Making progress - slowly

I thought I had better post as my blog has been mentioned in a post about the Vision 2020 Textile challenge organised by Brenda Gael Smith.
All the images are now online. Sadly, the exhibitions they were going to be shown at in the near future are cancelled. There are some scheduled for later in the year, in the USA and Australia, so perhaps they will get to be seen 'in the flesh'.
I hope so.

Anyway, I am not going to post about that work - I am still working steadily on my small tapestry. Actually, for me it is a large tapestry but I am in contact with my tapestry teachers on a group that is relatively active at the moment, partly due to social interactions being so necessary.
Anyway, she showed us a series she is working on and she called them small tapestries - the same size as mine!! A3 approximately.

Cresside will be much faster than I as a weaver, however, she has done several in her series. I will be content when I finish this one! So far I have taken about 30 hours and I am about 2/3 of the way through.
I have been slowed down a little by the fact that I got the tree limbs mixed up, had to change my cartoon on the run and am making the colours up as I go. But I am relatively happy with the progress.

I can see something that I would change if it weren't soo far back and would require unpicking most of the tapestry. I will just have to live with it.

So, here is my progress image. (Oops, just saw another thing wrong, going to ignore that too, see if I can fix it when it is finished.)

2020

The date is 20/1/20. Not sure that there are going to be that many interesting dates this year. So I had better post!

I forgot to mention that I got an image of a tree from 123RF, an online site that gives royalty free images for a low cost.

I used that image and tried it in Photoshop. I put colour on the leaves and trunk, then put in some backgrounds. I tried a few. Here is one, not quite how the final piece ended up but it gave me the overall perception that my idea would work.

My idea is about how we perceive things, influenced by what is around them. Did I say that the theme of the call for entries is Vision 2020? Anyway, I love the way that background colours change our perception of other colours. So the leaves are all the same colours/fabric in each tree but the differing backgrounds change how we perceive them. 

I tried some fabrics I had for the trunks but realised that I don't actually have that many browns, especially ones that don't have other colours in them that would have distracted from my idea. 

Off to GJ's again! (I am trying to use what I have and not buy more but that wasn't going to work this time.)

I bought 25cm of 3 browns. The warmest one worked best. I used some little bits to double-check. 

Then I Vleisofixed (new verb!!) the selected fabric and cut out 5 of the tree shapes. They are all the same, or almost the same. It is very hard to cut them all exactly!

I ironed them on to the background.

Then came the tedious job of cutting out the leaf shapes, using the same colours for each tree. 

Then sewing them on!! I tried to cut them the same and place them the same but there are some slight differences. There is even a deliberate change in the number of each colour on one of the trees - Spot the Difference!!

I say tedious but I was very glad to have something that needed some concentration and removal from the real world. The real world is not great at the moment, especially if you live in the east of Australia (with apologies to those Australians not in the east but still suffering from fires. And now floods.).

If you want to read a very interesting account of how Brenda selects the final pieces, go here. She actually had to eliminate her own piece!!

Exciting news.

I have been struggling, along with many people I know, to be creative when it seems as if all of our part of the world is burning, as it has been for many months.

I saw a call for entries for Vision 2020 textiles (I expect there to be quite a few exhibitions with this title in 2020) and took the chance to work on something that would require concentration and take me into the creative side, away from the real world.

It was very timely.

I have been fascinated for years with the way colours seem to change, depending on their surrounds. So I decided to use this idea.
I played around with a mind map (I looked online for a link and see that there are computer possibilities but I have learnt to do the paper and pen version) of possible ideas for Vision but came up with the colour and perception take on it.

I found some gorgeous fabric at a local fabric shop (GJs Discount Fabrics) that had a lovely gradation of colours.
I have been trying not to buy new fabrics lately but these were too lovely to resist. I bought half a metre each of about 4 different fabrics, so not too much. Only two have been used in the piece, the others are waiting for the right inspiration.
Sometimes you do have to buy fabric that doesn't have am immediate application because you know it is the sort that you use and you might not be able to get it later.

We were asked not to put images online till the selection process was completed but now it has been - and I have been selected. Feeling very chuffed!
Brenda Gael Smith is the curator and is encouraging of us to put in our process, so I will start that now.

Trying out the various leaf colours on different pieces of fabric.

I eventually decided that I wanted colours from several pieces of fabric. They are laid over some polyester, fairly thick, adhesive wadding. Then I sewed them on using free motion machine embroidery.

A Tidy Studio … Sometimes

Exciting news: As I have mentioned before, my work was accepted for A Matter of Time. Brenda Gael Smith, the curator, has done an excellent job of getting the exhibition mentioned in several magazines and my piece was included in the images chosen. You can see the articles in Textile Fibre Forum magazine (edition #122 2016), Quilters Companion (no 80) and in the upcoming Down Under Textiles (issue 25, 2016).

I was also interviewed and photographed for the In the Studio feature of Quilter Companion. That was an incentive to actually tidy the studio, and to put some artwork up on the walls that have been bare for a while, since we had some renovations done.

My photos, not using the amazing camera of a professional photographer. 

It was great to see the pictures (obviously taken with a wide-angle lens!) and remember those brief few days when the studio was tidy.

It is not tidy at the moment, I have lots of my tapestry paraphernalia lying around. I started an image a while ago but it just isn't working. So, a couple of days ago, I warped up the slightly smaller loom and started again.

In the naughty corner.

I had done quite a bit of it, persevering despite the difficulties. But now it is put aside and I am using my smaller loom. I might be able to use it for a sewing exercise, maybe distress it or something. Seems only fair, it has been distressing me.

Hopefully I have learnt from the mistakes of the previous piece and I won't make the same errors - or any.

As my friend has just reminded me, a successful piece depends on good preparation. I don't think I did that properly and now I am sorry.
Still, the new piece is coming along and I am putting in quite a few hours every day, improving my weaving. I don't do weaving all that often, so it is good to be being consistently sitting down and doing it.

This is only about 24cm wide, much smaller. 

But I do have a couple of ideas for art quilts that are still rattling around in my head - I really want to get to them. Must have some discipline and get the weaving done first.

AQC 2016

I had to go the AQC today, just in case something interferes with my plans to attend tomorrow - is that being too paranoid? (Now I don't need to go tomorrow.)

Anyway, I went today, which means I can post on 16/4/16; how could I resist??

There were so many beautiful quilts on display, I was almost overwhelmed. Fortunately, I decided to go and see the quilts before looking at the stands. Good decision. I only had a limited time to be there and it was nearly all taken up by the astonishing exhibitions.

Of course, I went to the floor talk for A Matter of Time. It was so exciting to see my work on display.

Brenda gave a very interesting talk about the exhibition. It was better than reading all the artist statements, which I had already done, as she added information about her choices about why pieces were included and how they related to one another. It was great to hear how she used the different quilts to carry a theme or colour idea through the whole exhibition.

Then there were several other small exhibitions from different groups. I was going to take photos and put them on this post but there are really good links already online so didn't bother. It was actually rather tricky to photograph some of them as, lovely as it is, the Exhibition Building does have windows up high that let in light and makes it hard to see some of the artworks clearly, especially for photography.

I did have a small piece in another of the smaller exhibitions: one by my online group of Aus/NZ Art Quilters. It is 10 years since the group began and that was the theme - 10 years with works of 10'"x 10" (yes, non-metric).

So here is a selection of photos from various parts of the AQC.
These ones were just as you walked in. I was going to vote for my favourite but the voting was only on the first two day - not really a problem as there were so many good ones.

Feeling Famous

I recently received an email updating us on how Beneath the Southern Sky exhibition is going.  It is about to go to Lancaster, USA, to the AQS Quiltweek.
Here is a link advertising it.
Then it is moving on to Paducah, in April.
I would had loved to have been able to go but the timing wasn't right.  Oh well, I'll just have to imagine it.

There was also an article about the exhibition in Downunder Textiles.  I hadn't realised that until I received an email from Brenda Gael Smith, the organiser and curator of the exhibition.  She has been great, keeping us up to date on what is happening.

It was about a year ago that this exhibition was put together, so it has been good value for the effort!

I couldn't do a post without a picture - then I realised that I had taken the photo of my work and it is beside Dijanne Cevaal's.  I still feel gobsmacked that my work was accepted into an exhibition with so many top quilters.  It is exciting to think about, even after a year.

Craft and Sewing Show

Today some friends and I went to the Craft and Sewing Show at Caulfield Racecourse.  We were surprised with the timing of the show, given that it is the Spring Racing Carnival but apparently they had their last race there last weekend.  Actually, all I know about the Spring Racing Carnival is that we get a public holiday for Melbourne Cup day.  Not my thing at all. Bring on the footy season 2013 (don't ask me about the Grand Final this year).

Anyway ...  I had been thinking that I really needed a daylight lamp to help with my work - not getting any younger here.  I hadn't thought about getting one today but there they were, with show special prices and a free table lamp thrown in.  I usually look at these lamps when I am using public transport and can't be bothered carrying it but today there was free parking and it was way across Melbourne, so I had driven.  So I bit the bullet and bought one.

Beneath the Southern Sky was one of the exhibitions on display and I had to have another look - how often do you get to have work in one of these events?  The work was displayed slightly differently from the AQC, which is where I saw it last.  It had a light right on my work - very pleasing - and it was easier to see the connection with the surrounding works (at least, I thought so).  I remembered to take a photo of my work this time - but I had forgotten the camera, so it is taken using my phone.

Brenda Gael Smith was giving demonstrations of procion dyeing and we found that very interesting - enough for us to plan a dyeing day next week. Very inspiring.
She has a competition on her blog to comment on what we saw and we might win some of her fabrics: she says she has a lot since she has been demonstrating at a series of shows this year.  All in all, it was a very pleasant day.

Brenda and one of her wonderful works - as usual, the reality is so much better than images. 

The Australasian Quilt Convention

On the way home from our wonderful week at Ballarat, we called in to the AQC.  (I can't link to it anymore, it is over.)
I was very keen to go to see my work in the Beneath the Southern Sky exhibition.  Brenda Gael Smith, the curator of the exhibition, did floor talks every day at 12.30.  It was very interesting to hear her talk about why she chose the ones she did and how she decided to hang them.  I am sure this will stand me in good stead if I try for any more exhibitions.
It might also make me feel a bit better when I am not accepted as she made it clear that there were good works sent that she did not use as she only had a certain number she could show and she was trying for a particular look.  She was trying to show different techniques so had to reject some fine work because she wanted a greater variety of techniques.

It was very exciting to see my work amongst so many fine pieces.  And people were photographing it!!  Very pleasing.

I can't believe I forgot to photograph my own work in the venue - I was too busy watching everyone looking at them all.  Anyway, you can see an image of it here.