Waiting, waiting

It is election day today and it feels as if everything is on hold till we hear the results.
To fill in some of the time, I walked at Yarra Bend again.  There is a tree near the carpark that has a big fungus near the ground.  It often looks a lot like an elephant's foot but today it had a beautiful bright green rim on it.

I tried for a few close-ups, they didn't turn out that well but they are still interesting.  I couldn't get a good image of the velvety texture of the brown part but these give an indication.

Further along, I was taking pictures of the different colours and patterns in the bark.  Then I noticed the face.  Well, I think it is a face, or someone wearing a mask. In fact, it is almost the whole head and looks 3D-ish. 

More fungus

How time flies!  I can't believe it is so late in August. Nearly spring. The blossom is out on our apricot and nectarine trees already.
I haven't been doing much in the way of textiles lately, just thinking about upcoming deadlines and how I might approach the briefs.
I have also been working on my felting skills, trying to keep ahead of the lessons I have been taking.  That is all working out ok, we will all be doing the same activity this week - I hope!  It may turn out that one or two children have missed a class and will need to be brought up to speed. I think the rest of the children will be making felt balls and we will try to string them into necklaces.  We had thought to do some embroidery on the dried felt but that may not happen as time is running out. Still, it is better to be overprepared than underprepared.
The art teacher and I have also been talking about working with groups of children on the theme of decomposition.  So my recent pictures of fungus have come in handy.  I found another sort on a walk in Kew recently, quite different from the others I have photographed.

The fungus is well camouflaged in the tree. 

It was in the tree at the front.

Good date today - 31/8/13.

Making a forest floor machine embroidery piece - part one

After all my taking photos and thinking, I finally started making some distorted machine sewing based on the images.
I also used ideas from Exploring Dimensional Quilt Art by C June Barnes.  I didn't do the quilted shapes but used an idea for one piece. She explains her designs and the maths involved and they can be adapted to free motion sewing.
The idea was to make two identical circles, cut a slit in each one, then join them together.  I didn't quite follow the instructions but came up with something that could possibly be found on a forest floor.

I played around with ideas from the samples we had done, trying to use colours that might suggest a more muted fungus - despite the fact that I was finding orange fungus on my walks.

I wasn't sure how the non circular piece would come out once off the hoop but it turned out ok.

I chose a base fabric that was in the colour range I was using, so that it didn't matter if you could see a little bit of the fabric through the sewing.

Fungus walk

As I have been experimenting with the samples for our assignment, some of them have made me think of fungus (or flowers).

To get this effect, you draw a circle on your fabric and then sew in straight lines from the centre.
It wrinkles as you sew, giving dimension. It has to be hooped to be manageable. The one nearest the camera was done by going around and around the circle, rather than straight stitching.

I did the samples with  a colour that I don't often use, to get rid of some of it.

I had to take the camera out again and get more photos, while walking the dog. This time I was looking at various fungi that is in the park. As I have said, it has not been very wintry (although it is today!!) and the park is reasonably dry. I did find a few dampish spots though and there were some interesting sights - if I looked carefully.