lines extending out of the top right hand panel. These were basically the lines I had removed during the transplant processes but placed where I had intended them to be as per my original design. These lines served to connect the design and break up the four panel effect and I think they work well. It was quite daunting cutting the hole for the half warp roll end placement as the piece was looking so finished. Nevertheless, the operation was successful (I think) and I’m glad that I did it.

Extra warp roll end shape trialled.

After blending in my new addition I squared the piece cutting it to size and then spent some time finishing the edges with more stitching.

Tomorrow I will layer the piece with batting and a backing of black felt and quilt  the dark printed lines.

I have basically spent the last week at the sewing machine and fatigue is setting in. I identified some technical issues surrounding parts of the design which were not going to match up due to different rates of shrinkage from panel to panel. I needed to complete the stitching to the point where I was happy with the colours before I tackled this problem so that all shrinking had occurred.
A number of different “procedures” have taken place – firstly a “graft”. I had not originally intended to join the four panels but had decided down the track that this might be better. My first operation was to join the two lower panels together. The thing about this technique is that unpicking is virtually impossible. However, there is the possibility with intensely stitched textiles to remove parts, replace them and then blend with stitching. These facts also mean that anything I tried in the remedial line I had to live with the results of. For my graft I cut the two edges to be joined allowing an overlap which was unstitched on one panel. I zigzagged them together and then worked my random zigzag on top to blend. This worked ok but the join is a slightly visible as a ridge so I have decided to butt any further joins together.

Offending part cut out.

Starting to stitch in the "transplant".

Blending the "transplant".

Operation number two and three were “transplants”. There were printed lines on a couple of the panels which were meant to match with lines on other panels and which were clearly not going to oblige. I cut out the offending parts out with a craft knife and then used the cutout shapes as a pattern to cut an offcut of my fabric collage “fabric” to the right size to slot into the hole and be stitched over to camouflage. These were successful operations!

The major surgery was right at the heart of the piece where four panels meet and where different parts of the shape of a warp roll end were supposed to meet and create a whole image at the convergence of the four panels. This had ended up a very strange shape and so remedial tactics were definitely needed. You can see what I mean in the photo!

Mismatched pieces at central point

On a piece of conveniently left over fabric collage I printed a new warp roll end shape. I then stitched this so that shrinkage had taken place,  cut it out with a 1/4 in seam allowance and  laid it on the two stitched pieces which had already been joined together and drew around it. I then cut a hole in the piece ( and made sure that I had some matching marks) the size of the new piece and  sewed it in with free motion zigzag.

Hole cut in centre of work for placement of new warp roll end.

A lot more free motion zigzag was then stitched in the area of the join to blend it into the rest of the piece. I’m pleased to report that the patient is doing well and is expected to make a full recovery.The photo below shows the completed “heart transplant”. The top left panel is the last one to be attached. A job for tomorrow and then some refining last touches before the piece is attached to batting and backing and quilted, That should be a fun job! with a large piece of heavily stitched and quite stiff “fabric” plus batting and backing will be my next battle!

Warp roll end shape in centre replaced.

So, I met my 10 bobbins a day target for 3 of the 4 days I have spent so far stitching my piece. Each day it got a little harder and on day four I got to 9 but had some time trialing thread colour combinations. I have covered a lot of miles but have also realised that I have quite a technical issue to resolve. What was I thinking having four panels with various parts of the design which are supposed to match up on different panels?

All four panels with some stitching and some technical issues!

I guess I  was thinking about the overall layout and also the size of the piece would not have been easy to handle in sewing it as one piece. What I didn’t take into account initially was the rate of shrinkage. This varies according to the thickness of the background and also of course how much stitching one puts onto that. As the fabric collages were made as four separate pieces there was a little variation in the thickness one to another. Needed a day away from that particular problem today so did some work on pieces related to the collagraph blocks. Yes, I am working on two very different things. I am not really feeling confident that either of them are going to come off. I am free motion quilting a piece to represent the wires of the enormous jacquard looms. This is many, many lines of straight stitching and I can only spend up to an hour on it at one time. It is getting there. The other piece I was working on today is going back to my linocut design of the warp roll end. I had printed the block in a repeat pattern in grey on white fabric and grey on brown organza a while ago. Today I layered these, added batting and backing and free motion quilted that. Its probably quite relevant to the project that all these things are super-repetitive. I was wishing today that I could automate the process like in the factory! I like the effect of the layered organza/cotton panel  and have stitched it in aqua and teal blue.

The two stitched panels

Normally I wouldn’t sit at the sewing machine for hours day after day, I tend to mix up jobs and pace myself with the body stressing things. Now for some down-time!

Linocut block printed sheer and cotton fabrics layered and stitched with teal and aqua polyester threads.

Detail of the stitching of the jacquard loom inspired panel.

There are quite a few things I want to talk about today. First, in these final stages of producing my textile piece,  I feel the need to recapitulate and tell you -in a more organised manner- about the final concept, ideas, process and techniques, and also about what I want to communicate with my work.

I am working around a few of concepts:

• The many links that the people of Wangaratta have to either Australian Country Spinners or Bruck Textiles
• The social events that took place at both mills
• The sense of community and family (if you like) within the mills
• The cultural, economical and social influence of ACS and Bruck on the development and shaping of the city.

The inspiration for the graphic elements in my piece came mostly from the visits to the mills. The machinery, cones, floors, storage, looms,etc. As well as the large scale of production and the incredible capacity and speed of the machines.

The stories behind my work being a table runner are:

• Bruck providing cooked meals 24 hours a day to their employees
• Whole families working together for either ACS or Bruck
• Migrant employees living together as families and purchasing properties collectively

Now, the process so far has been….

• Developing the concept (mentally)
• Hand painting croquis and trying embroidery (stitching) techniques

• Revisiting old textile samples and redeveloping designs

• Manipulating images and motifs in Photoshop to create repeats

• Exposing images on screens and screen printing main panel of the final piece

• Sampling stitching on strike off print

The stitches mean many things in this work; they incorporate other graphic elements from my croquis and they represent the people involved in the Wangaratta story, the workers at the mill, the gatherings at social and sporting events, the building of the city, the cultural differences of the many migrant employees, the growth of the city, the involvement of Bruck and ACS with the community, the way everyone has a story to do with the mills in Wangaratta, and more… They are also an attempt to be less geometric and organised, less repetitive and squared. More conceptual and freer in my work.

I tried other embroidery stitches, but I’m not very happy about them. Also the colours in my mind and in paper worked pretty well together, but when I added khaki and terracotta to the printed colours, I didn’t think they worked that well. I changed terracotta for a light brown and I’m keeping the khaki stitches as they add - in a very subtle way – to the concept and the piece in general.

I am again using natural fibres and fabrics. I printed on calico and I’m hand stitching with fine ramie yarn . I find these materials very humble and beautiful. Calico is basic, plain, inexpensive and unpretentious. And ramie, as a plant fibre, is a bit rough but adds lustre and life to the fabric and it’s beautiful to work with.

I hope the final work tells the story as I see it and hopefully the people that are not reading this blog can understand  and relate to it without a written explanation.

So, Monday was a whole day of printing. I really miss spending days at RMIT just designing, sampling, producing….making, making, making. I had forgotten how tiring it can be though, I can’t believe that I did that every single day for two years. It was a long day, but a very productive and lovely one. I managed to expose my screens print a strike off and print the 3 colours for the main panel (only about 2m long). I’m quite happy with the result as it is exactly what I wanted and expected. I will test some embroidery techniques on the strike off and post more on the development as I go. I took some photos in the printing room sort of step by step and here they are: These are just the 2 screens I exposed. I printed the screen on the far left first and then I used the screen on the right twice. The second time I blocked some of the motifs to print a third colour. I could have exposed a third screen instead and it would have been a little easier, but it’s a waste of film and emulsion and doesn’t really save much time. 

After exposing the screens I did all the calculations for registration, placed the stops for the repeat and printed a strike off including the 3 colours. And after that, started on the main piece. I’ve never liked my photo taken, but here I am printing… The first colour done!

I left about 90cm on both sides of the printed area for hand painted and embroidered panels on both ends. For the edges of the printed panel I blocked the screen as the cutout repeat is not a straight line, but “interlocks” (if you know what I mean). Then, the second colour. In this second screen the cutout is on a straight line because of the way the motifs are placed, which can be hard to adjust sometimes, so the motifs don’t overlap.  In this case it wasn’t too difficult but I did measure the distance between the stops a thousand times before I started printing. The third colour was the easiest. I basically used only one of the circle motifs and blocked the rest of the screen, so it was very easy to place the screen where I wanted to print and adjust by eye.

This is the result so far. I’m very happy with it and can’t wait to start adding embroidery and pleats and things to it. I love the little imperfections of hand printed things. I just always thought it adds so much character and even humanity to a piece. (Just in case, I’m not making excuses for imperfections in my work, I really do love them, haha). It’s strange, but even though I am supposed to write about the process and show you images of it as I go, I can’t help but thinking it’s a shame there’s not going to be any surprises at the end…. 

 Having said that, I will show more of the development soon.

When involved in intensive stitching of a repetitive nature one’s mind tends to wander. One of the thoughts that crossed my mind today was that I probably had not made clear to the uninitiated what disperse dyeing entails. So I shall try and address this omission. Disperse dyes are also known as transfer dyes and to use them one paints the design (or draws with special transfer crayons) on paper and when dry the design can be transferred to fabric (with a high synthetic content) using heat. It is possible to use an iron but I have a heat press which I bought secondhand from a clothing store. The press was used to transfer images onto T-shirts. I often use this heat press to heat set fabrics printed with fabric paints as well. I am using disperse dyes to transfer my designs onto my (polyester sheer) fabric collages.

So today it was nose to the grindstone again. I’m working on a quota system at the moment. The goal is to use 10 bobbins full of thread per day. This is about 4 hours sewing time and also all my neck can handle in a day. I actually enjoy this repetitive stitching process as you can see the surface developing little by little, all the time. It feels active and there is a sense of progress. Surfaces can be problematic in that you might think that they are not working and then some decision about what colour to use next will just bring it to life.

Designs transferred to all panels.

I also spent  time heat setting the designs onto the other three panels so that I could work on a different one this afternoon. At the end of the day I have two panels of the four with their “underpainting” of thread. This  “underpainting” consists of up to 4 or 5 layers of stitching in places but I refer to it as “underpainting”  in the sense that it is probably not finished and I will make decisions about linking panels with colour and whether I want colours and shapes to stand out more or not and apply more stitching accordingly.

Panel two at the end of day two of stitching.

Stitching detail - panel two.

Meanwhile “back at the ranch” I am still thinking about the collagraph and linocut  images. Would love to do something with them. We’ll see. There is more than enough substance in this project to fuel an entire body of work. If time wasn’t an issue it would be difficult to stop at one piece!

And here’s a little piece of information to think about. From the Wangaratta Woollen Mills Ltd book on it’s first 50 years published in 1973:- “We spin enough yarns every day to encircle the earth more than four times”.