carole dawber

Within the textile ‘colourscape’ pieces I wanted to move the description of the Sefton coastline into a more decorative direction, while still maintaining abstract concepts of earlier research and the consequent paintings. I adore the kaleidoscope of colours I can achieve by using silk fibres and the translucent tones of luminosity they characteristically emit.

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The core fabrics were from recycled sources (mostly reclaimed sari silk) providing a wide variety of silk qualities from lightweight habotai to iridescent dupions. Often purchased as ribbon hanks, I separated and over dyed them before re-winding to create the myriad colour palette she later employed.

 

Using a needle felting Embellishing machine gave me the freedom to experiment with the brush-like application of the various weights of sari silks. By exploiting the random widths of the silk ribbons, I was able to imitate the mark making in my original paintings by felting and blending hues together. In turn, this provided a variety of colours to re-interpret marshland, dunes and sandy pathways under the influence of the tidal currents and winds. Once the pieces had been “painted” via the embellisher, I then used rhythmic machine stitching in rayon to anchor the silk, adding a tracery of tangled lines to echo the movement of the grasses. Finally, random ornate edges of the original sari silks were decoratively machine stitched, creating representative interpretations of man-made boundaries within each composition.