2020#12 Typography: Typo Tess with EEG (by Helen Chilton)

2020 Topic 12: Typography

Helen's project had me ooh'ing and ahh'ing at such a clever idea. The skirt and legs are particularly brilliant and there's hardly anywhere untouched by type-faced charm. 

~ Keren

Hi everyone, it's Helen with you today looking at Typography.

As you can probably see I've gone a bit off piste with this one - blame it on being in lockdown for several weeks! I'm using Emma's stamps which have loads of text, all different fonts and sizes and I was going to use the little pages to make a book. However as I was looking through my stash, I came on this calico art doll that I bought ages ago for something and never used. It got me thinking and Typo-Tess was born.

Here she is. This doll has got wire inside so you can bend her arms and legs.

I've used a piece of silk and sprayed it with Dylusion sprays. You could use any sprays or something like Ecoline inks, or Infusions are also a useful fabric dye with muted tones. I love how the colours bleed into one another.

Then I stuck it down on a piece of paper and ripped it into shreds leaving a border at the top. (This is all done on the floor by the way, but I'm not showing you that as you'll be shocked by the mess!)

While still stuck to the paper, I've stamped words and phrases on every strip. Archival works best for this, I tried Versafine Clair but it bled into the silk.

Use as many fonts as you want. You can split up the larger quotes and just stamp one line.

For the arms and legs I just stamped patterns.

When you're painting the calico, water your paint down a little and it goes on beautifully.

Wanting to get some text into every space, I then stamped in between the stripes.

Everything else is made of scraps and wool. Her skirt flows around her in a rainbow of colours.

Add text to the sash and then the beads spell out her name. 

Typo Tess really cheered me up and got my mojo going! I made her rainbow coloured as children over here have been painting rainbows and putting them in their windows to support our wonderful NHS workers at this time, and also all the other people who are working so hard to keep things going.

You could easily make your own doll to dress and decorate - it doesn't need to be anything fancy. Just imagine all the different stamps you could use - flowers, fish, faces from Darcy, Clare, Lynne Perrella, Zinski, Gwen's patterns and even some of Courtney's crochet to decorate the clothes! I think I'm off to cut out some more!

Helen

A Splash of Colour