Still January

 I have decided to try to post at least once a month, very different from the once a week that I used to do. 

So here I am at the end of January. I have just finished a two day workshop with Ro Bruhn at the Embroiderers Guild, Victoria, which now has Australia added to the link so that we don't accidentally go to Canada!

Ro makes fabric books. And other things. The workshop was about the fabric books. It was a two day workshop with the two days a week apart. 

It was great to be able to get back to the guild rooms. There are Covid protocols in place but they weren't intrusive, especially as we do not need to wear masks indoors at the moment. Long may that last!

Most of the people at the workshop are hand embroiderers but there were a couple of us free motion machine people. However, I ended up not doing much free motion, I didn't set up my fabric properly for that so had to keep the feed dogs up - motion but not free. 

I had gone to the workshop to start making myself do something. It has been a very quiet year creatively. So I didn't really have a theme in mind. Not sure it mattered, it might have helped. 

Because I had lost my blackwork folder (don't ask!!! I have just done an intermediate course in blackwork embroidery) and had searched through all my folders, I had found lots of samples from past textile courses that were never looked at. I pulled them out and put them in a box. The lack of theme meant that I just pulled stuff out of the box and used them. So I suppose I do have a theme - stuff I had. 

I thought we had to make lots of 'pages' for the book between classes, not the case. This led to some rather boring pages. However, I was able to put together two pieces of fabric to make a signature ( two pieces of fabric stitched together to make a page). In fact, I made two. The class today was about how to make the cover and then put the signatures into the spine. I will be able to make more signatures and sew them into the book. Then I will have a book to put in a box, or on a shelf, full of stuff that was in a box. 

I has been interesting to get out samples, some of things I will never do again, and to utilise them. 

I will spend time this week (and in coming weeks) putting pages together and making more signatures for the books. AND I have finally begun using the sewing machine again!

All good. 

Back cover.

My cover has pieces of fabric that were used inside the book.

One 'page' sewn into the cover.

Another couple of 'pages'.

Front cover.

How Things Develop

The machine embroidery group I belong to has a Farmyard theme this year.
This month's is buildings and fences. Not all that inspiring, I thought. But at least it is a theme and I can think about it.

Having thought about it for several weeks now, and having taken some extremely boring photos, I decided to bite the bullet and start today.

I had looked at some people's work on Pinterest. I especially like Cinde Hoppe, a new to me textile artist.
After browsing her site I thought I might pull out some fabrics I have dyed in the past and see if I had anything suitable.

That was yesterday, and the day before, and the day before. Finally, I got into my, relatively tidy, studio today and was about to start looking at said dyed fabrics.
I don't know what made me look down at the box on the bottom shelf but I did. There were some bits and pieces left over from my Cas Holmes workshop that I did about 10 or 11 months ago.

I pulled them out. I laid them out. I radically changed my mind about what I thought I was going to do!

Now I have a piece that I think is going to be 12" square - just because that is the size I have been working on lately.
I made the image. It is rather more abstract than I had anticipated. I was influenced by a book I borrowed from the library: Art Quilt Collage by Deborah Boschert. I haven't really done what she is teaching in the book, but I was definitely influenced by reading it.

I also had a bit of sewing I had done on soluble fabric which I had done it for the Secret Garden exhibition in 2016. It was still on the soluble fabric, I had not used it but I had put it on my pinboard so that I wouldn't forget I had it. Today was the day for soaking it and pinning it out to dry.

This is it, drying in the sun.

Then I noticed that the bag of offcuts from doing the Unfinished Business challenge (2017). They went into the mix tool.

After I placed the bits and pieces and sewed them onto the background (a drop sheet from the Cas Holmes workshop), I decided I wanted some quilting-type texture, so put a cotton batting on the back. Then there was some not very planned free motion sewing.

I laid the trees in the foreground and sewed them on. 

I have cut away some of the backing, where the edge of the image is going to be. There was a slightly frayed, raggedy edge that I didn't like as it was too white. 

(I think I am going to sew it over a piece of foam core, as I have done with my other pieces recently.)

Then I remembered that I treated myself when I was overseas visiting friends late last year, by buying some Inktense Pencils. I have coloured the edge of the fabric and will hope that it has done the job. 

I needed some new foam core for the required size and it was too late to go to the shops, so I will have to work on how to present it tomorrow, after I buy the foam core.

Using my small pieces of indigo dyed silk.

As I have mentioned previously, the Machine Embroidery Group, which is an interest group at the Embroiderers Guild, Victoria, is having a challenge this year. We are asked to make an A5 (14.8 x 21 cm, 5.8 x 8.3 inches) piece that is inspired by a different famous artist each month. This month it is Van Gogh.

I am waiting to go to the upcoming Van Gogh exhibition that will be at the NGV soon, but decided to bite the bullet and do one before I have the chance to attend.

I was all set to do an image using my fabric collage method. I got out all the bits and pieces I thought I might need. It is amazing how much stuff you might need to make such a small piece!

Then I came across the small pieces of indigo dyeing I had done recently. One piece seemed to be perfect for the sky.

I ironed it onto some adhesive interfacing, placed some other larger pieces (larger than I had planned to use) and then put a few fiddly small pieces, which had been Vliesofixed. Then I got out my newest favourite thing, silk roving (or whatever it is called). I laid that out over some Vliesofix, ironed it on gently, then sewed it all on to make sure it will stay. I also added a few small pieces of wool left over from some tapestry weaving.

Voila! My Australian version of a Van Gogh image. (You can see the inspiration as one of the scrolling images at the NGV site.)

Indigo dyeing

As I have already mentioned, I get together with a couple of friends each month (when some of us aren't away on textile week-long workshops).

Recently, we did some indigo dyeing. I wasn't particularly well prepared and only took some small pieces of fabric. But I enjoyed the experience and came away with some interesting small pieces of silk and cotton.

I was especially happy as some of them looked a lot like water (to me) and I have put them aside in case I come up with an idea for the Ebb and Flow theme of the Embroiderers Guilds' Members' Exhibition. That isn't till October, so I have a bit of time to think about it.

My friends had much larger ambitions than I, they overdyed some shawls they had. Very successfully, I must add.

At our most recent get-together, one of our group had recently returned from a workshop in the Grampians where she did some natural dyeing. She had some gorgeous show and tell!

She had a woolen scarf/shawl that she had dyed using native cherry (I forget it's proper name, sorry. Also, when I looked it up, there seem to be two sorts, one is eucalyptus and the other is some sort of cyprus. I think she used the cyprus). She made up another indigo vat and showed us a very easy method for overdyeing that used a piece of clothes line that she wrapped the scarf around and scrunched it down. Then she just dipped it in the dye for a few minutes. The result is beautiful.

The other group member had a linen, much looser weave, shawl that she decided to try. It worked wonderfully too.

Wrapping the shawl around the clothes line. 

Letting the dye run off, ready to lay out.

Busy, busy again.

Well, I missed the interesting date of 6/10/16 but that was because I have been busy!

This week I have helped to set up an exhibition and gone to three openings.

The first opening was at The Johnson Collection, on Tuesday evening. I have a small piece of work in it.
A group of eight tapestry weavers, from our regular Saturday group, got together and worked towards the brief. It was either to focus on Christmas or Mr Johnson.
We decided on Mr Johnson and his collection of Indian paintings and some images of the man himself.

You can see the edges of some of the Indian images on the right. Then there are two tapestries, the elephant and Mr Johnson behind a privacy screen.

There are many artists involved in the exhibition and each room is completely different from the other.

There was quite a large crowd and I will be going back on another day to see it all in a less crowded and more leisurely way.  But it was very exciting to be there, despite the crowd, or is that because of the crowd?

Then on Wednesday I went along to the opening of an exhibition, Triple Stitch at Bolin Bolin Gallery at Bulleen Art and Garden. As it is part of a nursery, there was a botanical feel but it was not all botanical. As I knew all three participants, I had a lovely time catching up as well as admiring all the lovely works.

Friday evening was the opening of A Secret Garden at the Embroiderers Guild, Victoria. I have been involved in setting this one up.  I was extremely pleased to be part of such a wonderful event. The quality of the work was amazing and inspiring.

Just before the official opening of the doors.

Secret Garden continured

Ok, the date 6/9/12 deserves a post!  (Oops, got excited about the numbers, forgot that it is now 2016.)

I have been working on my Secret Garden idea. I had done the background.

Then I did a free motion piece on soluble fabric. I thought I had made it the right size but when I dissolved the fabric it shrank. I seem to make this mistake often. But … it was the right size in one direction.

We had a day learning about Tyvek at the Embroiderers Guild play day recently, so I used that inspiration to try making a wall.  I knew I had a pack of it somewhere, I bought it at least 5 years ago but hadn't even opened the packet. After some wondering where it could be now that I have tidied my studio and knew I hadn't seen it while doing that, I remembered where it was.

So, Tyvek painted, some rough free motion sewing, a bit of heat from the iron and voila - a wall.

Not so secret garden

I thought I had better try to come up with a piece for the upcoming A Secret Garden exhibition, seeing I have become involved in the organisation of it.

Continuing on with my small pieces of fabric collage theme, I have made a small garden. It started out slightly smaller than A4 and will probably shrink a bit with the sewing.

Just laying out scraps, very small in some cases, onto some fusible interfacing.

Even smaller pieces that have had Vliesofix attached and were then ironed on.

Free motion sewing to add some texture. 

Now to work out how to make it 'secret'.
I have an idea but it remains to be seen if I can get it mounted in the way I am imagining. Time will tell.

Creative Play Day at the Embroiderers Guild

Today was the monthly meeting of one of the Creative Play day groups. We were reminded that there is an exhibition coming up that will feature some of the works we have done at these sessions. So I was inspired to finish a piece I started at one of the sessions.

It is based on one of my sunset photos but done strictly from memory. And it was heavily influenced by the threads I had to hand. It is mostly silk threads, sari silk yarns and some dyed silk ribbon. I loved working on the hessian and just randomly sewing the threads. Not too randomly, I was trying to convey a sunset scene. But I wasn't being too precious about stitch length and other such pedantic notions.

I was invited to lead today's session. I decided to do it on fabric collage, seeing that was what I have been playing around with lately.
I don't have any images from today as I forgot to ask for permission to show other people's works. But it doesn't really matter as they are all works in progress. And the progress may well stop at the end of the session. The advantage of the play days is that we are exposed to things we don't usually do, and we may choose never to do them again. It absolutely doesn't matter.

I had thought to demonstrate on my latest idea. That didn't eventuate as it is much more fiddly than I had anticipated. I am doing another torn (or cut) strip collage, based on the Bungle Bungle mountains in Western Australia.

My design is relatively detailed and the pieces needed for it are all tiny. So it is taking much longer to do than I had anticipated. Not to worry, I was able to talk about the process so far and about some of the products I am using to assist me with the development of the piece. More on this later.

It was a lovely day. I didn't feel too threatened about demonstrating as the group is full of receptive listeners who will have a go, even when it is not a technique they are particularly interested in doing. It is just a lovely play day with people of like interests.

Blue sea and sky, dark island

Life has been busy lately and not much of a creative nature has occurred. However, the Machine Embroidery Group at the Embroiderers Guild is meeting this week and I have a task to complete before then.

I missed the last meeting, being at the Ballarat Fibre Arts workshop, which was wonderful. But I felt that I had to complete the small piece that I undertook to do at the February meeting.

So I have been thinking, thinking.

The task is to use an image that has been provided and interpret it in stitch.
This is the image I was given.

I decided to continue with my current interest, fabric collage.
The original is only small, about 6" by 4" (can't remember what it is in centimetres, quilting happens in inches more often than not. Even though this is not, strictly speaking quilting, it is related. It has three layers, or more, and has pieces of fabric joined together to make the piece).

I used lots of very small pieces of fabric that I had saved from previous works. They were even smaller than I have been using lately. I am not even sure why I kept them.

I used a piece of fusible interfacing and laid out the fabric pieces. I ironed them on and sewed then so that they were secure. I worked on the background first. You would think I would remember that that is the way to go but I had to pick off quite a few pieces that were the foreground, rather than the background, and then put them back on later.

I used the image as my inspiration but didn't try to be exact (so not my thing, being exact). It was enjoyable to be doing some creative work again, even though it is only small.

This is one of the times when the actual piece looks much better than the photo.

I then cut a piece of commercial craft felt to size and zigzagged around the edge to attach it. It is firm enough but also pliable.

The idea of the book is that a person has made the book (some people opted to just have a box), put in an original image that was then taken by a member of the group who interpreted the image in fabric and thread. Then that person put in a related image, which was interpreted by a different person. This has been done many times and when the book if finished the original maker will have a lovely book of works by different people.

It is a great idea. The pieces are small, the techniques are up to the individual person and there is no time limit. Someone will end up with a lovely little book.

Finishing off the banner quilt

After I had sewn on the silhouette, I then had to put on the border. I had done some other pieces, when I was doing the design course through the Embroiderers' Guild, that were based on my sunset photos. I had not sewn borders on them, I had just satin-stitched the edges. They didn't have the extra layer of wadding that I have used for the A Matter of Time piece.
You can see one here - I was developing the idea for this piece, unbeknownst to me at the time.

I had done the majority of the sewing on the banner quilt without a backing piece of fabric. This made it rather messy for the machine, meaning I had to brush it out more frequently than usual. It also meant that any mistakes, tangles, etc, will be hidden when I finish it off!

The back of the quilt, before I put the backing on.

However, I did put the backing on before I sewed on the silhouette. And I did some extra quilting in the parts where the tree didn't cover the image. Just to be sure that the backing wouldn't move around.
I remember being told, in my beginner quilting classes, that you should never have more than a handspan free of quilting.

To finish off, I had to decide what I wanted, an obvious border or something that would, hopefully, blend in. As I have been using small pieces of fabric, I didn't have many pieces that would be long enough to do the border.

I managed to find some that seemed to echo the colours on the quilt and joined them together to make my edges. The silhouette made it easier, I could just put black on that edge, and I could use the border to extend the bottom part of the silhouette.

So here it is, the finished piece. 

Small part of larger picture

The machine embroidery group at the Embroiderers Guild of Victoria has a challenge at the moment.  It is a fairly long-term challenge and I have eventually done a small piece for it.  You can choose an image, that is approx 20cm x 18.5cm, and you are supposed to interpret that to make a stand-alone piece.  It is part of a larger image but we haven't seen the larger one, so don't know what we are making.
My piece looked like a face, or an animal's face, looking up to rainclouds.  Well, that's how I saw it.

My work hasn't quite turned out how I wanted but I will still take it to the group this weekend and see what they say.

The cloudy sky on mine is not really dark, I hope it doesn't matter in the overall finished piece.  I am hoping that the it will be one of the illusion-like images where you can see the overall design if you stand away from it.

You can see some of the sorts of things (that I think we are making) here and here and you can even see how it can be done here.

Interesting date today - 28/2/14. (28/2=14 (I can't find the division sign))

Stump work, nothing to do with trees!

I have just been to the Embroiderers Guild for the monthly machine embroidery interest group meeting.  We don't do any actual sewing, we sit around and share ideas and tell of interesting exhibitions we have been to.  People are very sharing and pass on all sorts of information.
I showed some of my work from the SWTAFE class and also from the Olga Walters workshop. I seem to post my latest work off for assessment just before each meeting.

However, today I was blown away by the exhibition in the rooms - it was of the Stumpwork Masterclass work. It took two years to do the course and the work is amazing!!!!
We weren't allowed to take photos so I can only recommend going to the Guild rooms to see it.  It is well worth the trip.  The exhibition is on from August 3 to 31.

Still interested in blackwork

I have been trying to design my own blackwork piece for an upcoming Emboriderers' Guild exhibition.  I might not get anything finished for it but at least it gives me something to focus on for the moment.

As I was browsing the internet, I came across a Pintangle site (Friday Freebies, I'll have to read more of that). It had a further link to yet another site (String-or-Nothing) where the owner has made up some designs and provided them free.  What a wonderful resource.

I am sticking to simple designs at present.  This is partly because I am just a beginner with blackwork and don't want to make it too hard for myself.  It is also because I am working on a fairly small design and can't afford to have any intricate designs because I don't think they will fit properly in the space.

I am continuing on with an earlier idea but in a different format.  My idea is to produce a stained glass window design in blackwork.  It may come to nothing but it is something to be thinking about.

I spent quite a while on one part yesterday and then noticed that I had miscounted by one thread and had to pull out half of it.  Luckily, I have learnt patience through my tapestry weaving, where you pull work out all the time, so I wasn't too annoyed with myself. Mind you, I haven't touched it since.

I am not sure if I should have sewn in the outline of the design or not, so decided to do the patterns first, then decide.  Taking photos of your work also lets you see mistakes rather more clearly (not necessarily what I was hoping for!). I will keep plugging along and see what develops.