Handmade in the factory

I had a great day this week printing lengths of my hand-dyed cloth in the factory - these will all be sewn up into lovely cushions, aprons, teatowels, lavender bags, all sorts...for sale at up and coming Christmas markets at the Downland and Weald Museum and Crafty Fox Market in Peckham.

My print day was the culmination of 2 weeks work outside in the garden with metres of heavy, wet cloth soaking and boiling them in wood ash to mordant them (so that the dye stays) and then dipping them into my bubbling caldron of walnut and rhubarb dye. All my fabric is odds and ends recycled from the factory. At Dora Fabrics we are very sustainable!

And slow. I then had to do masses of ironing before loading the fabric onto my bike and heading down the cycle track to Shoreham and the London train.

Once I got me and my fabric to Ivo Printing factory in Southall, all the lengths had to be pinned out on our lovely long printing table - 50m!! This very time-consuming so next time I will sew them together first. The screens were them squared (so they don't print crooked!), the repeat set and the colour checked. My walnut dye had come up darker than last time so Andy our colour matcher adjusted my mustard colour - brought it up so that it had more oomph.

 


Shelley and Monique then got on with printing the lengths although it was a bit of a pain to wash up so many time (sorry girls and thank you Dave). They did a great job and I was very happy.

Washing up the screens is one of the wettest and coldest jobs in the factory.

I then sewed up the printed fabric so that it could be baked in the huge baker at the end of the flatbed machine. This is a truly terrifying moment as all my precious fabric disappears into this the massive boiling rollers... then appears again. Material does get lost and Podge has to climb inside and fish it out - scary!!

Finally, the material gets inspected to spot any print flaws - Rob passed my print. Thank you Rob!

Now I cycle with the fabric to Beverley who will transform it into beautiful things.

The product of lots of hard work from me and my lovely friends at Ivo Print - couldn't have done it without you - thankyou xx

Wild Textiles

It's nearly a week since my 'Wild textiles' workshop - 2 days of foraging and wild textile making with 5 other intrepid makers...

Sally and Geoff kindly lent us and even erected their party tent in our garden (very bake off) and we got started by foraging and collecting local plants, leaves, bark, mud, chalk... everything we might need for making colour, creating resists and dyeing cloth.

Together we filled our huge collection of pots and pans (sorry, Ursula but the seaweed went in the one you leant me) with our seasonal haul - hops, alder, ash, walnuts, willow, black berries, wayfarer tree, weld, dandelions, rhubarb, raspberry leaves amongst other things. And as we got the colours on the boil, delicious smells and enticing colours started ouzing out.

At this point we short circuited the electricity in David's writing hut - but redeployed our stoves and kept ongoing. We also mixed up a resist in the tradition of Indian dhabu printing using mud from our local River Adur and smashing up loads of chalk - which was hard work. We dyed our resists in indigo with lovely results.

By the afternoon of the second day we were totally on a roll - I was very impressed by everyone's meticulous record-keeping of their experiments with different mordants and afterbaths. Very different colour palettes emerged.

It was to be to be honest - a bit of an adventure... climbing chalk cliffs, slipping in mud, getting stung and ruining our hands our hands in the process - but the results were truly stunning.

 

We were overwhelmed with the range and breadth of colour that can be created locally and on such a low-tech basis. Well done to everyone who came along and shared their energy, passion and enthusiasm. Especially Elise, who helped so much - thank you.

I am now taking bookings for Spring Wild Textiles 2017 - a seasonal 2 day workshop based in the South Downs and all about the local colour we can forage and create for ourselves sustainably. So if you're interested in a South Downs adventure get in touch with me at dorapattern@gmail.com

The workshop costs £80 for 2 days with all materials included and you will learn how to make your own natural dyes using foraged plants, make mud resist patterns with indigo and experiment with a larger piece to take home with you.

My website www.dorafabrics.com finally went live this summer and I wanted to blog about the whole experience of creating the website, products, logo.

First and biggest thanks to Andy Hodge who encouraged me from the first and did all the technical stuff so that I can now manage and maintain the site for myself.

Building the website was great for helping build a team around me - Beverley Witter at Opening Statement who sewed up the blinds and cushions, Martin Cleave who took the beautiful photos as well as Andy throughout. I dyed, printed and sewed everything else myself, including metres and metres of wallpaper...sometimes it felt like my degree show all over again.

 

Martin took my idea (above) and turned it into this!

My three top tips for anyone else thinking about setting up a web shop would be

• Have a clear vision for your brand - with a little help from my kids I got there in the end. Robin told me 'Not everyone wants everything indigo, mummy' - a real breakthrough moment!
• Be organised - with a clear list of products and shots needed. Martin only had a day to do the shoot so we had to be super organised.
• Ask for help - Fanny Shorter (www.fannyshorter.com) helped me with legal blurb and terms and conditions. Thanks so much Fanny!

Please have a look and let me know what you think. It's definitely still a work in progress - but for the moment it's helped me create a public face for dora fabrics that I can share with the world and take advantage of many more opportunities (apply for markets, commissions, promote my workshops etc) as well as connect with potential customers.

Local pattern Local colour

  

      

My new home in the Adur Valley has inspired my new collection of Dora fabrics - I've discovered incredible patterns carved and painted in the ancient medieval churches along the river and have been drawing and printing these all summer. I've named my designs after our local Saint's - St Cuthman, St Peter and St Botolph. St Cuthman pushed his mother to Steyning in a wheelbarrow - you see his picture all over Steyning and the boys climb on his statue next to the Church.

My other big discovery are the local plants, like the weld I found growing under the Shoreham flyover. When I boiled it up in  my dye pot, gorgeous, rich, yellow colour filled the pot and filled the kitchen with a rich wonderful smell. I was intoxicated and carried on dying cloth for months... Then in autumn I moved onto walnut husks for their warm brown colour and in the spring I'm looking forward to digging up rhubarb on the allotment and enjoying it's soft pink colour.

What do you think of my fabrics? I wish you could smell them - they smell so sweet. I hope St Cuthman would approve - he's certainly been popular on curtains and blinds. If you would like a fabric sample or would like to find out more about pattern-making, printing and natural dyeing in the Adur Valley, please get in touch by emailing me at dorapattern@gmail.com.

 

Recipes for Pattern

 

Does pattern have to be superficial and imitative or can it capture a fleeting moment, the fingerprint of a place or even the spirit of a person?

My final collection for my BA Textile Design Course at Chelsea College of Art (www.chelseatextiledesign.org) is based on five pattern-making experiments that try to answer this question – to find out if pattern can be anything more than skin deep. Together with gardening friends on my local allotments, at Spa Hill in Upper Norwood, I have created five pattern stories that reflect a time, a person and a place. You can read more about their pattern stories at  www.spahill.blogspot.co.uk

By collaborating with them, I wanted to create a recipe for pattern-making with soul: a way of using pattern to re-enchant and beguile the eye, encouraging people to look more closely and care more deeply about the world around them.

I found the process of collaborative making intriguing and inspiring. Each person was so very different and each life in its own way was so extraordinary and challenging. As we grew closer and spent more time together - making design decisions about the colour, form and composition of the pattern became clearer and clearer - a bit like a picture coming into focus the longer and more carefully you look at it. 

Looking back - it seems as if the process of making something together was quite straightforward - but actually at the time it was anything but. The process of practical making with my  hands  - printing, dying and stitching, helped me refine the process at each stage.

I learned three (at least) important things about making patterns together - 

1) Begin by exploring the world around you - look closely and as often as you can. Try looking through someone else's eyes. Draw as much as you can and in as many different ways as possible. Take risks and feel the seasons change.

2) Slow down and look for detail. Seek out the overlooked and the ordinary. 

3) Share as much as you can - cups of tea and cake, seeds, advice... Reciprocity helps the process to flourish and grow.

A HUGE thank you to the pattern-makers - Stinky aka Sarah Newton and Isabelle, Eileeen Ward, Beverley and Thabo Witter and Tim Gundry-White. Thanks also to Martin Cleave for the beautiful photographs.

You can meet the pattern makers by watching a short film I made about them at  http://youtu.be/ft2Fh6x_dZY