FUFO

Finished UFO!!!
I have had a panel lying around for years. I think I did it with Olga Walters, at the Patchwork House, when it was still in Church St, Hawthorn. I can't remember how long ago it was, just that it was quite a while. Maybe 10 - 15 years??

Anyway ...

I found the panel a while ago and decided not to put it away - it has kicked around for almost a year.

The Christmas, New Year and Summer holiday break has been a good time to play around with some ideas. And the weather has been fairly kind to us so far, unlike the rest of Australia.

I decided that I needed to play around with my new(ish) sewing machine and practise my free motion sewing. I even got out two little booklets that Dijanne Cevaal made which show many different free motion NOT stippling designs. Every now and then I get them out to have a play.

Those empty spots are mostly filled in now.

I did some more free motion work on the panel, having decided that I couldn't be bothered doing the whole thing with patterns I had started so long ago. So now it has little sections of different designs where I just played.

What to do with it now?
It is not as if it is gorgeous and should be on one of our walls.
I have been visiting a friend lately and taking my sewing machine. It has a lovely big perspex table to go with it, to help with the larger pieces of sewing. I have been taking it in a cardboard box which is a bit unwieldily.
The panel is exactly the right size for the box - well, it is because I had, with great forethought (or we did it for some reason that I don't remember), made the batting and backing much larger than the front. So I have been able to put a wider border on it than I would usually, and lo and behold, I have a bag for my perspex sewing table.

Now all I have to do is remember to take the legs with it when I take it with me. (I don't use it at home, I have a wonderful Horn table that fits my machine. I love my Horn table. I have had it for years and years and it has been one of the best purchases I have ever made.

Winter Doldrums.

After posting about the Winter Delights, I find that I have been in the winter doldrums. Not that I mind the colder weather, especially as it is not all that cold yet. I can't really blame the weather, I think it is me that is causing the doldrums. Not to worry, I am sure something inspiring will happen soon.

I went to the Craft and Quilt Fair recently. It 'almost' inspired me to start doing something with the fabrics I have lying around. Lots of them! There were some absolutely stunning quilts on display.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the name of the quilter, or the quilt. 

Night Flight, Pamela Brockwell.

Arabesque

Kiwi Warriors by Dianne McDonald. It reminded me of some of the tattoos and doodles that I have seen so much of recently. 

Persian Panolpy by Jan Frazer.

Rings and Roses by Janet Treen

Abstraction by Cathy Jack-Coupland.
I think this was my favourite, so different from the others, quite textural.  

I have plenty of pieces of fabric from old workshops, including some online ones, that I can now see could be used. There were some works that used lino printing, or variations of printing, that inspired me greatly. So the visit was well worth it - as well as providing me with a lovely day out with a friend I don't see that often.

Dijanne Cevaal (whose online lino printing workshop I did) was there, with her Sentinelles works. They were beautiful and inspiring. I resisted the opportunity to take part in the her next idea, I have plenty of things to finish off.

I have been cleaning up, going through old containers and came across several unfinished quilt tops. Now I have to decide if I will try to quilt them myself or pay to have them done professionally. That is in the too hard basket at present. I don't feel much like getting out old work and quilting it, I would rather be working on something new.

I have also warped up my loom!!!! I do so little weaving that it is always a very slow process, something to be given serious thought as I remember how to do it. My idea is simple - I hope. But the idea is in my head, no cartoon. It will be interesting to see how it develops. I haven't quite decided how to do it and am going to make decisions as I go. Hope it works.  More on this soon - I hope.

Disguising the mistakes in my Optical Illusion quilt

I have had another go at the quilt which has the small squares that didn't line up.  I had put it away in disgust but still liked the effect from a distance. Having blurry distance vision helped.

I decided that I couldn't just let it lie around being another UFO.  I got out the left-over bamboo batting, put a backing on using a piece of fabric that I had bought to trial as the optical illusion solid colour but rejected for the darker fuchsia colour, and sewed it all together.

I looked at the designs in the books I got from Dijanne Cevaal and found one I liked.  A wavy grid that I hoped would subtly disguise the non-matching corners.

Isn't it amazing how looking through a camera changes your view of something?  I hadn't noticed the strong delineation between the blues, purples and the red. Luckily I had decided not to use if for the call for entries so I didn't get all stressed, as I would have if I had been entering it. Now I can just enjoy it.

Just when you think it is finished, you have to bind it, put a hanging sleeve and generally tidy it up.  Still a few hours of work to do yet.
But the sewing has disguised the uneven squares quite adequately.

Random thoughts about doodling … and other things

As I have recently said, I am taking up the daily zen doodle thing again.  I have stuck to the small format so far but am feeling a smidgin of interest in trying to produce a larger image.
I have also been in the company of friends who are artists and have expressed interest in zen doodling, so I pointed them in the direction of a couple of sites and a book I had.

Then I was given a book for Christmas (yes, I have read it already, even though it is not yet Christmas).  This book is about the The Great Tapestry of Scotland.  It is very interesting, especially given my Scottish and Irish heritage.  The tapestry is based on the Bayeux Tapestry and the Prestonpans Tapestry, among other things. None of these works are, strictly speaking, tapestries as they are not woven but they are still called that historically. They are all embroideries.
As I was doing further research about the Great Tapestry of Scotland online, I got sidetracked to my local embroiderers guild and noticed they are having classes for crewel embroidery in the new year.
This got me to thinking about counted thread embroidery I have done in the past and how you make up little patterns to fill in the spaces - just like doodling.

This has to be over 20 years old - who says I keep things a long time??

The thing about the crewel and Jacobean work is that is usually has colour and that can change the process. I don't think it matters though, it is still in the same area of design technique.

THEN I wandered off to some Pinterest sites about Jacobean and crewel embroidery.  The images are very reminiscent of doodling - no need to be making up my own designs, I think they have all been invented.  From there I decided to look for some free designs, just to see how much like doodling they really are.  I came across quite a few interesting sites. Several of the sites I visited pointed me to the Gutenberg project site and the book on Jacobean embroidery.  Such an interesting read - and source of designs.

While I was doing a desultory clean-up for the Christmas period, I also came across some designs I drew up when I was doing the blackwork workshop at the Embroiderers Guild.

As I was doing counted thread work, I used graph paper to help me.  But this is a design that is very much like the doodling patterns, I have just tried to remember what I would need to do to be sewing the designs rather than simply doodling.

I was off and running then, looking around all sorts of links connected to my current train of thought. I often come across this site when I am idling around the web - it is always worth a visit.  There are some great links on this post.
This site isn't for crewel embroidery, it is sashiko patterns but they look just like doodling patterns to me.
Here is another site I found through Pinterest.
No wonder I have liked doing the doodling thing - I have been playing around with similar stuff most of my life - off and on.

AND THEN I remembered Dijanne Cevaal's free motion embroidery patterns that she has published recently. They, too, look a lot like doodling.

So, although I have been busy with visiting and preparing for Christmas, not doing any of my creative stuff, I have been busy in my mind.

And the hollyhocks are blooming profusely at the moment, the freezer is filling up with flowers and the pressure is on to get the them out and start dyeing. Someone very selfishly wants to use the freezer for food - as if it were summer.

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.

Too much on my mind

Not only am I working on tapestry design and making, I have also enrolled for a Dijanne Cevaal online workshop, the Traveller's Blanket.  (It was on the front cover of Quilting Arts Magazine recently.)  This is not just a technique workshop, it is about having a story to tell and then using that story to influence how the blanket develops.  So there is a lot of thought involved - as well as the actual dyeing and sewing. My story hasn't started yet, there are just nebulous ideas floating around - in with all the other ideas, very confusing.

I have dyed the fabrics and sewn them together to make the quilt part, now I just have to start thinking about what fabrics I will use for the appliqué and what embroidery threads and stitches I will use.  Simple!
I am actually looking forward to the sewing, it will be hand sewing that I can do while watching tv (as long as it isn't sport).  It is not really the weather to be holding a blanket on your lap but autumn will be here soon and the weather will be more conducive to it - I hope.

And then there is the attempt to do some daily doodles and lino cutting.  And the fortnightly playday group.

I miss the textile design course I did, the discussions of how people are developing their ideas, how they are going about making the pieces, etc.  I think it focussed me as well as gave me other ideas and approaches to think about.  But our assignments usually worked in conjunction with each other and I didn't have too many ideas floating around (well, not all that often).  Although I enjoy the challenges of the different groups I am in, I need to compartmentalise them, or reduce the number I am trying to develop at one time.

ATASDA meeting & Dijanne Cevaal

Today I attended the Victoria ATASDA group's (we're not a branch yet) meeting.  The guest speaker was Dijanne Cevaal who was very interesting.  She talked about her recent residency in France and showed us her book about using Lutradur.  Unfortunately it is only in French but she has DVDs available in English on her blog.  As I understand it, they are mostly the pictures and not in the same layout as the book.

Her work was beautiful and inspiring. She is certainly not afraid of strong colours.

She showed us some of her work for her Master's degree exhibition and explained the personal history that inspired it. It used silk that she had dyed, stamped or painted, cut out and then sandwiched between two layers of tulle.  She had also attached some silk to the edges of some.  Absolutely stunning.

So now I might actually get out some of the Lutradur that I have bought in the past and have yet to use.  I have read articles and books about it but haven't quite been able to visualise what to do.  Now I have seen examples that show how wonderful this product can be.  I think I am a person who has to be shown physical examples of things, not just read about them, to be inspired.  That probably explains all the classes I have done in the past.  I love being shown techniques and then thinking about how I could use them.