Tie dyeing in India

Among the many crafts we saw being made in India tie dyeing was one of my favourite. One of the things I like about it is that you never quite know what the end results will be and the moment when the threads used for the ties are pulled apart and the pattern is revealed is quite magical. At the workshop we went to, the owner showed us how the pattern of dots is transferred on to the fabric and then told us how each dot is pulled up into a spike and thread wound round it to form the resist for the dyeing process.

He showed us how he wound the thread round the spikes of fabric to create the ties, but he was working over a piece of fabric with spikes already tied on it. When I asked him how he made the original spikes he said he just pinches the fabric by hand to make them. I have seen similar techniques in Japan (see my Nov 2019 post) and there they either use a small hook to pull up the fabric or place the fabric over a nail to push up a spike of fabric. The Japanese technique seems more effective and quicker to me but we didn’t actually see the original spikes being made in India so it’s hard to tell.

Once all the ties have been made the fabric is dyed, further ties can then be made, as we were shown, and the piece dyed again to give a subtle colour to the fabric. There were some beautiful pieces in the workshop and the owners obviously experiment to produce interesting colourways and patterns, keeping the tradition alive and up to date.

Women’s textile cooperatives in India

One of the things I enjoyed most about my recent textile tour to India with the retreatrecreate group was the interaction with local women. We visited formal textile cooperatives as well as women working in their villages and were welcomed so generously everywhere by the women and their curious smiling children. They all gave us small cups of masala chai while we admired their work as they showed us the techniques they use and answered our questions about their work and lives. All the members of our group were craftspeople so we appreciated the work being done and were genuinely interested in the details of the techniques.

At the Sadhna group in Udaipur we learnt how the group trains and encourages women in local crafts such as embroidery, applique and block printing. Over 600 women work on a piece work system and are given the materials they require as well as access to sewing machines. We joined some of them in a workshop where they showed us how to embellish fabric with shisha mirrors, how to work fine applique and how to make small round fabric buttons. I was delighted my teacher praised me for my neat stitching in the applique work as I felt I’d passed the test!

At the Sambhali Trust in Jodhpur we joined the women in their workshop to see their embroidery for cushion covers and fabrics for soft toy making. They were a lively group and were very interested to see photos of our children and grandchildren and to find out about our lives. The Trust is a non-profit charitable organisation which provides free education to women and girls and trains them to earn their own living through stitching. After our time in the workshop we joined some of them for a cookery demonstration and a delicious lunch.

At other times we visited women in their villages sitting in the shade working on their embroidery together in sociable groups. These settings suggest a simple life with no cares but the reality is that these women are supplementing the family income as well as carrying out all the responsibilities women have throughout the world – their life is not easy. They all had stocks of beautifully made crafts for us to buy at what we hoped were reasonable prices and most of us bought pieces at every place we visited. At least the money goes straight to those doing the work and it places a value on women’s work and gives them some status as breadwinners in their villages.

It also allows them to work in their homes while keeping an eye on their children, rather than having to travel to find work or to labour in the fields. Hopefully, the fact that we had travelled specially to see them also raises their status within their community. Despite the differences in our economic circumstances I felt that at the end of the day we empathised with each other as women and stitchers – I hope they felt the same.

Filet lace designs

I haven't been blogging for the last few weeks because I've been on an amazing textile trip to India but that does mean I'll be writing about some of my Indian adventures so there will be lots of news to catch up on. In the meanwhile back to some lace! These filet lace designs are taken from a pattern book I have entitled ‘VII Le Filet Ancien au Point de Reprise’. They seem to be aimed at the home needlewoman and book includes adverts for two types of thread they suggest the pieces should be worked in. The fact that this book is number seven in the series suggests that they were popular. I assumed the designs were for an antimacassar and matching arm covers but the index refers to this page as designs for a window ornament and two brise bise so they are evidently meant to be worked on a large scale. The larger curtain would have been designed for a main window and the smaller two for the lower part of a window hung from a thin rod or wire along the scalloped edge. The term brise bise means ‘wind-breaker’ in French. Unfortunately there is no date on the book but brise bise became popular in the early twentieth century so it probably dates from that time.

Amy Atkin project - needle run lace

As you can see I’m getting on well with my Amy Atkin lace project. This is the first panel and I’ve almost completed it. The design is mine, based on motifs taken from Amy Atkin’s designs housed in the Collection of the Nottingham City Museums. I’m using needle run lace on machine made net. This is an old technique originally used in the nineteenth century before the invention of lace machines that could produce patterned lace. At that time all patterning had to be added to plain machine made net manually by young women called ‘lace runners’ using needles for embroidery, small hooks for fine chain stitching, or fine sewing for adding material in an applique technique. I’m using needle running in a more fluid modern way to outline my design and produce some areas of shading. Of course, Amy Atkin’s designs would have been produced on modern Levers lace machines that would have produced the net and pattern at the same time, but needle running is the closest I can get to a traditional lace technique working from my studio

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Amy Atkin lace designs

I’m making progress on my Amy Atkin lace project. The image shows my sketchbook and preliminary ideas for the finished lace. Amy Atkin attended Nottingham art School in the early 1900s and claimed to be the first female machine lace designer in Nottingham. Some of her designs and other items are held in the Collection of Nottingham City Museums, which is where I saw them. I decided against working her designs directly because they didn’t fit the short narrow format I’m using and also because I am working them in needle run lace on machine net rather than using a lace machine, which is what she designed them for. I’ve designed four panels using motifs from her designs and working in the same way as she did with a large motif at the base of the design and stylised flowers and foliage leading up from that. I’ve just finished the first panel and found the needle run lace worked well. It’s a technique I used on my response to the Battle of Britain lace panel and has relevance to the early machine lace trade, before the invention of the jacquard pattern system, when much decorated lace was made by using a needle and thread to add the pattern to plain net, so it seems relevant to the work of a machine lace designer.

Surreal images and decadent decay at the V&A

I had an enjoyable day at the V&A recently admiring the surreal images of the photographer Tim Walker and the decadent decay of Darren Waterston’s ‘Filthy lucre’. Filthy lucre, part of which is shown in the image above, is a re-imagining of James Whistler’s Peacock Room, expressing the opulent extravagance of the original, which he decorated for the shipping magnate and porcelain collector, Frederick Leyland. However Leyland refused to pay for the work in full because the room was over-decorated, leading to a long dispute between them. In Waterston’s immersive installation gold drips from the painting, shelves break under the weight of fine china and shards of porcelain litter the floor all to the mournful accompaniment of a cello.

Tim Walker is a well known fashion photographer, but that description doesn’t do justice to his amazingly surreal imagination. I loved the images from his fashion shoots for Vogue and other magazines of oversized sets and imaginary worlds. His portraits also grasp the essence of the sitters; I especially liked his witch-like portrait of Margaret Atwood, as she did too, according to a recent interview.

As well as his older work, the exhibition also contained images from his recent encounter with the V&A collection. I particularly liked the images he produced from the conservation store using the storage covers for the historical costumes.

Joan of Arc lace panel

Joan of Arc is the subject of this curtain lace panel on display in Calais lace Museum. It depicts important points in her short life - she was burned at the stake when she was about 19 years old. These include images of her seeing visions, and then riding into battle, as well as her death in 1431. It was made by the Nottingham lace company of Dobson and Browne in 1875 and exhibited at the Paris exhibition of 1881. It is a large panel (480 x 153 cm) made on the curtain lace machine and follows the design of other lace curtain panels made at the time with a wide central area, two narrower side panels and a scalloped edge. This panel was the inspiration for the Battle of Britain commemorative lace panel, also made by Dobson and Browne, in the 1940s.