Reviewing past workshops for new ideas

The Embroiderers Guild, Victoria, is having an exhibition in October, called A Secret Garden.
I have had ideas swimming around in the murky recesses of my mind, not really developing.

Today I decided that, as I cannot do my weaving once the daylight has gone, I should use the non-weaving time to be developing my ideas with some experimentation. As it is just after the winter solstice, there is quite a bit of non-daylight time at the moment. And today was particularly dark, due to rain clouds. Still, I can't complain about rain, we still need it.

I have looked at some Pinterest sites - too many things to look at!!

Then I came across a You Tube video of Kim Thittichai doing some painting of what she calls Bondaweb and we call Vliesofix, here in Australia.

It reminded me of the wonderful workshop I did with her at Ballarat a few years ago. I loved the workshop, did some more playing around once I got home and then forgot all about it - as is my wont.

So now I feel inspired to have a go again. I will have to tidy the studio again - it gets tidied reasonably regularly recently. I must admit that it makes it easier to keep track of things if I actually put them away properly - amazing.

I loved the process of tearing up paper, dyeing or painting it, tearing it up again, etc. I am hoping to make a background that will either be a door or a wall that is hiding the secret garden - a bit obvious, I know, but that is where my thinking is at the moment.

Then I had the thought of looking through a keyhole. I found some images on 123RF and have more ideas floating around, not really connected to previous ideas. I really need to actually start, then things might gel better.

Anyway, ideas are floating around - that is an improvement.
I am thinking of using some gardening type books as my base, maybe I can paint on the paper, rip it up, etc.
I will need to find all the equipment that is involved, that will make a bit of a mess, but it will be a productive mess, hopefully.

Here's hoping something comes to me.

Laura Edgar workshop

I have to post today, the date is so interesting - 8/4/16.

Fortunately, I have been to the Fibre Arts event at Ballarat, so I have something to say.

I attended Laura Edgar's workshop. It was based on seascapes, or so I thought. I don't know if I read it incorrectly or if other people just wanted to do landscapes, but some people did some wonderful scenes.
These images are from the exhibition on the final evening. A lot of them have minimal stitching on painted fabric. They have turned out beautifully.

I stuck with seascapes.

I also stuck with the image I have used before, for tapestry and for a small piece I did recently. I had thought to donate it for the raffle but have kept it as I want to develop more work based on the technique I used to make it. So it is still in my studio.

The work I did in Laura's workshop is rather different. We used a lot of synthetic fabrics, acrylic paints and much more hand sewing than I am used to. The hand sewing produces a different texture. I did do one piece using both machine and hand sewing and the machine definitely flattened the area I worked on.

Machine and hand sewn

The other pieces I produced are hand sewn and much more textural. It was lovely to sit for several hours a day and just sew - I doubt that I will do that at home. There is too much else for me to be doing.

Hand sewn

Hand sewn, some free motion sewing on dissolvable fabric to make small pieces to add as texture.

Laura did some demos of her technique and I can see that I will have to practise it a lot more. The painting of the background, or of fabric that may be overlaid, and perhaps burnt, needs more experimenting. She produces lots of stormy scenes. She says that is because she is from the north of England and the seas and skies are darker. From her work, I assume they rarely see the sun.

It was a very enjoyable week, relaxing and educational.

Workshop at Ballarat 2014 - part one.

I am finally getting around to posting about the Fibre Arts Forum at Ballarat this year. It was great, as usual. Lots of lovely people doing textile work, designing, making and discussing textile art. No news, newspapers, television, etc. (I will admit to checking the football scores.) It is like a retreat. It would be great even if the workshops weren't - but they are.

I did the Kim Thittichai workshop - it was advertised as a workshop in two parts. The first part was about finding a design to work with. I must admit that I didn't take much notice of what the second part was, I was more interested in learning about designing.
Fortunately, the notes did say that you might only do samples, no finished article to produce at the end. Just what I wanted.

Kim got us to do three design exercises to start with. She kept telling us that they are simple design exercises, not new developments, etc. But it was a chance to spend several days doing it!! No phone calls, no deciding what to cook, no cooking, nothing but the work. Fabulous.

She didn't give us any notes, we just had to do our own work, make our own decisions. Apparently it is all in her book, Experimental Textiles, but I hadn't seen it. Anyway, I am a person who prefers to be shown, and work with others and see what they are doing, rather than read notes or books, not that I don't have my fair share of books.

The first one was to paint a journey. We were to ignore the fact that most of use think we can't draw, we just had to paint images that meant something to us. Then, because we had to fill the paper to at least 80% with black (all the design work was with black and white only), I had to make up some images. They had nothing to do with the journey, they were just images to fill the space. I was even reduced to writing letters of the alphabet to fill in some space - must be the teacher in me, the alphabet is always a good bet.

Here are a few of the journey painting, laid out together.

We then got some L-shaped cards and chose an area that appealed to us. Guess what?  The letter 'e' got into my more intricate design.

We traced the part of the image that interested us the most, transferred it onto some foam core board and some sort of self-adhesive foam stuff. Then we cut the foam and stuck it to the foam core. You can see that we cut the positive and negative images out to make two blocks. We than printed them, using acrylic paint. After the paint dried, we painted the newspaper with procion dye solution.
All this took a bit of time but I loved it.

Kay Kahn workshop

I was lucky enough to attend a two day workshop with Kay Kahn on the weekend. She is a lovely teacher, patient, generous with her ideas and clear in her instructions. As it was only a two day workshop, she prepared some of it for us beforehand.

We laid out fabrics onto the base, sewed them on securely and decoratively.

Then we cut out the shapes we wanted. Kay didn't give out any notes which meant that she had to repeat her instructions over and over again as we all got to different stages at different times. We also had to design our own vessels. This was a challenge for me as I didn't have any clear idea of what I wanted to achieve. But it didn't matter, Kay could cope with any challenge. I stuck to a very simple design as it was my first attempt at this sort of work.

My small sewing machine, that I purchased for taking to classes, struggled a little with some of the thicker areas. I had only taken cotton threads and they broke - repeatedly!!! But, having learnt a lot more patience since taking up tapestry weaving, I persevered. Because I threaded the machine more times than I have ever done (I am not sure I am not exaggerating!), I didn't quite finish. But all I have to do is sew it together by hand - and we were given a very good demonstration of how to do that too.

Of course, I got the usual questions about fibre art - what is it FOR?  How will I use it? etc. Not to worry, I just ignored those questions.  It is ART.

I am going to the Fibre Arts at Ballarat this week, doing a different class. Kay will be teaching there too. I will be very interested to see what the students can achieve with so much extra time - 4 and half days.