Aprons

There is an apron exhibition on at Buda.  You can go and see it and the Contemporary Textiles exhibition at the same time - maybe you should check the opening days, one is in the house and one is not and they may have different opening hours, I'm not sure.
Anyway, we had a wander around the house and reminisced about the aprons, table mats and tablecloths we remembered from our mothers' homes that were in the same styles as the ones on display. They were in several rooms, so we kept coming across new ones, prompting more memories.
We also discussed not wanting to wear such lovely items while cooking or cleaning!

The dark one in the middle is made of ties.

It made me want to get out some of the old embroidery I did so long ago.  I still have an apron that I learnt to do smocking on - in grade 4.  It is the only smocking I have ever done, I think.  And I remember getting a table cloth with a pattern stamped on it, from the Women's Weekly, if I remember correctly.  I just may have to rummage around and see if I can find them.  The embroiderers' guild is having a display in July of similar items, maybe I could put them in, if they are in good condition.

Winter or Deep Winter

As I said in my last post, it is supposedly the first few days of winter, according to the European calendar. But according to some researchers, it is really Deep Winter, using the Six Seasons Calendar.  I have heard of this a few times over recent times and it makes a lot of sense.
Quite a lot of the trees are flowering, the parrots are out eating them and it seems quite busy in the animal world.  I am not feeling very scientific about this at the moment, but if you are interested, here is another link that applies specifically to Melbourne.

Personally, I never feel as if it is the coldest, wettest time yet, that always seems to be late June to early August.  But the Six Seasons Calendar doesn't just go by temperature, it takes plant, insects and animal behaviour into account.

Now I'll throw in a photo I took yesterday at a friend's house, of some gum blossoms that have fallen off her tree - not that this tree is indigenous to Melbourne, just to confuse matters.  After all, as I have been saying lately, it is indigenous to Australia (actually, I have been commenting that some things are now indigenous to Earth rather than a region, they are so commonly found).

Opening of Buda Textile Award exhibition

A friend and I drove to Castlemaine today to attend the opening of the Buda Contemporary Textile Award.  It was a very pleasant drive there and back, sunny and warm in the car, despite it being the official beginning of winter.

We arrived just in time for the speeches and award presentations.  Congratulations to the winners.  I didn't note their names down and they are not on the website yet, so will have to let you know who they were later.  There was a very pleasant buzz from the crowd, all excited to be there to see the works and enjoy the enthusiasm.

The works were presented beautifully and the room had lovely lighting.
I can't believe it, I forgot to take a picture of my own work.  Oh well, that was because I met a lady who did the distance education course that I did last year through SWTAFE, the machine embroidery course.  We got chatting and comparing notes about the course and what we are doing now and I simply forgot.  But I did get a photo of her work.
I have included a photo from inside the house to show what I assume was the inspiration for the base of her lamp - it seemed like a good connection to me, anyway.

You can see the winning entry for the Inspired by Buda section in the background.

I also met a lady from the AusNZ tapestry online group. She had done a tapestry, of course!  It is good to meet people you know vaguely through the internet, in person.

It was actually a much brighter day than the last time I visited Buda and I got a couple of pictures of pieces I hadn't had a chance to photograph last time.  I especially liked this lamp.

eQuilter's videos of AQC

I have been sent this link to some wonderful videos of the Australasian Quilt Convention that was on in April.  You can see some lovely work in them.
If you can't find the AQC, it might be because the site has updated but I am sure you will find them if you scroll down.

I loved the use of different fabrics in this one, by Kay Haerland. It was in Beneath the Southern Sky and the online gallery didn't do it justice.

Learning something new

It's almost a week since I last posted.  Where has the time gone??
Doing Blackwork, that's where.  I am finding it much harder than I had anticipated!!!!!
I did a day at the Embroiderers Guild last week and we had homework for this week.  The homework took AGES, mainly because I pulled out about a third of what I had done (I have learnt to expect this from tapestry weaving). And I didn't get it all done - but neither did about half the class, so that took the pressure off.
Our teacher, Debi Marshall, designed a pin cushion as our sampler.  It has a lot of intricate designs that rely on each part being in the correct space.
I didn't do the outlining tacking quite correctly, so that put some of the designs out from the start.  Then I had some parts that were supposed to be square but were rectangular.  Then some of my stars looked more like spiders.
We were supposed to use varying weights of threads but, so far, I have only used the heavier weight with one small part using a lighter weight.
Debi was very patient with me and helped me a lot with my placement.  I don't think she liked that I had left some parts wrong but it would have taken way too long to pull them out so we ploughed on regardless.

I did manage to put my initials and date

 I have worked on it for hours each day this week but still didn't get finished today.  Ah well, I just have to remind myself that this is all learning and it is supposed to be fun.

This took me all day, with a lot of help - and it's still not finished.

I am going to persevere as I really want to try designing my own and then stitching it, so I may try for a simpler sampler to get toning down without having to worry about intricate designs, leave them for later.

One or two of the ladies got their pin cushions finished, or will this weekend. The rest of us struggled along more slowly.
By the way, there is no way any of us would use such a beautiful piece of work as a pin cushion!

Buda Historic Home and Garden Textile exhibition

The Textiles Awards exhibition will be held at the Buda Historic Home from June 2nd to 17th.  It is in Castlemaine, not far from Melbourne.
There are two categories, Inspired by Buda and Gold.  I decided to make a piece that is Inspired by Buda. I have written about it already, in terms of the problem of using inspiration to come up with a new work. There is a lot in the house and gardens that was inspiring.  I eventually decided to work with a bullrush design, incorporating some borders from the stained glass windows in the house.

It is about 50cm x 58cm, made of synthetic organzas and one layer of hand painted silk.  I ended up using about 7 layers as I needed to double some of them to get the intensity I wanted.  Actually, having the silk, which is translucent but not transparent, helped.

I tried to sew very closely along the lines of the design but discovered that, when I cut back the layers, the fabric was starting to pull out from under the sewing lines.  There were two things I had to alter in my technique - one was to sew messy lines so that there was more fabric under the sewing and the other was to cut away from the sewing lines, not very close.  This helped and there was much less pulling away.

I was a bit nervous about washing off the soluble fabric that I had traced my design onto and used to stabilise the work but it all behaved very well when washed - whew!

The organza behaved quite differently from cotton when I cut back too.  It was MUCH easier to go through too many layers, so I had to be very careful to only go back to the colours I wanted to expose.  Crystal organza cuts (and shreds) more easily than ordinary synthetic organza too.

I had two pairs of scissors for this, one very sharp for getting started and one with turned up ends so that I could hold it flat to the fabric with less risk of cutting through too much.

As I was basing it on a stained glass window, I had hoped to have layers the same front and back, cutting though to the middle (i.e., the same back and front) but that was too hard.  So it is to be viewed from one side only.  It also looks different depending on whether you hang it in front of a window or not.  It is transparent and some of the colour is lost when the light shines through.  But I am happy with either look.

Changing the cog on the sewing machine

Now I know what the dot on the stitch selector knob is for.  Isn't it amazing what you find out when you actually read the manual?
The book doesn't call it a cog either, so that might be why I had so much trouble finding information on the web on Wednesday.  The only thing that even closely resembled my search terms was my own blog and it wasn't about that problem at all.
But now that I have dug out the manual I know what to do.  It says:

Set the dot on the stitch selector opposite the indicator red dot [which is white on my  machine] and take out the programmer at the back of the machine and replace it with the one you wish to use. 

After having placed the programmer in position, press in and at the same time turn it until you can feel that it is engaged. 

 

What I can tell you is that it does engage but you need to press it lightly while you turn to the various stitch possibilities and it will go further into the machine.

I have posted this because I got so frustrated trying to find out information on the net.  Mind you, I was not particularly relaxed at the time and my frustrations levels were high - should that be low?

And it is called a programmer, not a cog. I might have found more if I had used the correct terms, who knows?  I am not going to look no, I have the manual.