Time for another post on 1/9/19

I was reminded today about the tapestry exhibition that is currently showing at the Handweavers and Spinners Guild rooms in Carlton North.

It is the annual challenge of the online group. The theme was Celebrate. There are approximately 50 pieces on show. It is a bright and cheery theme.

It will be there till mid-September, then move on to its next destination.

The inspiration of the yearly challenge is what I need to make me think, plan and do. I am very grateful to the ladies who arrange this every year.

Our local group also has a few pieces up. Some of our members gave a talk about tapestry weaving to the general meeting of the guild a couple of weeks ago.
I am often surprised that members of the guild do not know what tapestry weaving is - then I realise that I don't really know what inkle weaving is, and I don't know how to spin and dye my own wool (theoretically, I do, practically, I don't).
So it is good to be able to share the different practices of members.

September already!!

Today is 1/9/19. I was reminded that I had to blog because of the interesting numbers. So here I am, blogging.

I was going to put in a picture of the hydrangea sprouting leaves and say something about Christmas coming but every time I think of it, it is dark and I don't have a picture, so I will have to leave that till another day.

I did take some pics of the Silver Princess in our garden. The bees were busily humming (that song about Spring coming, something to do with daffodils - which are not up yet) and I saw some that went RIGHT INTO  the centre of the flowers. You have to look closely.

I have been doing some more bits and pieces for the Farmyard theme. I may be the only person in my group doing it - we had a smaller than usual group today because it was Fathers Day and some members were absent. I think there are a couple of others still doing it but they don't always bring them.

Not to worry, I am being inspired, if that is the correct word.
I recently attended another Kathryn Harmer Fox workshop and have been influenced by her techniques and advice. I did a Pademelon and was advised to let the fabric talk, not to sew it to death (my words, not hers).

I have done a cow, which needed to be knocked back in the body and I used tulle.

The horse didn't need as much stitching as I had planned, I liked how it was turning out so have done minimal stitching. It has lots of small pieces of fabric laid out as a collage. So the fabric speaks a lot in this one.

Now to work out how to mount and, possibly, frame them.

Must be going out time.

I have also been to a couple of other exhibitions lately.
A) I went to the Craft and Quilt Fair last week. It was busy!!
I resisted most stalls but did buy some lovely cottons for machine sewing. Gorgeous colour range.

The quits were amazing, as usual. Some I had seen before, at the AQC but there were new things to see also.

Modern Quilt, Amateur, winner of two ribbons. By Karen McGregor.

This one by Neroli Henderson.

B) I visited a retrospective exhibition of Rosalind Byass' at the Box Hill Town Hall. I had done a design class with Ros, through the Embroiderers Guild, Victoria, a few years ago. It was lovely to see her work. Many of her pieces have won awards at various textile art exhibitions around the state.
It was interesting to be in a class with someone who works so very differently from me. That is one of the benefits of workshops and courses, there are people with varied takes on the same topics and it stretches you greatly.

C) I visited Bundoora Homestead to see the One Step Further exhibition, organised by Quilters Victoria. There was a very interesting floor talk. Some of the quilt were not quilts - that is the idea of One Step Further, I realise. But they were far from being quilt-like. All of the works were wonderful, even the quilty ones!

Unfortunately, I can't remember who did this one!

Elizabeth Dubbeld

Rebecca Wolske

Maybe all these exhibitions are what has inspired me to post again. I hope my enthusiasm remains. I like documenting things here, as I have said before. It really is a good record for me.

Random exhibitions.

Just noticed this in my unposed list!! Need to post it because ... it is September!

 It is August already!! Where does the time go?? I have this theory that when you are 5, a year is a fifth of your life, a long time. When you are 50, it is a fiftieth of your life, not so long. So time is relative!

Anyway ... I have been to a few interesting things lately. I attended a workshop at Threads and Tangles that was taught by Kathryn Harmer Fox. I have done a workshop with her in the past and didn't want to miss out, so booked in February.
It was a three day workshop. I felt exhausted every day on the drive home, thought it must be me. Then, on the last day, people were commenting on how tired they had been each evening, so now I feel better. It was from the great concentration and creativity that we had been doing.

As usual, Kathryn was encouraging while still challenging. There were kits that had been prepared for the participants but I had missed some of the messages so took my own image. It didn't matter much, everyone did their own thing anyway, even if they had a kit! It is always amazing how people can be at the same class, using very similar materials, and come up with entirely different works.

Mine is the Pademelon (looks a bit like a kangaroo)

Each day we had to pin up our works in progress and Kathryn would do a crit for us, all positive but with suggestions to challenge further progress.

After that workshop, I went to the machine embroidery group at the Embroiderers Guild and there was only a small group. Lo and behold, many of our usual members were at a class being held by Kathryn. She was teaching at the guild also. So I got to take pictures of her works displayed around the room.

Then, the same day, the teapot exhibition had its official opening at the Stonehouse Gallery. Seeing it is not that far from home, I attended. It was great to see works by people I know, as well as many whom I don't know. I also caught up with a few friends and acquaintances.  I really admire the judges, the works were sooooo different!
There were functional and non-functional teapots. Ceramic, textile, wooden, felted teapots. Probably some other techniques that I don't remember at present. It was lovely to see so many creative ideas.

My two at the front.

Then, today, I went to the State Library - after walking around the block to find an entrance that was open, there is a lot of renovation and building going on in the city!!!

I saw this amazing tapestry on the wall. I had seen posts about it on the ATW website and had actually seen it being made but hadn't taken much notice of where it as going to be hung. So it was lovely to come across it today, in situ.

Playing around with quilting patterns.

A friend has asked me to make her a bag to carry her tapestry loom in.
I have one, I made it using a piece from a workshop with Jane Sassaman. It was just the perfect size for my loom. I didn't do anything fancy on the back, just some random shapes.

However, my friend has some fabric pieces she would like me to use. I have added some of the multitudinous squares I have left over from a cot quilt I made.

I have spent hours on Pinterest, looking at various designs that I could try. I am trying to be creative and make my own design, possibly using a Modern Quilt sort of design.

After hours of looking, I have ended up using a fairly traditional pattern.
I used the squares, cut the other fabric to the same sizes and put together what started off as a nine patch quilt.

But then I realised that is would not be wide enough or would be much too wide, if I continued the nine patch idea. That's because the squares for the cot quilt were rather large for a nine patch. So it became rows of patches.

I came across some sites that mentioned making a piece and then recutting it. (Apparently, this can be called disappearing nine-patch. I mentioned what I was doing when buying some cotton and the lady in the shop (GJ's discount fabrics) told me that is what it is called.
I don't know about the disappearing nine patch but you certainly have disappearing fabric - making the cuts means lots more seams! You lose half and inch (approx 1.25 cm) every time you do a new seam.

Anyway, I bravely cut up the fabric and rearranged it and sewed it back together. I had cut it vertically.

This method produces some lovely narrow bits but it also shows up any inaccurate cutting and sewing! I had to abandon one strip because it was so wonky.

Next I cut it horizontally and sewed it back together.

I have quilted the piece to batting and backing, ready to use it when I have all the other pieces made.

I am going to try something different for the other side, possibly some crazy patchwork, something I have not done before. The method I plan to use is done on a backing fabric and that will suit me well because one of the special fabrics is wool while all the others are cotton, so it will help me to keep things in kilter.

A Pig in Clover

Well, I made the decision to put the bright green background, I liked the way it changed the colours of the collage.

I put the head and body onto yet more adhesive interfacing and sewed over all the bits of fabric.

Then I pinned and sewed it to the background which had a layer of cotton batting under it and a calico backing. (I won't use calico again, it is rather boring even as a background.)

The pig was sewn onto the layers and I quilted a rough clover leaf pattern to hold it together.

The border is on, all I have to do now is put on a hanging sleeve - later.

Photos taken at different times of the day, mostly evenings, give very different images!

Playing around with collage

I can't remember if I posted about doing some paper collage recently. I was inspired by a couple of posts online, from a primary art class.
One here and one here being the main inspirations. But Pinterest does take you on a journey, suggesting endless other related links.

The idea is to put strips of paper radiating out from near the centre, then to look at the eyes and nose/beak of an animal and draw those, cut them out and put them on the collage. Voila: you have an image of an animal.

I tried it with mainly tissue paper. I was just doing a sample to show some young girls I was going to get to try this sort of art. I didn't take close notice of how to do the features and should have, my piece would have been a bit better. But I still like it.

I used the face of our dog as my inspiration. I didn't take the photo till afterwards, I probably would have put in a mouth if I had taken the time and done it in proper sequence. Not to worry, the girls and I had fun.

That was several weeks, if not months, ago.

I haven't done any fabric collage in this way - until this weekend.
Once again, I am trying to do the machine embroidery group's Farmyard theme and am struggling with it. The topic this month is Pigs.

After having it in the back of my mind for ages, and having looked online at lots of Pig images, especially pig collage images, I finally got around to trying it.

So far I have laid out the fabrics, adding very minimal eyes, nose and mouth.

I laid the fabrics, which are off-cuts from other projects, all very small, onto some adhesive interfacing and then ironed them on.

Then I cut out the shape of the head and added the features, rather haphazardly.

So far, so good. I went back to my inspirational image that I found on Pinterest, and decided that I needed to add some body.

Now I have to choose the background. I was originally thinking of doing a Pig in Clover and have tried two green backgrounds. The bright green does interesting things to the fabrics. The pale green is, well, pale.

Then I tried the linen and cotton background that I have used lately for other collages. I think that is the one I will use. Probably.  I am not going to try to do the clover bit - it was going to be free motion quilting but I think it is overkill. It will be quicker to just put on a plain background too.

There is still a fair bit of sewing to do, to put in some detail and to make sure the fabric pieces are really attached. The tilt of the head needs work too.

Actually, looking at the photos makes me see them differently and now I can't decide between the bright green or the duller linen-cotton fabric. That decision will have to come on another day.