Date again - 2/9/18

I feel as if I should post today, the date being 2/9/18.

I have been trying to come up with something for my Art Deco Now! theme. It is still not inspiring me hugely. But I have come up with a challenge for myself.

Having done a Kay Khan class a couple of years ago, having someone in our machine embroidery group (Chris Beehag) who does beautiful vessels, in a similar way, and having looked up lots of images, I have decided to see if I can make my own vessel.

So far, all I have is the inspirational image, found on Pinterest. There are so many images on Pinterest that it becomes a little overwhelming.

link here

I have used this image and a combination of others to come up with my template.
It is in pieces as I think I will do it a piece at a time and see how it goes.

I will have to work out how to actually make it stand as the template currently has no stable base - but that is for later.

The idea is to have separate bits for it so that it might be useful as a storage thing - textiles needing to be useful, or so people seem to think, given the question they often ask: What is if for?
That might be totally out of my ability range, hence the decision to start with the central piece only and see if I can make that much.

I have some old samples from furnishing books that someone was throwing out. I think they will be the surface of the central piece. I haven't actually got around to doing any of that detail yet, I am still at the stage of realising I need a front, back and sides design.
Waste not, want not - as they say.

I am finding this a bit daunting as most of the images I am using as inspiration are black and white, which do absolutely nothing to inspire me!! But the left-over bits of fabric are colourful, giving me some inspiration.

Envigilating an exhibition

As I have already posted, I have a piece in the Textile Awards exhibition at Buda.  It was my turn to sit at the exhibition on today.
It was an interesting experience - I met quite a few people who are interested in textiles and who had come to Buda specifically to see the exhibition.  There were also people there who had come to see the house and didn't have a special interest in textiles. They all seemed to enjoy the show.  Most of them put in votes for the People's Choice prize too. The show finishes this weekend, so I expect that it will be announced soon.
I managed to get the names of the winners of the two categories: you can read about the winners here.
Teresa Poletti Glover won the Gold section as well as the overall prize. Chris Beehag won second prize in the Gold section.
Beverley Downie won the Inspired by Buda section and Raewyn Penrose won second prize in that section.  
I recognised Raewyn's style from the workshop I did a couple of years ago.  The coat was lovely.

Part of Raewyn's jacket.

I also met Cheryl Kennedy, a fellow workshop member from a few years ago at the Ballarat Fibre Forum - she has her own exhibition on at the moment, in Castlemaine, at the Falkner Gallery.
Then I met the person who ran a quilting class at a Northcote Community House, it was when I was on long service leave and trying to put together my folio to apply for the Studio Textiles and Design course and she was a big help, so it was great to catch up with her too.

I also caught up with a fellow student from the course who also graduated last year.  So it was well worth the trip and was a very interesting experience.  She took a photo of my work there - you can see the shine on the synthetic fabrics, something I did not get with my photos.