Outdoor art adventures Part 4!
- stitch153
- Apr 13
- 4 min read
So, thank you for keeping up, I'm back at Raveningham with this one for the 2nd Year! If you haven't read my first adventure there in 2024, its here for reference.
So in 2025 the theme was 'Alchemy' and so much of the textile work I have been doing recently involves alchemy, I just had to create something again! Put in my proposal and was happy to have the same woodland setting, although I knew that I would not be able to fill this space this year, the processes take much longer.
I made my list of things I wanted to represent, show, explore.....soy milk mordanting, dyeing with onion skins, modifying with iron water, eco printing, maybe some copper modifying? Nature, simple motifs and no words this time. I also wanted to explore different ways the cloths could be hung from the trees, came up with a few ideas
The playing was a bit of a whirlwind, looking back a photos I was juggling a lot! I'd been up to Saltaire and on the way home called in at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and saw a wonderful huge ceramic exhibition, I admit, some of those big marks inspired my mark making for the first layer of this huge cloth, although you would never know in the final outcome. Then a Bletchley Park community project, a trip to Waddesdon Manor to stitch festival flags, a week in a large primary school working with every child to create a wooden woodland of trees and birds! Third child was moving between his 2nd and 3rd year of uni flats. Thank goodness I take photos of along the way, it is a blurrrr of activity!
Step one: the soy milk mordant, thickened soy milk painted on around 1 week before I need to dye it. Where the soy milk sits, it will soak up more colour as the 'protein' in the milk has bonded with the cotton fibres.
Step two: one week later, in the dye pot you can see where the patterns are and then when the fabric is dry.
Step three: this was a bit of a jump, I'd been printing with thickened iron water on dyed fabrics, playing with patterns and shapes. Then going down a Pinterest rabbit hole, I found these dot and line patterns (in the middle of the last image) I really didn't know where they had come from, not credited at first, I thought they were more ancient....then suddenly saw that they were Picasso drawings on constellations from 1926. Oh well, I was committed now, they were my inspiration!
Now I have a confession, I had a bit of a mishap with some iron water and a big piece of dyed fabric. You soon find out that the merest spec of iron in a dye bath will send the whole thing 'dark' you'll loose all of your lovely patterns and layers. Yes, that happened to me, I did not have time to risk that happening again.
So I investigated natural inks that were weather proof and also light proof. I knew the onion skin dye would fade, but needed the lines to stay strong. Indian ink was the answer thankfully, I set to work painting my constellatoin designs on the one large cloth. I also decided that light and shadow would play a big part in the work, so added some applique eco printed leaves and larger versions of the shapes I had printed. It was all coming together.
The first audition of layers and further details, but suddenly one cloth didn't seem to go very far on a washing line, so I drastically cut it into 6 pieces, hemmed them and added channels for wooden batons. Sadly I obviously didn't have time for any photos.....we jump straight to Norfolk and hanging them in the woodland haha
Above, the first photo is the late afternoon, I'd just set them up and was happy with the order. I then sat for a couple of hours adding stitched 'wire' drawings, another layer of detail that would not be lost over the weeks of weathering. I was staying on site this year so could visit more easily and the photo on the right is the following morning, when the light was flooding through - I was delighted! Such a transformation from morning to evening.
Fast forward 7 weeks and we returned to take the work down, the first photo shows how much the colour has faded which is to be expected. Surprisingly, though where the soy milk was still held its strength and the contrast was actually more obvious - hurrah! For those who cared about my alchemy experiment it had worked, layers of mordanting had changed over time and the eco printing and applique had gone ragged. I then spent some time photographing the work in different ways, before it started to rain.
Another happy installation, not prize winning this year, but I was delighted with the process and the setting. A huge thank you to the Cannell family for their hospitality and wonderful spaces for exciting art work. I could move in, or at least return again another year.
I'm not there this year (2026) but if you are in the area, the space is amazing and I'm sure the work will be as well it just gets better and better. Here is a link to their website, enjoy!
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