Darkened Butterflies
I would have given anything for my grandmother to have seen the color effect happening in this square. It’s part of my award-winning piece – Grandma’s Butterflies, done in her honor. I can imagine her thinking through the color and weave relationship for the many pieces she created over the years. Like with weaving, when you place a color on top of another you will create a new color, like in this square the black silk gauze created a darkening or shading effect. Grandma was fascinated by colors and their effects. I can see her chuckling about how I had a square that darkened everything almost to black because of my affinity for black as a teen during my Goth phase. Early in high school my mother allowed me to redecorate my room transforming the rainbows to gray and black in my teenager room. My grandmother went shopping with me to help me design and decorate the transformation. I know that time period really struck my grandmother and mother’s hearts because they love colors. But the Goth me did not. She would also have found this square entertaining. She would have pushed her glasses up for a closer look and inspected the trapped shiny objects that were on top of the darkened gray base. She might even have had some stories about adorning her own pieces. I continue to miss my Grandmother dearly every day.
Darkened Butterflies came closest to my original vision. I love working with gauze because it is easy to felt and has an incredible effect on the inclusions trapped underneath it. But gauze is more fragile than china silk, so it requires you to be gentle when working with it. You need objects that can be captured and held without compromising the gauze. I had done some samples as part of fiber artist Fiona Duthie’s online Surface Design class and had learned from experience that you need flat dull pieces. I always want to challenge myself and this square demonstrated how far I have come to mastering inclusion with gauze.
I wouldn’t say I have completely mastered this technique, but I am comfortable with it and know I can design a unique piece through its use. It was fun to find different materials for this square and I was excited to use them. I bought dupioni silk from a company in India. It’s a high-quality silk that I was lucky to find on Etsy as scrap square pieces in a dark pink. I knew it fit this project and I really wanted to work with this type of resist inclusion. It took a long time to get the silk but well worth the wait. Dupioni silk works as a resist inclusion because it is a double strand of silk that is both thick and thin in appearance. It worked well for this piece to form the shape of the butterflies.
After rolling 400 times.
When doing inclusion with silk gauze (or, as in this case, nylon) you can choose a white or black gauze with the affects being different. You can influence the value of the color beneath the gauze by shading or tinting it. Overlaying black gauze will shade the color underneath and white gauze will tint the color beneath. My original plan for the fourth square was to have white chiffon trap another set of dupioni silk butterflies to demonstrate the lightening or tinting affect. I did not like the effect of the chiffon I bought and tried many different silks to try to accomplish that opposite version of this square. In the end I could not find the right one to trap inclusions that brought out the effect I wanted to demonstrate. I will share below some of the failed or rejected pieces to demonstrate to you what happens when you add a white overlay to your inclusion piece. Most of the materials were not found in local fabric or craft stores. I found that getting materials was challenging because it often comes from vendors that are overseas. With the short timeline I was on, to complete Grandma’s Butterflies for The Golden Web Show that was held for the 50th Anniversary of the Buffalo Weavers Guild (my grandmother was a past president), ordering from overseas was not a great option.
This square is a technique-contrast to Pink Silk Butterflies. In that square three-cutout cotton quilt batting butterflies were trapped by pink china silk. This square used black nylon gauze to trap the dark pink dupioni silk resist. The silk’s momme (weight) determines how the silk will transform the surface of the felted piece. For Pink Silk Butterflies a piece of china silk (heavier momme) created a new textile with a repeating pattern across the entire piece. This square creates a stark contrast because nylon gauze (lighter momme) will be instead engulfed by the wool. All but disappearing, leaving a darkened shade over the square along with the various inclusions trapped on the surface.
Start of the fulling process.
Like the other two squares I started out by laying down four layers of commercially mixed gray merino wool. Using the same butterfly stencil as the other squares I cut out a trio of butterflies from the dark pink dupioni silk. I laid the trio of butterflies in the same positioning as the other squares and laid other inclusions to be trapped. Next, I added the black nylon gauze on top of the entire square and placed a piece of bubble wrap on top. I began to rub the piece that was soaked in soapy water with my hands. I then lightly circled over it with a palm washboard felting tool, paying special attention to moving it around the butterfly cutouts and other inclusions. The key with this stage is to be gentle and light because you don’t want to compromise the gauze.
Halfway through the fulling process. The butterflies are starting to emerge.
This square needed to sparkle, and gauze inclusion allows you to do just that. My mom had given me silver seed beads when I started the class, so I used those as my additional inclusions. At my local fabric store I bought pink sequins to trap, but also found my favorite inclusion – butterfly sequins. I just couldn’t believe it when I saw them because they were so perfect to use in this square. But remember, you must be careful with what you trap under gauze. It can’t be too heavy because the gauze is sensitive to weight. It’s best if it’s dull and flat. Unfortunately, the shape of these butterfly sequins caused tears in the gauze. If they were just flat-dull-circles it would have worked better but the wing shape has points to the wings that damaged the gauze. In the end it came together but to make it do so I had to seal some of the butterfly sequins with the gauze and a few stitches of black thread. There is nothing wrong with that and it’s a common fix with inclusion because sometimes there will be areas that do not end up sticking. In this case the problem was the gauze being compromised.
Fulling Complete
I also had an interesting problem with the pink sequins. They enclosed just fine and are very easy to work with like seed beads. The problem with the pink sequins, a problem that I didn’t think of before I started, was that they will be emerged in soapy water for days. The color in the end washed off many of the sequins and I ended up with silver sequins and seed beads. Not the worst problem to have but I was just a little disappointed to lose the pink in the background. I don’t know if there is a type of colored sequin that will not lose its color during the felting process, but it is worth researching for the future.
Keeping the form of the butterflies in this square was the biggest challenge. The dupioni silk is impermeable and thin. Unlike the cotton quilt batting, which the wool did pass through a little bit and was thicker, the dupioni silk was thin and the wool could not pass through it so nothing secured it in place. The fulling process of throwing and rolling caused the butterflies that were trapped in the gauze to bunch up and lose their shape. I had to spend a lot of time trying to flatten them back down under the gauze without separating the gauze from the wool. The trio of butterflies on this square are more abstract than the other squares. I did have to add a small number of stitches with black thread to save the shape in one of them. But its an organic look and I like the abstract feel of this square.
View of the shrinkage.
What is so incredible about using gauze to trap inclusions, is that that the gauze disappears into the fulled wool. At the end you are left with felt that has objects trapped on top of itself. This square ended with an incredible texture and shading effect across it due to the black nylon gauze. The background becomes almost black and the butterflies themselves become a deep pink/purple color. I won’t use the butterfly sequins again, but they added a little touch of character to this project. The sequins and seed beads worked perfectly as inclusions, were easy to use and sparkled. This square is dark, complex and beautiful. It is unlike the trio of pink silk butterflies who are instead simple and elegant. I think that my grandmother would be proud.
Finished Piece
Housekeeping
This is the third of four installments on the individual squares to my award-winning piece – Grandma’s Butterflies. They are being released in the order they were created. Last week’s post was about the second square - Wings Flapping - and the series started with - Pink Silk Butterflies. Next week I release - Blue Cotton Butterflies - my fourth and final square. This square was created after a long stretch of squares that did not measure up but in the end the effect of the light blue cotton quilting squares fit in perfectly. Check back next week to get the story behind the final square.
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