The Textile Artist's Studio Handbook


Book Description

Explore the world of textile arts, one thread at a time! The Textile Artist’s Studio Handbook is the only book you need for expanding your repertoire of textile crafting and design techniques. This is the go-to guide for the foundations of design and fabrication, glossary of materials, and classic techniques that include weaving, dyeing, painting, and more! Plus, where else can you get behind-the-scenes access to setting up the best home textile studio for you? Inside, you’ll find exploration of basic materials (including fibers, dyes, paints, and other media); visual tutorials for spinning, felting, crochet, weaving, sewing, and quilting; primers for surface decoration techniques such as dyeing, painting, stitching, and screen printing; and patterns and project instructions.




Sketchbook Explorations


Book Description

A practical and inspirational guide to help embroiderers and textile artists make the most of sketchbooks to inform their creative work. The artist's sketchbook offers an exciting platform to explore a host of mixed media techniques. Using a combination of paper, textiles, found objects, pencil, ink and paint, Shelley Rhodes shows how a sketchbook can act as an illustrated diary, a visual catalogue of a journey or experience or as a starting point for more developed work. Whether out on location or in the studio, Rhodes explores every stage of the creative process, from initial inspiration to overcoming the fear of a blank page, manipulating paper and images and incorporating 'found' objects to build a sketchbook that is both beautiful and inspiring. Sketchbook Explorations is the ideal companion for everyone from the beginner to the more experienced artist looking for exciting techniques to expand their repertoire in mixed media. The book explores: Why work in sketchbooks? The importance and joy of working in a sketchbook. Ways of recording and investigating ideas that inspire. Techniques in mixed media from found objects and layers to three-dimensional sketching. Creating on location. Using electronic devices to develop ideas.




The Glass Artist's Studio Handbook


Book Description

The Glass Artist's Studio Handbook offers readers a comprehensive and accessible guide to not only the nuts and bolts of this perennially popular craft but insight into the artisan crafter's lifestyle.




Embroidering the Everyday


Book Description

Inspiration and practical tips on incorporating the everyday into textile art. In Embroidering the Everyday, acclaimed textile artist Cas Holmes explores the 'everyday' and the 'domestic', generating a wealth of inspiration and raw material to create textile work that resonates with time and place. Cas invites us to re-examine the world and use the limitations sometimes imposed by geographic area or individual circumstances as a rich resource to develop ideas for mixed media textiles in a more thoughtful way. With techniques and projects throughout, the book explores: How to be more resourceful with what we have to hand, including working with vintage scraps, homemade dyes and papers, and even teabags and biscuits. Rediscovering family history and how photographs and objects can provide inspiration, including Cas's own exploration of her Romani heritage. Drawing inspiration from our local landscape and how it changes through the seasons. How to transform materials with mark-making, printing, image transfer, collage and stitch. Packed with inspirational work from the author, and other leading practitioners who place the everyday at the heart of their work, this treasure trove of ideas, techniques and practical projects is an essential guide for our times.




The Surface Designer's Handbook


Book Description

Beginning with studio practices and safety rules, this information-packed handbook is appropriate for both newcomers and experienced dyers but assumes that readers have a serious interest in textile design. An overview of dyeing starts with fibers and fabrics and discusses all aspects of the dyes favored by textile studios--fiber reactive, acid, vat, and disperse--before explaining discharging, screen printing, monoprinting, stamping, stenciling, resist dyeing, devore, and painting. Would-be fabric artists are advised along the way to identify a personal approach to dyeing--free spirit? rule-follower?--and color photographs of work by today's top fiber artists elucidate prevailing styles. Recipes and techniques are accompanied by step-by-step instructions with photographs, and a concealed spiral binding allows the book to lie flat. Ten appendices include a worksheet for recording chemicals, procedures, and costs for all projects; a guide to washing fabric; descriptions of stock solutions, thickeners, and steaming; a metric conversion table; and a guide to water temperatures.




Shibori for Textile Artists


Book Description

Shibori is the Japanese term (from the word meaning "to squeeze or wring") for the dye-resist technique of binding, clamping or gathering the cloth so that the dye cannot reach certain parts. The result is a most powerful combination: a carefully structured design with the organic freedom of the unpredictable. One of the richest textile traditions in the world, shibori has been used in Japan, Africa, India and South America for centuries to create vibrant color, bold patterns, and intricate motifs. In recent years, a resurgence of the art has revealed its full potential. Janice Gunner's book is aimed at quilters, embroiderers and textile artists who want to master the techniques of shibori and to find ways of using the fabric for a range of textile applications. The book begins with the historical and cultural background of shibori; then goes on to explain, with clear, precise instructions and diagrams, how to make a wide range of exquisite fabrics. Gunner covers many different techniques, including tied-resist, stitched-resist, wrapped-resist, clamp-resist, folded- and pleated-resist, as well as immersion, space and indigo dyeing. Stunning examples of shibori pieces appear throughout the book both to inspire and guide; and practical advice is given on incorporating shibori textiles into the reader's own quilted and embroidered work.







Digital Jacquard Design


Book Description

For centuries, the creation of Jacquard cloth required the collaborative efforts of teams of designers and technicians working on vastly complex equipment. In the past three decades, developments in loom technology and CAD systems have made it possible for a single individual to design and produce this most challenging class of textiles. Digital Jacquard Design presents a comprehensive introduction to the creation of weave patterning in the era of digitally piloted looms. It offers both aesthetic and technical training for students of figured weaving, covering the Jacquard medium in fantastic breadth and depth. The book is an essential guide for all who create figured textiles with modern materials and tools, and provides the reader with a 'digital' key to access and employ the great textile traditions of the past. Digital Jacquard Design examines the design process from end to end, progressing from visual analysis, sample analysis and weave-drafting methods, to figuring techniques and the selection and building of weaves. It provides a guide to converting traditional drafts to digital polychrome format, a design terminology and a weave glossary. The book concludes with a rich set of case studies to demonstrate ingenious and effective weave and design solutions.




A Fiber Artist's Guide to Color & Design


Book Description

"From the language of color--to the principles of design--to examples of fabulous fiber art creations and 12 workshop lessons, each is spectacularly presented in this exciting, new book developed to help you become a better artist."--P. [4] of cover.




The Art Is the Cloth


Book Description

A colorful guided tour from an expert, enabling weavers, textile lovers, and art lovers to notice and appreciate what tapestries can do and how they do it. This guide from expert tapestry weaver and historian Sidore gives how-to strategies enabling weavers and nonweavers to notice and appreciate the meaning of these artworks. You'll discover much to enjoy in photos of more than 300 tapestries from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Sidore enables you to think about the weavings in ways you have never before considered as she groups pieces that talk with each other--and that also converse with the viewer. Enjoy learning basic elements of weaving to help you become increasingly sophisticated in understanding what you're seeing. Then, learn six ways in which tapestries can call attention to themselves as cloth. This eye-opening guide to seeing explains the great range of materials and visual themes, the use of trompe l'oeil, the importance of the direction in which the weaver weaves, and more. After this learning experience, you'll bring smarter eyes to your museum wandering, deeper enjoyment to your collection and purchases, and surprising new skills and creativity to your weaving of fibers . . . and of life.