Monday, August 31, 2009

Getting the Bug

I rarely use this blog but have found it useful to try out some applications that I was teaching this week.
I noticed that I had put in a reference to my Aus/NZ art quilt group so thought I would put a link. There has been a very interesting discussion going on about the safety (or otherwise) of using bleach discharge techniques for fabric surface design. You will have to join if you want to see the group but I am putting in a link here.
I found this group as the Quilt Convention in Melbourne at the beginning of the year. (Here is a link to the website, unfortunately it does not have anything from this year but is beginning to advertise the 2010 event.)
They had a very interesting display of A4 art quilts, demonstrating different techniques. They also advertised the group as a place to go to learn about different techniques and to ask for assistance. I joined full of enthusiasm and did a few of the monthly themes but have run out of steam lately. I still visit the group regularly and go to the links, admire the work, etc.

This is one I did about the bushfires, it is supposed to represent regrowth after the fires as well as a change in my life, the squares represent me trying to break away from traditional piecing, they are blowing away with the hot wind.

ToonDoo again

\friends\



THANK YOU!!! Meera has cleared up the very frustrating mystery of why I could not embed the toon. I had to make the toon public and I had not been doing that because I am playing around with the application for educational purposes and we always keep stuff private for safety reasons. Thank you, thank you.

The toon is not very interesting, I was just seeing if I could do it. It is also different from the one below, I made two to see if anything different happened on the second one. It didn't.

ToonDoo

ToonDoo is another site I have been playing with. It allows you to make cartoons which can be saved at the ToonDoo site and then can also be linked to your own blog. But I have had trouble finding the code to embed.
I found an interesting site with some info on embedding and other educational exercises but the code still does not appear. I am not sure if that is because I am using a mac computer. I'll try later on a PC and see if I can find it.
Here is a link that I have copied and am trying.

If I can't find the code I'll at least take a screen shot and put that in. It works, sort of, but I am not happy with it. I will persevere and see if I can come up with something better.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Wordle

Wordle - a site for playing around with words to make images.
I have played around with this for ages!! It kept disappearing on me as I tried to work out where to save it, whether I could print it and get it into my blog. It generally annoyed me. Hopefully this will embed in my blog.

Tried it and it just brought up the code, so it appears that you have to go the site, not my favourite way of doing it.
Tried that too and it didn't work, think I'm over all this!!
One last try,
Go here.

That seems to work, now here's a jpg of the thing.

image from http://www.wordle.net/

trying to glog

I'm trying to use Glog but it is coming in huge and I don't know what to do about it. I'll leave it for now and see what I find out later. All this takes more time and patience than I can be bothered with at present.



I have played with it a bit and now it is smaller. I had to go to the html code and halve the numbers so it is better able to fit. Now I find the writing is hard to read but I did discover that I can right click on the image and choose full screen, so I can see and read it.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Playing with images

Here is a poster to show some of the elements of the course I am doing at Brunswick, Studio Textiles and Design. The course has been changed as the TAFE structure is changing but as I am doing it part time, I am still in the old course.
I am also trying out this ImageChef application. ImageChef Word Mosaic - ImageChef.com

Monday, August 24, 2009

Long time since I've been here!

I have been talking with a few friends about blogs and how to do them. They are interested in making blogs to show their work. So I decided to come to my blog and see what I had done in the past. Very surprised to find an unmoderated comment from March, gingatao. Amazed to have received a comment.
I may actually start using the blog a bit more in the near future as I am going through my course at RMIT (the TAFE part), doing a Textiles and Design course. I'll have to take some pictures of my work and also put in the link to a group I belong to, the Aus/NZ Art Quilters group. It is an interesting group although I have now got a heavier schedule this semester and have not kept up with the monthly challenges.
The group does a monthly challenge in which you make an A4 quilt (very manageable size) and try different techniques around a particular theme. One of the members organised a fabric postcard swap and I joined it, my first ever try at a group thing.










Below is an image of the postcard I received, done with food dye and machine stitching.