Another interesting date!

 Someone pointed out to me that today is 11/2/22 - I will have to post! But I am really waiting for 22/2/22 - hope I don't lose track of the days!!

So, what to post about? 

I haven't done anymore small embroideries, seem to have run out of oomph. I am working on a small tapestry, based on a photo of a local park. The theme is Sense of Place. If the tapestry works, it will be a good reminder of the park. It is Heidelberg Rd, over Darebin Creek. (That was a lot of bother to type - it kept trying to auto-correct to Darwin!)

I am not going to post a picture of the tapestry yet, just in case I decide to put it in for the Petite Textiles exhibition at Wangaratta. I think they don't like you to post images beforehand. Not that it is finished and I probably won't go in the exhibition, but you never know. 

Here is a picture of the park though. I am weaving it at about 20cm wide by 10cm high. That's the plan, not sure how it will turn out, I'm not very good at following my cartoons properly and end up winging it a bit. 

I played with it a bit in PhotoShop. It is a bit harder to do than I had anticipated because I am trying for a rather large landscape image in such a small format. But I will persevere. I am doing it with seine twine 12/6 and 3 strands of ATW wool, much smaller than I usually do. 

Miniature

 I finally got back to the sewing machine today. I was inspired by a call for entries for Petite textiles at Wangaratta. 

I am also influenced by having visited Como House when they had the Doll House collection exhibition. I think it finished this week. 

So today I worked out a method that might work. 

I found some photos that I thought I could use. Then I drew the basic shapes using Inktense pencils. I probably didn't need to do that as I then covered the piece with other pieces of fabric. But it gave me the general idea of the image. 

I ironed the background onto some adhesive interfacing, then put Vleisofix on the front and put the tiny pieces of fabric on. (I had collected some pieces of organza that had been being thrown out when I was at Ballarat last year, from the Bojagi class). 

The size is about 6.5cm which is tiny. But it is probably still too big for a doll house. However, I have worked out how to do it - and I didn't need a hoop! The interfacing was stable enough. 

Even though it is small, I need to keep working on how to reduce the size. Maybe I will try thinner cottons next time. But I am pleased that I tried. Maybe something will come of it. 

Now to work out how to frame it. 

Recording your progress - with music!

After talking about taking photos to record progress, I decided that I should use the images to make a small animation.  Then I sent it to my musical source and have some sound to go with it. Very impressive - it even matches the change of the images. Thanks so much, Cardells.
The work is titled Branch on a Hot Day and I think the music has that slow, taking it easy, feel.

It was a bit of a challenge to take the photos as I was working, I tried to make them as similar as possible but it is very difficult not to have different lighting, different angles for the camera, etc.  The weaving took weeks, so I didn't stress too much about continuity in the images.

If you look closely, you can see that some days had little progress while others were quite successful, or I had more time to actually do the weaving.  So it is not an even progression but I don't really care about that.  It is an interesting record of the work.

I played around with the images in Photoshop though as the cartoon hanging at the back moved around a lot (or I took the photos at different angles).  So there was some cropping as well as deleting of the background.  I have enjoyed doing it as it keeps my hand in with the Photoshop and the Movie Maker (which is a very easy to use program!).

I deleted the background so it wouldn't be quite so jumpy.  But I have to admit that I didn't put a whole lot of time into the deleting, I just used the magnetic lasso and let it do the work.
But it is a bit of fun.

I did the tapestry for the Petite: Miniature Textiles exhibition that opened today at the Wangaratta Art Gallery.  I was unable to go to the opening but hope some of my friends will let me know how it went.

The tapestry was woven on its side, so here it is the right way for viewing.

Petite Miniature Textiles Exhibition

Last Friday my friend and I travelled to the Wangaratta Exhibitions Gallery to see the Petite, Miniature Textiles Exhibition in which I had a piece showing.  It was my first acceptance into an exhibition, so I was very excited.

I have tried to take pictures of the work before but they always seem to show the hand stitching too strongly.  It was good to see the work from a distance so that I could get a view of the complete work without being drawn into the detail.  

The piece, Fern Walk, was done on commercial felt.  I used foil in the background and then used a needle felting machine to put on wool and silk roving and then I hand stitched it.

I had not realised how far away Wangaratta is!  It rained all the way there and all the way back. I am usually happy to see the rain but not all the time I am driving. The journey was not too bad as it is straight up the Hume Freeway and very straightforward.  Overall, we travelled about 550km for the complete trip.  I was very pleased that my 15 year old car did it all on one tank of petrol.

The work in the show was well worth the trip.  There was a large variety of techniques - art quilts, art books, embroideries, jewellery, weaving, tapestry (quite a few by people I know through my course), machine embroidery, sculpture and 3D textiles, miniature knitting, crochet, wire knitting, prints and manipulated fabrics to name a few.  It was inspiring to see such a range of work.

The exhibition pieces all had to be within the 30cm x 30cm x 30cm restriction.  There was some very fine work, especially in the tapestry category.

We also were able to see Flourish, an exhibition celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Embroiderers' Guild of Victoria.  The work done especially for the golden anniversary was beautiful, all set out on emerald green backings to go with the theme of different branches doing different colours for the Celebrating Colour theme.

There was also a small exhibition of work selected from the Textile Collection that was next to the Petite exhibition, so we got to see that also.  There was some beautiful work there too!

All in all, a good day was had by all (two of us).