Sewing onto plastic

For some of our assignments in the Textiles and Design course, we have had to design work for an outdoor installation at the Coburg Carnevale Festival and another piece for a research project about bags.
In both I have discovered the fun of free machine sewing on plastic.  I have based my outdoor piece on tiles in Turkey, again, just as I used this idea for the Graphica exhibition.  The theme for our group includes pomegranates and there is an element of light and shadow, so I decided that transparent plastic would fit into the light and shadows part of the theme and my design is a stylised pomegranate.

The technique I have used harks back to the quilting I used to do.  I cut out shapes as if for applique, placed them in their design onto a layer of PVC and then laid another sheet of PVC on top.  Then I free-motion sewed the pieces in place.  There are four larger pieces made up of the original design repeated four times in each.  All I have to do is work out how to attach it to the place I am going to display it.

A Busy Week

As I was looking back at the week this morning - I was putting off getting up and facing the cold - I realised that I have had a busy week.  A friend and I went to Castlemaine (it was freezing!! our first blast of winter this year) and visited the art gallery.  It was between shows, so we got to see the permanent collection free.  It is an interesting collection and we might not have taken as long to look at it if the special exhibition had been on.

The new show is Geoffrey Stocks Survey and the works were all standing along the floor, waiting to be hung.  We had a peep in and it looks worth a visit.  It starts today.

After lunch, we visited the historic house Buda.  The guide there told us an interesting story about the house and it's founder and his family.  It was built by a Hungarian silver smith who came to Australia in the gold rush.  He had six unmarried daughters who live in the house for many years.  They did a lot of art and craft work including silverwork, wood carving, ceramics, cloisonne, embroidery and rug making.  I am sure there were other arts and crafts included, I have probably forgotten something.  It sounds like it was a very creative family.
There is a textile exhibition coming up in 2012 that you can start working for now.

Then, the next day, I visited Bundoora Homestead with another friend and her friends from the Box Hill textiles course.  We saw the tea cosy exhibition that is in support of the Cancer Council.  There was a very large number of tea cosies - most were knitted or crocheted but there were a few other techniques included also.  I especially liked the series of chickens.

I occasionally revisit The Artist's Way and the journalling in which you reflect on the artist's treats you have given yourself during the week.  I have done very well this week.

Class Excursion

Today we went to an exhibition as part of our Experimental Textiles subject.  It was at the Incinerator Arts Complex in Moonee Ponds.
The exhibition was called ARTECYCLE and artists were asked to explore the themes of environmentalism, recycling and sustainability.  There were many interesting works, of different construction and making techniques. While I like to do my best for the planet, sometimes I get overwhelmed by the seemingly incessant, and often depressing, messages about mankind's misuse of the resources, the impending demise of the planet.
So it was great to see some works that didn't have the doom and gloom feel that can come with this message, that there were whimsical pieces as well as more upbeat ones.
The works were very diverse and I found it hard to vote in the people's choice part of the exhibition.  There were several pieces that appealed to me.

Here are several of the works.  

ATASDA meeting, May

I went to the ATASDA meeting on Saturday, we were celebrating finally having a permanent place and a new day (the first Saturday of the month) for our meetings. It is at the Hartwell Church Of Christ Hall 

cnr of Milverton & Highfield Rds Hartwell.  

Congratulations to the committee members for their hard work in setting up this group.

It sounds like I missed a fun workshop last meeting.  There are pictures of it on the ATASDA blog, here.
There are also plans for some interesting workshops in the coming months.  I'll be keeping an eye out to see what is on.

Thank goodness for modern science

Where would we be without modern inventions ?
I have recently been playing around with sewing onto PVC plastic. (Inspired by an article in Stitch magazine, Dec 08/Jan 09.) I have used two layers with pieces of fabric between, then free motion sewing them together, technically a quilt I think, as it has three layers put together.
My sewing machine drops the feed dogs, allowing the free motion but I kept finding the free motion not so free - upon close examination, I realised that the plastic was sticking to the machine.

In comes the modern invention - teflon.  (Actually, it is only relatively modern, I looked it up and it was invented in 1938. Wouldn't you know it, there is some thought that it might cause cancer!)


I had bought this handy looking thing a few years ago, when I was visiting my friend in New York and had visited the City Quilter shop and HAD to buy something - but I hadn't wanted to buy anything bulky that would take up room in my suitcase.  So there it was, this thing that looked like it would be ever so useful.
This is the first time I have used it, at least three years since I got it, if not four.  It is actually rather fortunate that I remembered I have it.  Anyway, it worked a treat, the plastic slides around on it beautifully. So now I am happily sewing on the plastic.

Setting up a business

We have just finished doing our Business Practice course and it was quite eye-opening.  There is so much to consider when setting up your own business.
Coincidentally, one of the students who graduated last year has just opened Urban Textile, focussing on machine knitting.  Her site looks great.
Maybe I could be tempted to have another go at knitting, her workshops look interesting.  It would be great to do workshops that don't get assessed, that don't have short (seeming) timelines and the stress of trying to pass a subject.
Good luck Leeana.

More Kerr Grabowski workshop

I seem to be in a bit of a slump creatively, I haven't done much at all since I got home from the Ballarat Fibre Forum.  I have restarted classes for this term, the second half of the semester but I don't have a lot

of enthusiasm at present.

I have spoken to a few people about the workshop and realised how much I enjoyed it.  This time I am going to talk about the use of a syringe to draw directly on the screen.  We did this with black dye in the alginate and then let it dry.  Then we either just used clear alginate, or coloured if we wanted to, to wet the dye and have the image appear on the screen.  As usual, the first images were a little lighter as the dye on the screen had to take time to wet through.  But it was a fun way to do it and, as the dye got wetter, the image changed.

These are Kerr's demo pieces, as you can see, you can draw back into the image with a foam brush or add colour with coloured alginate.

This is one of my samples, it shows how the dye acts as a resist at first, then the coloured dye comes out as it gets wetter.

Here I have added some coloured alginate to the image.  It is still wet, hence the grey background.

I hope this description wasn't too confused, that you can get some idea of the process.  If you want the actual instructions, Kerr has a very entertaining DVD of her processes available on her website.