Possum Merino felt

The textile students are working on a commission to test possum/merino wool. At the moment they are trying to felt it and then will dye it in natural dyes and acid dyes. At the moment the sliver (carded wool) is palest beige but I hope to be able to change some of that tomorrow!

The Australian Brushtail possum was introduced to NZ in the 19th century and they have been chomping on our forests ever since.  To get rid of these pests they are shot, trapped, deliberately run over or poisoned. Woolyarns factory devised a way of mixing possum fur (which is a hollow fibre) and merino wool to make the most beautiful knitting wool. It is incredibly warm and soft.

If anyone has anything possum related for the students please get in touch. This could be possum skin offcuts, scientific papers, anecdotes about possums or names of people they could interview.

Photos of possum felt samples tomorrow

C

Screenprinting

I am not very good at this blogging, I forget to update it for weeks at a time.

Over the last few weeks I have taught 2 screenprinting classes. One was for the public and one for digital design students who had the designs all ready to go and just needed to get them onto a t-shirt. One was very low-tech, the kind of process I use at home where I don't have access to all the fancy equipment. One was high-tech in that we used the vacuum table and special exposure unit.
Both classes were great fun but I was shattered at the end! I didn't even take any photos.
 Over the 8 days I managed to coat about 20 screens with the photo emulsion and help students coat about 20 more, and help about 15 students with their designs which required at least 3 colours per print. Pretty full on.

I have also been making scarves for a shibori exhibition at Barometer Gallery ,13 Gurner St., Paddington, NSW. The exhibition will be opened by Yoshiko Wada who wrote the bible for shibori artists 'Shibori: The art of Shaped resist"

SCARF
- contemporary shaped resist dyed scarves/shawls

Barometer Gallery will open on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday each week from the 8th September to the 3rd October, 10am to 6pm.

Here is a detail of one of my scarves that will be on the sale table. We each have one major piece and up to 5 for sale. This is the first time I have entered a shibori exhibition. It feels funny not entering a quilt which needs a hanging sleeve etc. I don't even know how they display them.

This scarf is made of 100% merino wool jersey and has been clamped and bound and dyed about 6 times in acid dyes. Dyeing wool is also something new for me and I have been experimenting with both acid and fibreactive wool dyes. They react differently to Procion dyes on cotton and I am just learning how they work.