Fibrecircle

February already!

2012-02-14T20:03:00.001+11:00

Good grief, in the words of Charlie Brown. It's February already! Fibrecircle met again for the third time this year, again with a smaller number than usual.

One of our plans for 2012 involves bringing along some of our many "backgrounds" - pieces of fabric that we've dyed, painted, printed and otherwise altered - to discuss that we can do with them. Helen brought along a clean-up cloth that she'd like to use in some way.

We all agreed that it really needed the white background coloured in some way, perhaps with dyes or inks. It's quite a large piece of fabric, larger than you'd need for a book cover, for example. One idea we had was to make it into a handbag, gathered into a plain band and with plain handles. What do you think? What you do thik she should do with a piece of fabric like this?

Helen also brought along some really striking glass beads that a family member brought back from Jerusalem. They're chunky and quirky, and probably quite fragile.

Helen was working on a piece of canvas embroidery - no surprises there! This one will be a book cover, which she thinks she might sell. Like all her work, it's beautiful.

Nola was painting the Zentangle that Toni Valentine drew at the ATASDA Christmas party in 2011. Members drew on the "tablecloths", which were cut up and shared around. The challenge is to make something for the March meeting.

Bev was working on a piece for an exhibition. It involves postcards, but we can't say more. You'll see the finished work in due course.

Carol was knitting the slippers that she was working on back here. She's really made some progress on these lately.

We decided to play with marbling with shaving cream. You layer shaving cream into a container and drizzle over thinned acrylic paints. Here are Nola and Bev using syringes and spoons to drizzle the paint.

You lay the fabric over the surface and gently pat it onto the colour. Pull the fabric off, with a layer of shaving cream and colour, and set it aside for a little while. Scrape off the excess shaving cream and the colours stay on the fabric.

Then we tried it with transfer paints, which are a kind of dye.

We realised after the event that transfer paints only transfer to man-made fibres, so we thought perhaps these ones might not adhere. But they coped fine with initial washing, although they lost some colour. It's always worth trying these things!

Until next time...

January - aren't summer holidays wonderful?

2012-01-26T18:38:00.000+11:00

January often passes in a blur for many Aussies. I guess we feel the same way about it as northern hemisphere people feel about July. Holiday season, and not much gets done in the studio, even when the weather is as unreliable as it's been this year. It certainly hasn't been good weather for dyeing or deconstructed screen printing or many other creative activities!

Here at Fibrecircle, we've been in holiday mode too. We have met together, with a much smaller group, as people came and went, but we haven't really been in creative mode. This week, most of us were lolling about, reading creative books and gathering ideas for the coming year. Sounds like last time, doesn't it?

Helen was busy, of course, though at one stage, she had her sewing in one hand and a book in the other. Multitasking, she called it. Here's what she was sewing, when she had both hands on the job!

This is a gorgeous rich purple - it was quite hard to photograph well.

She also brought along her embroidered jacket, which was her major work for last year for an embroidery group she belongs to. We last talked about it here. Now you can see the finished garment!

It really is beautiful. The background fabric is a warm wool, so it's quite warm to wear.

Maz was working on her tile for the upcoming travelling suitcase exhibition from ATASDA, which will go on the road in late March 2012. The title is Marrakesh and, in addition to the main works on the theme, it will have many of these small works, inspired by Moroccan tiles, made from a kit of materials. They'll be attached together with buttons and loops to form panels for hanging. You can see more about the exhibition here. The works haven't all arrived yet, but we hope to have some photos on the web page shortly after they do. Meanwhile, here's Maz's tile in progress:

As usual, on our second meeting of the month, we swap postcards. Nola had been making a postcard but she didn't like the way it was going. So she spent the day making another one, from a piece she'd started previously. It's another in the Bush Road series, of manipulated photographs. The original photos was adapted using a design program, printed onto fabric, drawn on, painted and embroidered, before being backed with fusible Vilene and fabric. She edged it with a hand picot stitch.

Helen's postcard relates to one of the works she's made for the Marrakesh exhibition, inspired by Moroccan tile work. The typical eight-pointed star of Arabic architecture really lends itself to canvas work, her favourite embroidery style. The centre star is very strongly textured, as are the blue bars on either side of the central motif. Click on the image for a better look!

See you next month!

Happy New Year

2012-01-09T20:07:00.000+11:00

Today was our first meeting for the year. We were a small group, because many of us are still on holidays. We didn't do very much today - it was a hot muggy day, ideal for lazing about, reading textile books. We had Isobel Hall's Embroidered Books and Janet Edmonds' From Print to Stitch. Plenty of inspiration there!

However, we haven't been idle since you last heard from us! Helen was working on an embroidery in shades of blue, but it's not ready for photography yet. I'm sure you'll see it soon! She also brought along her finished Sunflowers challenge from last year. It's a gorgeous piece of embroidery, filled with a stone to give it weight.

Isn't it luscious? It's like a field of sunflowers distilled down to the essence.

Maz made a piece of art cloth as a gift. She began by folding and twisting the fabric, holding it together with elastic bands for the first dye bath.

The first dye bath was yellow. Then she added some areas of stitching and bundled it up again as before.

Then the cloth was dyed with red with a little rubinole.

Then she screen printed squares, and stencilled, and drew marks on the cloth. She felt the dark screen-printed squares were too strong, so she did not heat set them for the full 10 minutes, but only half as long. Finally she dyed the cloth again, in a blue dye wash, to unify it. When she rinsed, some of the dark colour of the squares also washed out, as she'd hoped, revealing the marks underneath from the earlier dye runs.

Here's the finished cloth:

...and here's some detail shots.

Maz said, "This was my first attempt at a piece of cloth and the recipient liked it, so that was good." I bet she did!

Nola was working on a piece of cloth, one of her "paint rags", that she began drawing on some while ago. Here's what it looked like when she began today:

and here's how it looked when she stopped:

It had been painted with Setacolor paints and drawn on with black Sharpie pens and fabric pens. Today, she drew on it with the new Sharpie fabric pens called Stained. They are a little strange to use since they have a soft brush point, meant to be something like a paint brush. It's an odd choice for fabric pens. Nola wasn't very happy with them, since the black pen bled on fabric in the same way as the usual Sharpies can do, the pink and orange were fluro and the yellow is actually an acid green. After playing with the pens for a while, she changed over to colouring with Inktense pencils to add some flat colour, which she brushed with water. It will be interesting to see where she goes with this.

More in a fortnight!

And some other things we've been doing...

2011-12-19T23:04:00.001+11:00

And now, a catch-up of a few others things we've been doing, to round out the year.

Our last challenge of the year was Sunflowers, set by Bev. Carol had begun playing with the idea and was making flowers using her flower loom. This one was made from yarn:

and this one from paper ribbon:

It's going to be interesting to see where she goes with this.

Nola used her challenge to make a cover for her handbag sketchbook. She wanted something without much embellishment, which would get damaged in the bag. She also wanted it to carry the many pieces of paper that currently live inside the covers of the sketchbook, falling out whenever it's opened.

This is the front cover and here is the back:

The fabric is from our sun printing experiments way back in Feb 2009. The flower shapes were made with a paper cutout, from a photograph she took of Marguerite daisies. The circles were made with plastic cups. Then she painted the flowers to look more like sunflowers.

The button and elastic loop fastening, which keeps it closed in her bag, goes to the back, to avoid having a button on the front image. There are pockets inside each cover.

Bev brought along some gorgeous buttons that she bought at the Victoria and Albert Museum on her trip last year.

Maz brought along a stamp she had been carving. She began it at the ATASDA NSW social day in October.

It's going to give an interesting all over pattern. Stay tuned for some examples, I hope!

Tricia has been branching out into quilt-making. She had some Laurel Burch cat prints, and she's added tone-on-tone fabrics and some wonderful wild ones to make this quilt top.

Isn't it fabulous? And a wonderful first quilt. Her next task is to quilt it, which she hopes to have done before Christmas. I think we've finally got her hooked on quilting!

We meet again in January 2012. I wonder what interesting things we'll find to do in our fifth year?

Deconstructed screen printing #2

2011-12-19T16:34:00.000+11:00

As promised, here are the other deconstructed screen printing/breakdown printing pieces.

Maz wasn't very happy with hers, so she didn't pursue it very much this time. It came out rather blacker than she had hoped. I really like it, though!

The fabric is sheer, which made the print look quite different. The process would be fantastic for silk scarves!

Nola has several other breakdown printing sessions. Here is one she printed and then dyed here in our earlier session:

It's been printed over with another screen, on a very humid day, so the colour came off the screen quite quickly. The best fabrics seem to come from repeat prints, building up complex layers of pattern.

One of the things Nola was interested in, during this session, was blurring the obvious edge of screen lines. She brushed over the edges with a dry sponge brush, drizzled dye paint on in places and encouraged stripes of black to form during the printing, to break up the regular rectangular effects of repeat screens.

This one was printed using the same screen, on the same day, over the very pink piece. This fabric was initially printed by spritzing a screen with very little pattern but a lot of dye paint, with water, in the same earlier session.

This print was the last from this screen, which exhausted very quickly. Again, she added black highlights and brushed with foam brushes to break down the distinct edge lines. As the screen was becoming exhausted, there were obvious areas that remained unprinted, so the original wet print effects were not obscured. Some areas of that printing resisted the additional dye paint while other areas absorbed it, so this method of making a background has a lot of possibilities.

She still had dye paints needing to be used up, so she experimented with different ways of making marks with the dye paints. They are very different from fabric paints, due to the texture of the DR33, and the results seemed to be less predictable than using fabric paints, in keeping with the unpredictability of the screening process.

The last fabric printed had already been dyed turquoise in the waste bucket of the second session. Nola was experimenting with stamping, using commercial texture plates. The effect was very subtle, as she used turquoise dye paint, and the intention is to reprint this fabric with a other screen, to see how much the texture print resists the screen pattern.

I don't think this is the last breakdown printing you'll see in this group!

Dyeing with natural materials

2011-12-16T22:58:00.000+11:00

Last Fibrecircle session, we decided to try dyeing with materials we found in our local areas and gardens. This kind of dyeing, often known as eco-dyeing, seems to be wildly in fashion at the moment and we wanted to see what kind of results we could get.

We bought wool voile and silk voile to experiment with, as these fabrics take this kind of dyeing well. For days beforehand, we collected leaves, bark and other natural materials from our gardens and local area. Tricia set up several pots, each with a different plant material boiling in it. We also used other plant elements, folded and wrapped inside our cloth , to add extra colour in the different dye baths. Once the plant material in the pots had boiled for an hour or two, we added various mordants to the pot and allowed them to boil further. Finally, we added our folded and wrapped fabrics to the pots and allowed them to boil some more. At the end of the day, we took home our bundles and allowed them to batch in plastic bags for a further 24 hours, before rinsing them.

Nola cut her fabric into six scarf-sized strips, three silk, three wool.

Her first silk piece had celery leaves, rosemary sprigs and leaves of a Grevillea, folded into it, and was dyed in a pot of beetroot. This one has more texture than colour, but it's really quite lovely. It was rolled from one end, giving an ombre kind of effect, as the many layers acted as a resist to the dye. The celery leaves don't seem to have acted much at all.

Her second piece was wool, with photinea leaves and polygala flowers, concertinaed and wrapped, and dyed in a carrot bucket with alum and cream of tartar added as a mordant. The pot looked very pale, so the fabrics were left in the pot as it cooled. The red photinea leaves and purple polygala flowers didn't leave any markings in the cloth, although they did act as a resist to add subtle pattern.

Her third piece was also wool, with Grevillea rosmarinifolia leaves and red onion skins, rolled and tied between pieces of wood. It was dyed in a bucket with rhubarb leaves and alum.

The red onion skins yielded red-brown markings, and the grevillea, green.This one is quite strongly-coloured, more than the picture indicates.

The fourth one was silk, with Cootamundra wattle (Acacia baileyana) leaves and flowers concertinaed in the folds. The wattle was picked when it was flowering and frozen for a couple of months. This one was also dyed in the rhubarb and alum bucket. The wattle gave faint blue-grey markings.

The best one was a piece of silk, with celery, rosemary and bottlebrush (Callistemon citrinus) concertinaed and clamped, and dyed in a bucket of Ironbark (Eucalyptus sideroxylon) bark, using ferrous sulphate as a mordant. The celery left faint traces of lime green, which are hard to see in the photo, and the other plants seem to have acted as a resist.

Nola's last piece was wool, with thyme sprigs and prunus leaves, dyed in dandelion tea and alum. The prunus made splotchy marks, while the thyme gave very subtle texture. The thyme was a complete pain to wash out, though, so we don't really recommend it!

Helen was unwell, but she sent two silk scarves to dye.

The first one was knotted and dyed in ironbark bark and ferrous sulphate, like Nola's.
Her second one was also knotted and dyed in rhubarb leaves with an alum mordant.

Bev dyed three pieces of wool voile.

The first one had prunus leaves tucked inside the folds, and then was dyed in a bucket with ironbark leaves and twigs, and a copper sulphate mordant. The prunus leaves give a very intense red-brown colour, especially with a copper mordant.

Her second piece used wattle flowers in a red onion skin and alum bath. The vibrant colour seems to have come mostly from the wattle, as it was colouring the fabric even before it went into the bath. The flowers were frozen, so this seems to have been a similar effect to what India Flint calls "ice flower dyeing". If flowers are frozen, then placed in a warm water bath, the colour can come out immediately, and with the addition of mordant, can dye fabric. It was quite a warm day, so the flowers defrosted as we were using them.

Bev's third piece was dyed in a bath with an unknown bark, possible Brush Box or similar, with alum. The bark was collected by one of Helen's friends, so we have no idea what it was.

Tricia did a lot more dyeing, because she had the dye pots set up so she continued dyeing in the week after our meeting. This is her favourite. It was folded and clamped, then dyed in a bath of red onion skins and alum.

The first one here is really unusual. The blue came from red cabbage leaves, folded inside the layers, and the bundle was dyed in rhubarb with alum as the mordant.

The next one was dyed with red onion skins and polygala flowers inside the folds, in the beetroot bath, no mordant.

This one had gum leaves and prunus leaves, clamped, in the ironbark and copper sulphate bath.

This is one of several that were double-dyed. It was dyed first in dandelion tea, then later tied and placed in reboiled ironbark leaves, copper sulphate and alum.

This silk one was also double-dyed. First, it was dyed in ironbark leaves and copper sulphate. Then, pieces of bark from the Ironbark bark bath were wrapped in the folds and it was left in the cool bath overnight.

This first piece went in the ferrous and ironbark pot.

This one was also double-dyed, first in dandelion tea and, later, clamped and added to the reboiled ironbark leaves, with copper sulphate and alum.

This one had prunus leaves folded into it and was boiled in the ironbark and copper sulphate pot.

In this one, you can clearly see the outlines of the gum leaves, folded and clamped, and it was put into the reboiled ironbark leaves, copper sulphate and alum.

Things we concluded:
Celery seems to be very variable. Sometimes it yields a lovely lime green; other times it is barely visible at all. There are probably more reliable sources of green.

Wattle flowers are worth collecting, in season, and freezing.

Ironbark is very intense and gave a deep dark colour very quickly after boiling.

Polygala flowers have an intense purple colour but don't dye anything. We decided to try them later as ice flower dyeing, to see if that encourages some of the colour to transfer, but we're not hopeful. It's a shame - it's a beautiful colour, but one thing is obvious, in all the books about eco-dyeing - the colour of the plant is not a good guide to the colour it may produce in dyeing, and strong aroma or oils are a better indication of dye capability than intensity of colour.

A far better capacity to recognise tree species, especially Eucalypts, than we currently possess would be a huge asset in dyeing with Australian flora. Our education in this area is increasing in leaps and bounds!

And some other things we've been doing..

2011-12-11T22:54:00.001+11:00

Here's some other stuff we've been working on or have to share. First, the laminating we did a few weeks ago on sheer fabrics:

Here's Bev's piece of laminated fabric. The photocopied image basically disappeared, but the images from newsprint have printed just fine. The back of Bev's fabric is still quite white and the hand is quite paper-like, but the image is semi-sheer.

This is Tricia's laminated fabric. She had composed a set of images into a single piece of work, and it really looks great. The images had a similar colour scheme and feel about them, so it really works as a whole piece. The colours are still quite warm, enhanced by the burnt orange fabric underneath. Her laminating is also still white and papery at the back, though apparently it is possible to rub off almost all of the paper without losing the image.

Carol brought along the felt wrap she made in a class at ATASDA with Pam de Groot.

It's made from silk chiffon or "tissue silk", rainbow organza and wool fibres.

Helen was working on binding on a purse.

The fabric is one she printed earlier, enhanced with stitching and a button. When it's finished it will folded into a clutch purse, like this:

Nola was sketching ideas for her sunflower challenge piece, the last challenge of the year.

Helen and Tricia has postcards to swap. Here is Tricia's:

It's an embroidered piece she's been working on, off and on, for some time.

Helen's was a beautiful beaded lizard on a painted and stitched background she made a few months ago. The shape under the lizard is made from Sinamay, a stiffening material.

Deconstructed screen printing - the results!

2011-11-23T18:43:00.000+11:00

Our experiments with deconstructed screen printing and breakdown printing ended up spreading out over several sessions, as people came and went, and even gave us some homework! Nola still has a screen to print, so there'll be photos from that one soon, too.

Some of the information we had suggested that the first print from the screen might be a bit ordinary, as it takes time to break down the medium on the screen, so Nola did her first pull onto a piece of scrap fabric. The results were much better and more intense than expected.

These are later prints from the same screen, by Nola and Helen. We found it amazing to see how long there continues to be texture on the screen, and how much colour variation is possible by varying the colour of the printing medium, or using clear medium. By the time Nola was printing the third sample above, the dye paint was drying quickly on the screen in the heat, so less of the pattern was being printed.

This third one was later over dyed in the waste bucket from the second printing session. We were rinsing tools and screens in a single bucket of water, which resulted in a fairly strong dye solution at the end. The first time we did this, the dye bucket was, unsurprisingly, brown, but we had good results dyeing a mixture of cloths. As these fabrics hadn't been prepared with soda ash, we added soda ash to the bucket, with good results. The second time we did this, the prepared turquoise dye paint was becoming stringy from the heat, so we tipped it into the waste bucket. The resulting bucket gave us a good turquoise dye solution. Here's the third one after dyeing:

I think the message here is that the most unprepossessing prints can look much better, if you persevere with them!

Nola hates to waste dye so she spritzed the dry screen with water and printed again.

By this stage, we really only had magenta dye paint left, on the screen and to print with. A lot of texture still printed on the fabric, though, and by the end of printing, there was little left on the screen to be rinsed away. By itself, this is nothing to get excited about but, overprinted, it could be quite something.

Here's another series of screens Nola and Helen printed:

This is the primary set of prints.

Again, the dye paint began drying in the screen quickly, because of the temperature, so little of the dye was being released in later prints.

Here is the same piece of fabric, overprinted with another screen in a later session. It looks a lot more interesting!

Once again, the dry screen was spritzed with water and printed onto cream fabric. The water tends to make the dye paint very runny, so it's more like guided dyeing than printing, but echoes of the original printing remain.

Tricia's printing was rather less successful. She used borrowed soda ash, and it seems not to have been as effective as the soda ash the others used. Her prints were intensely coloured like Nola and Bev's, and were batched under the same sort of conditions by the same method, but a lot more colour washed out at the end. None of us used Synthrapol in the rinsing stage.

This is Tricia's first set of prints. As you can see, the dye washed out badly and she lost all her lovely texture. It's so frustrating, because she had some absolutely fabulous patterns and colour combinations after printing!

This is the best of her prints. And to add insult to injury, here is Nola's end print from her screen once she'd finished, onto fabric she'd dyed turquoise in the second session waste bucket.

The remaining patterns from the spritzed screen have actually come out clearer in these prints than the original printing. I guess that reminds us that dyeing always has that surprise factor, and not all the surprises are good!

Bev's prints had no such trouble. She produced lovely complex patterns from her screen.

These prints were done on a very soft, semi-sheer fabric. They'll look fantastic mounted against a backing and stitched.

These prints were done on cotton cloth, like Nola and Tricia's. I like the way she's moved away from the side-by-side structure that we automatically tend to do.

These prints exhausted the screen, with very little dye paint left to wash out. Bev was working on a cooler day than the earlier sessions, and she had less trouble with the screen drying prematurely. Drying screens aren't a huge problem, since the dye in the screens can be released with more of the thickener or, if the screen is almost exhausted,by spritzing with water, but it can be frustrating when you have a wonderful pattern happening!

We haven't seen the results from Maz's screen yet, and Nola has another screen to print. I think we all found it a very interesting process, and something some of us will probably incorporate into our creative practice. We particularly liked the way it produces a whole series of same-but-different images, with wonderful texture and depth.

Double the fun!

2011-10-12T22:58:00.011+11:00

The Fibrecircle girls have been busy creating lately, both in the group and elsewhere. Our first October meeting was crammed full of creative energy and two different activities.
Tricia brought show and tell from the dyeing workshop she did at Virginia Farm Woolworks last weekend. She had some fantastic cotton squares, which she thinks will be perfect for a quilt. They really are a short primer of ways to tie fabric for Shibori dyeing.

1. fabric wrapped around a CD
2. twisted from edges with object in middle
3. bobby pins strategically placed
4. twisted in circular motion from the centre, keeping it flat
5. wrapped around another CD, corners fan-folded
6. fan-folded from corners, then bobby pinned and tied in the centre

7. concertina fold and clamped between tongue depressors
8. marbles tied with string
9. stones tied with string
10. scrunched up and tied
11. stitching with tied corners
12. clouding - pole-wrapped and tied

13. Tied with string in clusters
14. concertina one way and then the other, then tied
15. Large piece showing clouding
16. Pole-wrapped diagonally
17. wrapped length of plastic chain
18. pole-wrapped, scrunched and pushed along the pole

Maz brought along samples from her week-long workshop with Marie-Therese Wisniowski at Fibre Arts and Hunters Hill last week. Marie Therese was teaching a method of transfer printing she calls Multisperse Dye Sublimation. The result is visually complex art textile pieces on man-made fabrics. Maz's samples show some of the possibilities of the technique.

1. Sample of the transfer printing, repeat of the print, light colours first
2. as above
3. multiple layers on delustered satin, using plant material as resist
4. colour sample on synthetic chiffon
5. sample on synthetic lace
6. two pieces – one on ordinary satin – Maz wasn’t happy but Marie-Therese suggested printing again onto organza as an overlay

7. reverse layering – dark to light – on delustered satin
8. Printed using plant materials, moving the plants with each colour to create shadows
9. printing without laying down a background colour first, and moving the objects to create shadows
10. multiple print – paper stencils, some reversed, and line drawing on transfer paper
11. postcard size pieces using different techniques she’d learnt

During the week, Maz won a raffle, and this was the prize – a large piece of printed silk fabric by Els van Baarle. This is just a section of the fabric, as it's way too big to take the whole.

Isn't it just gorgeous? We all wanted to sneak it into our bags! Helen brought along two bags she’d made since our last time together. This first one uses fabric that we printed last month. She cut the fabrics into strips and wove them together into a piece of fabric. She also made her own braid by stitching over yarn on the machine, and used it to embellish the front.

The other bag used a piece of monoprinted fabric, embellished with appliqué, stitching and beads.

It was also time for the unveiling of our latest challenge works, on the theme, Let’s Go Geometric. Maz’s unfinished Geometric piece is worked on rug canvas with embroidery threads. She’s not sure where it will go next, perhaps a book cover.

Nola’s Geometric piece was also unfinished, but is almost there. She’s making a dice pot for gaming, using fabric she painted earlier and then block printed a couple of weeks ago.

This is the lid, which needs to have a rim added.

These are the sides of the pot, individually stamped with hand-carved stamp motifs.

Bev’s Geometric is also unfinished. It’s inspired by the windows of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, and is made from snippets of fabric trapped between layers of silk organza. You can see her sketchbook with sketches for the work, along with the piece itself.

Helen is the only one to finish her challenge (no surprises there!). But she surprised us by producing two challenges. The first one is this notebook cover from embroidered rug canvas.

Here's the whole cover.

But she said that she thought we would all expect her to make her challenge from rug canvas, and that wouldn‘t be a challenge, so she decided to do another one. The second one is a concertina book, with pockets containing different geometric patterns.

The side with the pockets..

The other side...

Then it was time to start work.

Carol wasn’t participating in the activities this time, so she was busy preparing craft for her Joeys Scout group. She was making flowers from egg cartons, as samples for the kids to follow.

Our first activity was to prepare screens for some deconstructed screen printing/breakdown printing. In this method, printing screens are used to create a series of similar-bur different prints, unlike traditional serigraphy (screen printing), which aims to produce identical images over multiple prints. Basically, thickened dye is added to the screens in a pattern, and allowed to dry thoroughly. When the screens are printed with the thickening agent or some more thickened dyes, the dry material is slowly softened and dissolved from the screen. Thicker areas of dye paint take longer to break down and act as a resist. The result is usually complex layers of colour.
Before everyone arrived, Nola had prepared some Drimarene K dyes, mixed with urea and DR33, a thickening agent. We were using several different methods to put colour onto the screens. This screen was laid over a texture plate and several pieces of bubble wrap, and printed with a squeegee in the usual screen printing method. The texture of the materials underneath was reproduced on the screen and allowed to dry.

This screen was painted from the back in several layers. The first layer was a wash of turquoise, from when the dye paints were made up. It was allowed to dry overnight, and then further dye paint was added in different thicknesses, using a sponge brush. The thicker areas were imprinted with pieces of bubble wrap and texture plates, which were left on the surface while the screen dried. Some puddles of dye paint were drawn out into spikes with a comb, and small black lines were added with a syringe.

This screen was built up during the morning, by painting on the back. It had dye paint applied thickly and then two pieces of string were laid down in a random pattern, then a small piece of bubble wrap, a piece of road guard plastic and more bubble wrap. This screen took a long time to dry, because the bubble wrap tended to trap the moisture.

We’ll show you the printing results after our next meeting!
The second activity was laminating fabric. This process transfers an image from newsprint or similar lightweight paper onto a layer of sheer synthetic fabric, using gel medium. First, the image was laid down on the back cloth, and then the organza or similar fabric was taped firmly down on top. Gel medium was added to the surface, fairly thickly but without soaking the paper. The layers were set outside to dry.

Once they are thoroughly dry, they need to be heat set with an iron for about 10 minutes. Then the fabric is placed in a bucket of warm water for about twenty minutes, to soften the paper. The paper is removed by scrubbing with the fingers and then with a dish scourer, leaving the image behind. Some paper residue usually remains, so the images are usually slightly cloudy and mysterious. They show up well overlaid over strongly toned fabric. We’ll show you the results of that next time, too!

September block printing

2011-10-11T22:52:00.002+11:00

Our September meetings were much smaller, since several members couldn't attend. The remnants decided to keep on block printing for a little longer.

Nola carved these stamps from large erasers. The flower stamp is based on a sketch she made at an exhibition called "The Art of Islam", back in 2005. The cloud motif was a motif she sketched at an exhibition of Chinese art called "Celestial Silks" in 2004. Both exhibitions were held at the Art Gallery of NSW. So it really pays to keep those sketchbooks!

Here is a test print of the flower stamp, with a pair of stamps she made earlier this year.She talked about them on her blog here.

These are some of the stamps she made then.

She had these stamps out because she planned to use them as part of her Let's Go Geometric challenge piece.She stamped these images on a piece of pre-painted quilter's muslin.

Tricia was also printing. She laid down some colour with the roller and then added texture with a round cardboard reel.

The shapes on the left of photo above, and in the one below, were made by printing with toe separators.

These were from stamps that Tricia carved. She was very interested in making stamps that could be used to make a repeat pattern, so these were test prints.

Bev was also printing but no photos were taken. So we need photos, Bev!

Bev brought along a postcard in progress. She wove together strips of fabric, including some with hand prints from stamps. Then she began to stitch on the top. Can't wait to see where this goes!

End of August?

2011-09-24T23:15:00.001+10:00

We can't imagine how it got to be August already!

Our second meeting in August was a block printing playday. Everyone but Carol decided to decorate fabric using our extensive collection of wooden print blocks and commercial & hand-made stamps.

Carol was busy doing some card weaving, with yarns she'd dyed with food colouring. Here are the yarns:

and here is the weaving:

I love the fresh colours you get with food dyes!

Everyone else was playing around with our combined wood blocks and stamps, using Permaset printing inks. We used a variety of methods to put colour onto the blocks, and onto the fabric. One method of inking the blocks was to use a plain overhead transparency sheet (not the coated kind for ink jet printers) as the palette. You lay down some inks at the bottom and then roll them up the sheet a little at a time with the brayer to get a tacky surface, before rolling the brayer across the stamp. You get a good coating for the stamp this way, not too thick and blobby but not skimpy either. It's also quite economical on inks, and means that these fast-drying inks don't dry out too quickly. You can also use the brayer itself as a printing medium, once you've run it across the block surface, as a negative version of the block will be left in the remaining ink on the brayer.

Another method was to use polystyrene trays as palettes, and coat the stamps with a sponge brush. This works well for smaller stamps but leaves brush marks on the larger blocks. This can give interesting effects, but sometimes it's not what you want. Sponge brushes are also very thirsty for ink, and you can waste a lot. You also need to be more careful that the inks don't dry in the brushes before you can wash them clean.

Here is a print from Helen using one of Nola's Indian wooden print blocks.

Helen stamped this one with gold metallic ink. It's very delicate.

Nola also tried stamping with the metallic ink, on a piece of painted cloth, but she also found it very muted.

The metallic ink would be good to over-stamp a coloured print using the same block, which would add gold highlights to the print.

Maz used two different stamps to make a striped design, but once it was dry, she felt it was too regular for what she wanted. So she stamped over the design with a third stamp.

She did the same with this piece, which was stamped with two blocks.

Maz also spent the first part of the day carving a stamp from a block of balsa. The top print here is her test print. She found the balsa tended to split very easily, which wasn't a problem for the kind of block she was carving, but would be very frustrating if you were trying to carve a specific design.

Tricia was also carving balsa. She was aiming to make a block that repeated.

The left print shows the results:

That worked out well! The second print is another stamp she carved previously, without thinking about repeat effects. The third is one of Nola's print blocks. But blocks don't always have to line up neatly to create in interesting repeat pattern. When she deliberately off-set the prints, the repeat became stronger and more effective.

This is a print by Bev using one of Nola's wood blocks, in which she's working out the registration, to create an overall pattern. The block gives a great all over pattern and the registration (lining up the block elements for repeat prints) is not too difficult.

This is another of Bev's, using a large stamp that gives an interesting all over pattern if you get the registration right, as she has here.

Tricia was also interested in creating all-over patterns using registration. She continued using Nola's print block:

The colour variation comes from laying down two colours on the transparency sheet, without mixing them, and letting the brayer take up both colours on each pass.

Here's the finished piece. Doesn't it look great?

This piece was made using a string stamp that Nola made a while ago. She glued string to cardboard using PVA glue and allowed it to try thoroughly. She completely coated the cardboard with PVA and mounted it on a wooden block. It wasn't designed as a repeat block, since the beginning and end of the string don't join if the block is printed side by side. But it gives a surprisingly good repeat effect over a piece of cloth painted with Setacolor paint.

Nola was also practising repeats with her newest print block, which has repeat points on the block edges. Although the repeat wasn't perfect, it worked out pretty well.

Tricia continued playing with repeats. Here's an all over-version of the first block on today's blog entry.

And here's the block Nola was using, printed onto chiffon. These print blocks look great stamped onto sheers.

Not all our printing involved us putting paint onto an object and pressing the object onto fabric. We had a pile of texture plates as well, which we printed onto fabric by laying the textured element underneath the fabric and rolling a paint-covered brayer over the top, to pick up the bumps. You can also add the colour to the plate and then lay the fabric on top, and rub with a brayer or spoon.

On this print, Bev used a block with a strong motif and, once it had dried, used a roller over a texture plate to give the motif a textured background. She felt the motifs on their own looked very stark on the cream background, and she likes to create layers and more complexity.

Here's the same motif with a different texture plate underneath.

Not all our printing was done with specialised stamps. This print was made using a piece of rubber non-slip or impact-absorbing mat, which you might buy from a hardware shop, as a texture plate. As you can see, it also gives an interesting all-over print.

Helen made this print as a monotype from her palette...

We all had a piece of cream homespun as a paint rag, because often paint rags give the best patterns. Here's Helen's:

Here's Bev's:

They are going to be very interesting by the time we finish our upcoming painting activities!

Nola was interested in stamping on fabric that already had marks on it. She had several pieces of fabric that had been drawn on with various media in a "graffiti" session. She stamped over the top of these marks using various stamps.

Then she added colour later, to fill in the background:

Another fabric had this star design in fabric crayon:

She added an all over pattern with a wood block

... and then added colour with a brayer.

This is a third graffiti fabric:

and then with colour added:

This piece was an earlier exercise in using resists when painting fabric. Nola cut 1 1/2in squares of freezer paper and ironed them to the cream fabric. Then she painted the fabric using different shades of blue and purple fabric paints, beginning with the lightest shade. As she painted, some of the squares lifted, and were removed, and the paint also bled underneath the squares, blurring most of the lines. As an exercise in resists, it was fairly ordinary, and the fabric ended up very dark and moody. It was also used to test a small area of foil transfer. In our stamping session, Nola stamped over it with window screen mesh and two small stamps, using Supercover White Permaset ink. The white Supercover is opaque, so it really lightened up the piece and gave it a lot more interest. Nola thinks it may be a journal cover one day soon.

Maz brought along her finished Forest piece. She had kept the felted piece whole and used it to make the cover of a book. The pages are handmade paper.

We also swapped postcards this time.
Here's Bev's postcard:

It has a stamped background, from one of our earlier fabric printing sessions, overlaid with a stitched bird. Simple but so effective!
Carol's postcard has tone on tone blue elements added and hand drawn spirals with a silver pen.

Helen's postcard snippets of yarn and fibre trapped under a sheer layer, and stitched. The leaves were lined with Sinamay, a stiffening often used for hats.

Maz's postcard was felted on the embellishing machine.

Nola's postcard was from an earlier playday, when we used paper serviettes to make small art pieces.

Tricia also brought along her first experiments in free motion stitching, from a recent workshop.

This is a clever technique for the drawing challenged!

In September, we plan to do more block printing...

Forest challenges!

2011-08-22T18:33:00.003+10:00

We unveiled our latest challenge offerings at our last meeting. Our challenge was Forest and the results were, as usual, very diverse.

Helen created a really clever book, called Wingding Forest. She used the wingding letters for "forest" in conjunction with images. It came in this stylish case:

Here's the cover:

and pages:

The three-dimensional leaves in the book were made from fabric with an overlay of painted sinamay, which made them textured and stiff. Sinamay is a fabric often used in millinery to stiffen hats.

This one is the forest image that Helen has digitally manipulated.

Brilliant!
Maz was still working on her felted piece, that she made on the embellisher.

It's going to be a book cover when it grows up. During the meeting she finished the edges with buttonhole stitch.

Nola finally finished another challenge, her second for the year! She made a handbag from the fabric she was painting last time :

The bag top and handles are from another fabric she painted for the purpose, and then drew lines to resemble bark. She says it has all her favourite features - an outside pocket, long straps and pouches inside to hold essentials like wallet keys and mobile phone.

Carol's forest challenge was inspired by the elves of the forest in Lord of the Rings. It's a very delicate wire and bead headpiece.

She began with the idea of making earrings that would stand above the ear, but technical challenges made her change to a headpiece. I think it works really well!

Bev was still working on her Forest challenge too. She had laid down strips of different fabrics on a base she painted earlier, on one of our painting days.

She's not quite sure what she'll do next!

Our task for the day was to progress a few postcards. Helen was working on a piece of canvas work embroidery, which will find its way into a postcard in the future.

Nola was looking at various postcards. She wanted to add a little colour to this one which has been hanging around for ages.

She subtly altered the colours using her Inktense pencils and now it just needs to be backed ready for swapping. It's another Forest piece - she seems to have a series happening! She also drew lines on some painted pieces.

This one had some heavy stitching at the bottom, which she didn't like, so she took it out.

She also painted on this one, which had been stitched on before.

Plenty of postcards to come for our swaps!

Maz was working on two postcards she'd made on her embellishing machine.

This one looks like it should be part of the Forest challenge, too!

She was also making some more Dorset buttons. These are so pretty!

Helen chose our next challenge, Let's Go Geometric, which is due at our first meeting in October. She tells us she isn't going to use her trademark rug canvas work, "because that would be too easy"!

A quiet day in July

2011-08-15T22:34:00.001+10:00

We had a quiet day for our second July meeting. It was a day when it was hard to get motivated and some people were haunted by gremlins! But we did have some work to show for our day together.

Maz did an ATASDA workshop with Felicity Clarke on the use of her embellishing machine, in mid July and she brought along the samples she'd made. In this one, they used the embellisher to create a motif in fibres on a felt background.

This sample shows different techniques to make a heart shape. They look very effective mounted together like this.

This one has various yarns and strips of fabric embellished onto felt.

This one uses various kinds of fabric.

Then they were encouraged to try out some of the techniques they'd learned, using some of the materials to hand.

This one has woven felt as the base

This one uses different fibres and ribbons, onto a sheer fabric.

Maz doesn't have any immediate plans to use these samples. They're more for inspiration when she's using her embellisher.

Carol was busy making a bag for her Japanese martial arts equipment. She decided buying a bag was boring, and she could make one that was much more interesting!

She investigated Japanese symbolism before deciding on the motifs she wanted to stitch in Sashiko on her bag.

Nola was working on her Forest challenge. She took one of her painted cloths, which she'd drawn on after painting. It looked like this:

She painted it with Setacolor paints and by the end of the day it looked like this:

I wonder where she's going with this?

Maz was also working on her Forest challenge:

No surprise that she's been working on it with her embellisher! Hopefully we'll see more at the unveiling next meeting.

Falling behind!

2011-07-25T18:28:00.017+10:00

Oh dear, our blog is falling behind our activities! Just too many things happening in our lives lately. Nola and Bev have been organising an exhibition, Carol was making costumes for the local Gang Show, Tricia and Bev have been travelling and we've all been struggling with colds and other things that real life throws at us. It seems Blogger has also been suffering from a winter virus, since it didn't want to load images! But we have still been creating interesting things. Here's a summary of our activities in June and July.

Maz was able to attend a playday held by ATASDA at Primrose Paperworks in late May, and she brought along the beautiful paper she made. The Primrose Paperworks Co-op meets at Primrose Park Art & Craft Centre at North Sydney, and they were happy to prepare paper pulp and provide eager volunteers to show ATASDA members just how to make paper. Here are some of Maz's papers:

...and some more...

Of course, paper is hard to photograph nicely but it really is luscious! She made more than two dozen papers that will be brilliant in her future work.

She's also continuing to make Dorset buttons. Here are some in progress:

Carol brought along a scarf she bought at the Easter Show. It's an example of fusion - made in India from Australian wool, with fine elastic incorporated into the weave to imitate the collapsed weave look.

It's absolutely gorgeous! Here are some detail shots:

She also brought along a beautiful knitted lace scarf, which she'd bought from the EWES (Epping Weavers Embroiderers and Spinners) sale at Dence Park. It was made by Brenda Hall.

She's also been doing some knitting from this cute slippers kit.

Can you see the picture? They're rather fun, aren't they?

At our meeting, Carol was making more cards from paper serviettes.

But most of the time, she spent sewing Scout badges onto this amazing blanket coat.

It looks incredibly warm!

Nola finished her Lost Treasures challenge book cover.

She used quite a few differnt techniques on this one. Remember she was making the jewels back here? The orange background in a serviette, whicih has been stitched down using the lines of the stamped elements on the fabric section on top of it. The gold flowers of the serviette have been extended onto the fabric, to tie the two together. The ribbon fastening can be unties through the D-riungs, but fussy fastenings make a journal difficult to use so there is also a hidden snap fastening under the turn back near the D-rings. The island and title were drawn freehand and painted withg Setacolor paints. The copper gold edging was painted by painting over the edge of torn paper. The gold side and bottom edges are cotton dressmaking tape, also painted with Setacolor paint.

Nola has also been working on her Past Life challenge. She hauled out her sample folders, full of "paint rags" and other treasures.

She chose several "paint rags" as pages and covers for a book, and cut them to size. It was a great way to start the project so it's obviously worthwhile collecting together all those samples and bits and pieces we all have, in one place.

The book is intended to show Nola at different decades of her "past life" with some words about what was happening at that time. She had printed some images onto Transfer Artist Papers, to transfer to quilters' muslin. (TIP: never use new media directly onto the pages of your book, since they may behave differently than you expect!). In this case, the precaution was sensible, as the TAPs really didn't behave as they should have. Some images printed and transferred well:

but some really didn't...

She got good and bad images from the same sheet of TAP. Bizarre! I think she'll be going back to acrylic media transfers for the remaining images.

Helen brought along a front of the jacket she is embroidering. It's on black wool and looks absolutely stunning.

She also showed us her finished Past Life challenge. It was a small book, with images of the area of Scotland where she grew up.

The cover is made from Helen's favourite medium - rug canvas.

It's a wonderful memento of her youth!

Helen was particularly busy in June. She also made these vessels:

Remember she was working on it here and here? Here's another view of it:

She's obviously been having a three-dimensional time, since she also made this vessel:

Helen also brought along a book cover she'd made as a gift.

That's all like a small gallery of what you can do with rug canvas, isn't it? The wonderful thing about rug canvas, in addition to it having lovely holes to stitch through, is that the glue used to hold the strands in place is soluble in water. So you can stitch your embroidery, wet it a little and shape it into a vessel quite easily. The strands don't come apart, if you just dampen them, but the glue dries it into the new shape, which is quite firm and robust.

We've also continued to make postcards to swap. This one was Helen's...

Maz made this one from a paper serviette:

... and Nola made this one:

This one is from our playday using paper serviettes, back in May.
So, as you can see, we have been busy! This is just a skip through the past two months. If you'd like more details about how we made these things, just ask!

Our own work

2011-06-26T19:44:00.000+10:00

Phew, running a little behind with updates on our activities! Our second May playday had no particular theme, so we were all working on different things.

Bev was doodling, with the idea of making small framed pieces for sale.

I love pattern-making like this!
Carol was working with more paper serviettes, mounted onto mat board.

This one had been adhered with diluted PVA glue, and then she painted it with watercolour paints.

These ones were laid down over moulding paste.

They are all intended as the base for future work.

Carol was also cheering up some very basic Masonite clipboards with some paint:

Helen was embroidering as usual:

Nola was painting some bits she'd made from glue and dimensional paint, for her Lost Treasures challenge.

She used her hot glue gun to make some shapes. When she painted them with Lumiere paints, they behaved as if the paint would rub off, so she coloured them with Sharpie pens and then painted over them with Lumiere and Setacolor paints. The first two coins were fabric, adhered together with fusible web and satin stitched. They really didn't look much like coins, even after she stamped on them with Setacolor paints, so she added Pebeo Expandable paint and painted them with Setacolor paints before heating with the heat gun. Some areas puffed to white, so she added more paint and Treasure Gold. Later coins were made from circles of medium weight card, painted with the expandable paint and over painted with Lumiere and Setacolor paints.

We also swapped postcards as usual. Bev's postcard was made from fabric snippets, free-motion stitches and beaded.

Carol made doodle patterns using the programmed stitches of her sewing machine:

Helen's postcard used fabric scraps, pieced together and embroidered.

Playing with paper serviettes

2011-05-22T15:48:00.001+10:00

Our second meeting in April was right after Orange Fibre Forum. Usually members come back full of exciting news and thoroughly inspired for another year. This year was a little different because for various reasons, most members couldn't come, and there were just three of us. Our plan was to play around with paper napkins (serviettes) We all have a decent collection of paper serviettes for Artistic Purposes, so we brought along our treasures to swap. The first May meeting was also devoted to paper serviettes, for those who missed out initially.

Carol brought along this postcard for us to admire. It was made in Dale Rollerson's Ratty Tatty online workshop a while back. Carol really recommends Dale's online workshops as great value and full of interesting ideas to explore. The postcard uses layers of the same serviette, a base layer, fused to felt, and then subsequent layers, stitched and frayed. It adds a real depth to the work.
Then we started work. Carol had brought along some mat board offcuts, cut into a variety of sizes, including ATCs and postcards. We had PVC (white) glue and card or old credit cards as spreaders. Nola brought along an old phone directory as a base to glue on. It's an ideal base because, after each time, you can turn the page and prevent glue transferring to places where you don't want it!

When you're working with paper serviettes, it's important to remember that they are usually two- or three-ply. That means there's a layer of printed paper and at least one more layer of plain paper. You can use the serviettes as they are, but you need to ensure that the medium you're using to adhere the paper goes through all layers. Using all the layers results in a more opaque image; using just the top layer allows you to play with layers a little, since the layers below may show through. Sometimes the second layer has a shadow image of the main image, which can be useful. As you can see with Carol's postcard, you can use images from the same serviette, or multiple serviettes with the same image, several times, on top of one another, to achieve shadow or texture.

Carol made this cute cat postcard:

She used a modelling medium under the cats, to make them stand out from the background. The medium takes a long time to dry but the effects are interesting. Nola used the same medium on two similar postcards. You can manipulate the wet medium once the image is added:

This one has quite a lot of texture, especially in the sky for wind effects, but it needed some extra details. She added more layers of the same serviette, to deepen the colours, and some Treasure Gold to tone back the brightness of the colours and pick up the highlights. The wind effects are much more pronounced, aren't they? She also added stronger outlines in some places, to make it look less flat.

For Nola's second one using the modelling medium, she laid the medium down in a grid pattern, before adding the serviette. The grid pattern isn't very marked, although it's still present. It was outlined and rubbed with Treasure Gold, as well.

Helen was more interested in adhering the serviettes to fabric. She made several fabric pieces, on calico:

She also adhered one to card:

I'm sure we'll see these again, in works to come!

Carol used the same serviette as Helen to make an ATC background.

She later added a Chinese teapot and cups from a second serviette, but hasn't photographed it yet. It was a good illustration of how these serviettes can be used as the basis for other things. She used the same serviette as the basis of a bookmark:

And here are some tiny cards she made, using the scraps of serviettes as a colour palette. Again these make an interesting background to other media. I hope we'll see what she does with these!

Nola used two layers of a simple serviette to make an elegant book cover.

But, once it dried, she wasn't very happy with it, as it just seemed dull and dirty. So she added some

colour with Carol's tiny set of kids' watercolours, bought in a cheap store. Very handy for taking on the road!

It probably will have more exciting things done to it, but it's certainly a good basis for a book cover.

Nola also liked this image of a Fifties housewife and added it to a postcard base.

The shadow behind her looked ominous, so she added borders of tissue paper to emphasise the sense of foreboding.

I'm not sure it's a postcard for swapping, though!
Speaking of swap postcards, Helen brought along this one for swapping:

She looks gloriously ditsy, doesn't she? The stitching really works to set the mood.

Helen also brought along a book she made, from pseudo-vellum. The paper was coated with Shellac, giving it a gorgeous leathery feel and look.

Meanwhile, our absent members returned, with treasures from their week at Orange Fibre Forum. Maz took a workshop with Barbara Schey, specialising in Dorset buttons. During the week, she made this very clever box.

As you can see, the decoration includes the Dorset buttons, but the box is very cleverly constructed as well. Maz also made a brooch from a Dorset button.

She has several more underway.

Dorset buttons were made in a cottage industry in East Dorset from the late 1600s. "Cottage industry" is a bit misleading, since it suggests a small scale industry. But as many as a thousand people were involved in their manufacture in the heyday of the industry, when the buttons were fashionable and sold world-wide. Many of the button makers were children but, like the spinning and weaving cottage industries, whole families were employed making buttons. The buttons are made by stitching over rings, these days made of metal but probably bone, horn or other natural materials were originally used. You can see some brilliant examples of different styles of button at the British Button Society.

Beverley was also at Forum, and her week was spent with Isobel Hall, making amazing complex layered media. A typical piece might have layers of Crash with fusible web, coated with Gesso, decorated with soft pastels, layered with Mod Podge, painted with alcohol inks, sealed and then coated with encaustic wax. Or tea stained media with acrylic wax, embroidery, and beading. Amazing! You can see her latest books, with Maggie Grey, Mixed Media: new studio techniques, here and a brief bio on the same site, here.

Bev made this beautiful book in the class:

She made a complicated layered & textured background, and added hand stitching. It's absolutely gorgeous! She also made this handbag, yet to be finished,

This book cover included cocoon strippings made into a kind of paper, tea staining and acrylic wax.

She also made this sheet of mixed media work for later use:

So I guess she had a pretty busy week!

First April meeting

2011-05-22T14:15:00.003+10:00

Our meetings in April were rather disrupted, first because of Fibre Forum at Orange and then by Easter. But we still managed to find a time to meet, although we were few in number. Our first meeting in April brought the unveiling of our second challenge, Lost Treasures. You'll have seen some of the pieces along the way, but here is what was unveiled on the day.

Helen's Lost Treasure was a treasure box, made for her, years ago, by her granddaughter. She had collected togather all sorts of tiny treasures in a chocolate box and presented them to her grandmother. There are buttons, a pretty marble, beads, all manner of lovely little things. It really is gorgeous! Helen decided to cover the box in "treasure" fabric and present it back to her now-adult granddaughter.

Nola struggled to get her Lost Treasures done in time. She's making a journal cover, but it didn't come together well. This is what she unveiled on the day.

She's hopeful of things to come....

Carol lost her Lost Treasure. However, she made this beautiful crochet shawl. Made from man-made fibres from a pattern, Exquisite, from Heirloom Afghans for Baby. She had hoped to enter it in a local fair but it wasn't finished in time.

Carol also brought along an experiment she'd been working on. It was a dye silk cap, moulded over an Ikea vase and stiffened using floor polish. She notes that it's important to use a shape which is larger at the top than the base, or it becomes a probloem to remove it from the mould!

Busy busy...second postcard swap

2011-04-15T23:50:00.004+10:00

Fibrecircle has been quite busy lately but unfortunately, while that means we've done some fun things, no-one has had time to blog about them! At our second meeting in March, we swapped our monthly postcards. This time, we had several swappers - Carol even made two! This one is Beverley's.

Does it remind you of anything? Yes, it's made from one of the samples she did for her Language of Thread challenge work. For both pieces, she was inspired by a technique she saw in a Quilting Arts magazine, of stamping the same image onto different fabrics and then combining them together. She tried stamping with several different media on various fabrics, to get the best effect. Once the two fabrics were combined together, she embellished the stamped image on the postcard with machine stitching. The images on the final work also had quite strong hand stitching. It's a difficult piece to photograph because both the fabric and thread have a sheen to them. The back looks like a postcard, but it has a beautiful hand-drawn element as well, which wasn't photographed at the time. The edges were straight stitched and then satin-stitched with a slightly longer than usual stitch.

Nola decided to use a piece of fabric she'd previously painted as the background to her postcard. It looked rather spring-like so she decided to embroider a butterfly.

The image was a copyright-free image from a Dover Press sampler. She resized and printed the image onto water soluble paper, and used it as a guide for the main stitching. The background fabric was layered with thin cotton batting before stitching. Once she was happy with the stitching, she washed out the paper and added finer details to the image. Then she painted the stitched card with Setacolor paints. The card was a bit floppy so she lined the backing fabric with fusible Vilene. She folded in all raw edges and hand-stitched a buttonhole stitch around the edges.

Maz hand stitched her card on a machine embellished foundation. She turned the front edges to the back and covered them with a backing piece. The card was stiffened with fusible Vilene.

Helen's elegant card was made by stitching free-standing shapes, joined with fusible web and edged with satin stitch. These were joined to each other and the card background with some beads. The edges were satin stitched.

Carol made two postcards to swap. Both used paper serviettes as the basis but in different ways. The first postcard had the serviette adhered to the backing and overlaid with a mesh fabric. Motifs from the serviette were adhered over the top.

The second postcard used a serviette with the same motifs. The serviette was adhered to the background and this was cut apart and reshuffled. The pieces were stitched back together using a single machine stitch. The motifs were attached to a backing, so they sat higher than the surface, giving a sense of depth. Both cards were stiffened with card and the edges were stitched with a machine buttonhole stitch.

These were a good advertisement for our next meeting, when we plan to swap serviettes with interesting motifs and have a play day with them.

Carol was busy sorting loose beads and stringing them. However, this is just her "loose beads" box - it seems she has a lot more other beads at home!

Helen brought along her canvas embroidery piece that she's been working on for some time.

It really is a lovely thing. She was talking about making it into a three-sided vessel, if she can work out the technical challenges.

Maz was stitching on her Lost Treasures challenge piece. It's a lost treasure because she began it in a workshop some time back, and found it again recently.

The background fabric has stamped images of carafes like the stitched one.

Tricia was continuing her Tunisian crochet.

It's a gorgeous scarf, with a selection of different yarns in deep jewel tones. She also brought along another scarf she'd made:

It's so light and soft, I think we all wanted to steal it!

Helen brought along this treasure to show us:

Nola was playing with books. She's making a book cover for Lost Treasures, but she also pulled out her Round Robin book pages that we made two years ago. Her theme was Sailing to Byzantium, so she was sketching various Byzantine motifs that might work on her book page.

Next time, we'll have the revealing of Lost Treasures!

Lazy day

2011-03-14T22:40:00.001+11:00

What a bunch of slackers! No-one felt like doing very much today. Perhaps it was the weather, which started out muggy and ended up trying unsuccessfully to rain. Hard to feel engaged with textile stuff, or anything other than browsing everyone's magazines and having a gentle nap, really!

Beverley brought along her finished Language of Threads challenge work, which she called Threads and Flowers. She exhibited it in the art quilt section of her local quilt group last weekend and guess what? It won first prize! Here it is, with its winning labels still attached:

Sorry about the diagonal background, the photographer was in a bit of a rush! Her prize was a delicious collection of Gutermann threads, an interesting Australian quilt book and some sixteenths of fabric.

Most of the day, we chatted and read magazines. Nola was thinking about her Language of Threads challenge, but was daunted by tangled skeins that needed winding before they could be used. Carol was sorting cub scout badges to sew onto her thick coat, which she refers to as "the blanket". She began to sew badges but lost interest. Tricia had her sketchbook but couldn't get started, and Beverley had some stitching but about the same level of interest.

Nola moved on to her Lost Treasures challenge, showing the others the fabrics she'd pulled from her stash to go with the "treasure" she found last time. But none was quite right, so eventually she pulled out her Setacolor paints and painted some quilter's muslin in a couple of shades she thought might work. She finished off the piece of fabric with some roller marks in blue and yellow paints, blended on the sponge roller.

She wanted a slightly green dark blue. The right side is indigo and ultramarine with a little yellow added but it is still a little too blue; the middle has indigo with more yellow added and is more like the colour she imagined. The plan is to use just a small amount as a narrow border.

None of today's photography is great, because the light was so changeable, but it gives an idea of what we were doing. Such as it was!

First postcard swap

2011-02-28T23:22:00.000+11:00

Today was the first Fibrecircle postcard swap. Like most of our projects, there's no pressure for anyone to participate, so today only Maz and Nola had finished postcards. We're a very relaxed group! Tricia had one underway, which may be finished for the next swap, in March.

Here's Maz's finished postcard. She was working on it last week remember?

Small pieces of patterned commercial and hand painted fabrics in black, cream and gold were pleated and attached to the black cotton background. They were surrounded by silver stitching, and the whole mounted over card stock. A cream fabric backing, drawn like a blank postcard, was hand stitched to the back.

Here's Nola's postcard:

The base of Nola's postcard is painted fusible web, with an overlay of crystal organza. It's one of her From the Heartland series, which has been running intermittently since 2007. This one is inspired by satellite photographs of the Menindee Lakes system in western New South Wales, although it uses the same basic pebbles-on-sand layout of the earlier postcards. The shapes were free-motion embroidered, and then further textural stitching was added by hand. Lastly, the brilliant lakes were painted inside the stitched shapes. The backing is brown felt, with a filling of Timtex, and the edges were satin stitched over fluffy yarn to give a firm edge and cover all traces of the Timtex.

Tricia's unfinished postcard looks like this:

All the details are hand stitched onto a hand-dyed background. She brought it along today for ideas about how to finish it into a postcard. So we looked through Nola's collection of ATCs and postcards for finishing ideas.

A Dozen Easy Ways to Finish your ATC or Postcard
1. Turn the front edges to the back over the lining material, and glue or hold with thread. Layer over a backing, attached with slip stitching, like Maz's, or with fusible web and stitched down with machine straight stitching or a patterned machine stitch. This also works well with a card stock backing that can be glued in place.
2. Satin stitched edge, like Nola's postcard, or a zigzag stitch. Nola's was satin-stitched over a yarn, which tends to cover the inner layer nicely, without showing glimpses of white around the edges.
3. Bagged - i.e. stitch from and back layers, right sides together, leaving a small gap for turning. Works best with softer fillings like quilt batting.
4. Bound like a quilt, either in strips or a continuous mitred binding, slip stitched on the back. One variation is to stitch the binding to the back, turn it to the front and top stitch it down with a patterned machine stitch.
5. Straight stitch around the edges - this can be simple or complex, but thicker inner layers, like batting or Timtex, tend to show around the edges. Straight stitching a narrow braid on the front side is effective.
6. Use a machine herringbone-style stitch, so that the outer edge of the stitch passes over the edge. Also better with thin or no inner layer and can look striking on a card stock backing.
7. Free motion swirls or loops, with inner layer hidden between extended front and back layers
8. Hand or machine buttonhole stitch around the edges - this also works best with thinner inner layers as batting or Timtex will show.
9. Cut lining slightly smaller and adhere front and back layers with fusible web. Trim with pinking shears and straight stitch inside the pinked edge.
10. Overlock (serge) the edges together, then cover the stitching with braid, rickrack or glued fabric strips.
11. Stitch eyelash or similar yarn on each side, beginning with the back, and using matching thread. The fringes blend, hiding the lining.
12. Layer a fabric between the front and lining, cut 1/2in oversize. Stitch around the edge through all four layers (front, extra fabric, lining and back) with wide zigzag or buttonhole stitch , and then fray the larger piece of fabric back to the stitching line, making a simple fringe.

Possible linings - Shapewell interfacing (a stiff but light woven interfacing), Timtex, quilt batting, cardboard of various weights, Pellon in various weights.

Nola did very little, creatively, today. She looked through her folder of samples for ideas for the next month's postcard and for our Lost Treasures challenge. For the challenge, she found this little piece:

It looks very like Lost Treasure, doesn't it? And for her next postcard, she found this little piece of painted fabric:

Carol was working on baskets woven from craft cardboard. Much of her life these days is spent in working out creative activities for her Scouts and Joeys!

Tricia was stitching today and she brought along two pieces to work on. She began the first one in a class with Jan Irvine-Nealie at Orange Fibre Forum a couple of years ago, based on a photo.

She has rocks to add in the foreground and some trees. It's looking really interesting!

Tricia's other stitching piece is a trial for a larger work she wants to make. Both use her own dyed fabrics, but this one is smaller. She's experimenting on this one with thread colour and different stitches, to get the effect she wants for the larger piece. It's hard to see the stitched area in the photo but it has the feel of something ancient.

Beverley was working on her Language of Threads quilt, which she'd like to exhibit in her quilt group's show soon. She was working on this last week too. It's coming along nicely, isn't it?

Maz was stitching on the next challenge, Lost Treasures. She found this "lost treasure' in her cupboard and was inspired to keep working on it. She painted and stamped the fabric quite a long time ago, and now she's adding stitch.

The printed pattern on the fabric is bottle and carafe shapes like the one she is stitching.

Helen was working on her rug canvas work, like last week. The rug canvas is quite fine, this time, so it's fairly slow work.

She painted the rug canvas, as she often does, before she started stitching. She also brought along a canvas work vessel, a challenge from another group. By moistening the canvas, she softens the glue that adheres the fibres together, not enough to make them come apart, but enough that, once it has been moulded into shape and dried, it stays in the new shape. Sorry, no photo of that one!

Helen's main show and tell, though, was a collection of works from her embroidery group, Lateral Stitchers. Each year, they have a paper bag challenge. This time, they took a copy (by permission) of an original image by Toni Valentine, which she made in a class on Hundertwasser. They cut it apart and each person took a section to reproduce in whatever way they chose. Here are the sections they made, laid out on top of the original image.

Just stunning work by those girls, and Toni too!

See you in a fortnight.

Back together again!

2011-02-14T21:05:00.000+11:00

Today was our first full meeting after the holidays and the unveiling of our first Challenge, The Language of Threads, set by Maz before Christmas. Four members had works to share.
Helen showed us her completed bag, called Threads of India.

The embroidery was done on rug canvas, which was stiffened with pelmet vilene and assembled with calico and braid into a bag. The colours were inspired by a photograph of dye workers in India.

Carol's Language of Threads piece is called Treasure Islands. She hasn't quite finished it yet.

She began with a felt background, and hand couched hand spun and threads and then machine embroidered. Like most shiny things, it's hard to photograph well, but it looks wonderful.

Maz showed her piece, Impressions, which is also not yet finished.

It's made using fabric lamination of newspaper images and text onto synthetic organza, using matte medium as the adhesive. If you enlarge the photo, you can see the stitching she's adding, which gives a lovely rich texture.

Beverley's challenge used her own hand-carved blocks. She carved a positive and negative version of the same image, and stamped it onto different fabrics. She pieced a background from two fabrics and is mounting her images on that background. Some images are a single layer, with frayed edges, while others have been lined. She is adding running stitches, French knots and other embroidery in Perle thread.

We had a perennial visitor to our group this time. Janet Bass from Pittsburgh was making her annual visit to Australia and came to join us. Her task today was to crochet a breast shape from strips of plastic bags, for a future installation planned by a fellow artist.

Here she is crocheting away, with Maz hard at work beside her. Maz was working on a small piece that may become a postcard to swap.

Beverley brought along some little embroidered fragments she has been making. She used an adhesive to hold the elements in place while she stitched them, and used Solvy as the stabiliser.

Helen was working on another rug canvas piece.

It's very soft and pretty in colour - can't wait to see it finished!

Tricia brought some beautiful roving to spin. Helen was happy to help her manage it, though it did look as if she had plans to make away with it. She does have rather more of it than Tricia, doesn't she?

Tricia is keeping a firm grip on the end, though!

Nola was busy with her orphan blocks project. From leftover quilt blocks and units of different sizes, she's making twelve inch blocks for a quilt top.

Here are some of the blocks she's made already. Today, she was converting a 5 1/2in finished Log Cabin block into a 12in block, by adding double borders - 1 1/2in finished borders with corner posts and 1 3/4in finished pieced strip borders, like the ones in the top right hand block.

Our next Challenge was chosen by Carol. She has set us the task of making a work on the theme of Lost Treasures, to be shared at our first April meeting. So many possibilities! Meanwhile, we're busy making postcards to swap for our next meeting in two weeks' time.

So what have we been doing 3

2010-11-13T23:01:00.001+11:00

Maz began making cards as a demonstration at the Open Studio weekend and was finishing them off on Monday. The tree shape is made from small triangles of paper, glued on in an overlapping pattern. It's such a clever idea but you really have to have a steady hand and some patience to get such good results!

She's also been doing more drawing on fabric. This is one she was working on last Monday:

She uses Sharpie pens for line and colour. By Wednesday, she had made a second similar one. Her intention is to make a bag with the fabric.

Nola was also drawing on fabric, as part of her graffiti project. Last weekend, at the Open Studio, she drew this line drawing.

She intended to draw more on it, to fill in the spaces around the edge, but on Monday, she began painting it instead, with Setacolor transparent paints.

By the end of the day, it looked like this:

This is part of an experiment using words, which become obscured and changed by later additions, much as new layers of graffiti change and obscure the earlier layers. More will happen to it before it is finished. The background is a pale lemon colour, which seems to be quite hard to photograph, and varies quite markedly according to the light conditions.

Beverley was working on a patchwork UFO on Monday. It's one of those projects that come out every so often, and are really long term projects.

She's also been making small art textile pieces, some of which were for sale last weekend, and cards. Hopefully we can get some pictures of those to share!

Tricia was using her rare creative time to work on a crochet scarf:

The colour doesn't show up well, but it's subtle and luscious!

Carol began doing some tablet weaving (or card weaving) as a demonstration at the Open Studio and brought it along to finish on Monday. Here is it all set up:

She's using the frame of her rigid heddle loom to hold the yarns. And here are her finished pieces:

I've given you a larger image, so you can see the detail, but for still more detail, click on the image.

So as you can see. we've all been busy on our various pursuits.

Our next plan is to make a series of works, taking turns to choose a theme or link. Maz has chosen "The Language of Thread" as her theme, and we have until February to make a work. In the meantime, we plan to make Christmas postcards for a swap at the ATASDA Christmas party in December. So there'll be plenty happening in the next few months.

So what have we been doing? 2

2010-11-13T22:50:00.000+11:00

Tricia has also been discharge dyeing. This process involves the use of media, in this case bleach, to remove some of the dye in a fabric, selectively, to make patterns. It has a lot in common with shibori techniques, except that the process is removing dye that is already there, rather than adding it.

Tricia chose to use black fabric for her experiments, and as you can see, she had quite different results from different fabrics.

This one was a cotton voile, which is why it is quite sheer, hanging on the line.

Her next step was to neutralise the bleach using a proprietary agent - Bleach stop or Antichlor. It's important to do that step, because washing is not enough to remove all the bleach, and it continues to work on the fibres, eventually affecting the integrity of the fabric.

So what have we been doing?

2010-11-13T22:18:00.000+11:00

Tricia has been busy dyeing. Her interest in eco-dyeing persists, but lately she has been making marks with rust on fabric, and with discharge dyeing with bleach. Here are some of her gorgeous rust-dyed pieces.

This one was dyed by Tricia's dad - he's become quite interested in the process.

This one was wrapped around lead sheet, cut into star shapes by Tricia's helpful dad. The lead marked the fabric with blue shapes.

Isn't it amazing what you can do with a few rusty objects and some fabric?

Yep, still here

2010-11-09T22:45:00.000+11:00

Did you think we'd vanished away, fallen into disarray or just plain split up? Nope, we're still having fun together, playing with textiles. The photographer deserted her post (what a terrible pun) for a few weeks but now we're back to recording what we've been up to. And what a lot there is!

Last weekend, we shared a table at the NSW ATASDA Open Studio weekend at Epping Creative Centre. If you didn't go, you missed a treat - many different artists showing their work and selling it to the public. You'll have to wait until next time to see so many creative people assembled in one place.

Here's our wares displayed:

We had scarves (knitted, woven, felted, crochet), framed art pieces, art t-shirts for kids, one-of-a-kind cards, gorgeous embroidered bags from Helen, all sorts of goodies. During the weekend, Carol was working on her tablet weaving, and Nola was drawing on fabric. Tricia demonstrated spinning, Maz made her intricate Christmas cards. It was fascinating to see other artists' work, to chat and to sell our goodies.

Here are some of Nola's t-shirt designs for kids:

More pictures of works to follow....

Embellishing machine

2010-08-13T14:39:00.001+10:00

Another smaller meeting, but I wouldn't say it was quiet! Maz brought along her Janome FM-725 needle felting machine, or embellisher, as they are often called, so we could have a play with it.

Maz brought along a piece of fabric she had been working on, with the intention of making a vest. The fibres of the top fabric have been felted into the lower fabric. It's likely to become a wall-hanging in due course.

Nola and Tricia had a play with the machine, as neither of us had ever used one. Here's our sample:

Both of us worked on the top piece. Here's a close-up of Tricia's solo piece:

And here's Nola's solo sample, Bonfire Night:

OK I made the name upon the spot, but it has possibilities, doesn't it?

We were surprised at how noisy it was, though this was probably because it was being used on a fold-up craft table. We were also surprised at how cheap in price they are, compared to the well-known competition! I can't imagine spending thousands on a machine I'd only use occasionally, but a couple of hundred is a much better option, unless you intend to use it a lot. We are blown away by the work of fellow ATASDA member Felicity Clarke - you can see her work Connecting with the light here on the ATASDA members' blog.

Meanwhile, Helen was working on an unfinished work, which (ta da!) she finished on the day. She loves embroidering on rug canvas.

She thinks it may be a book cover one of these days (probably by next meeting!).

Once we finished playing with the embellisher, Tricia returned to her spinning. She acquired the fibre from the Spinners and Weavers' Association Open Day and it's beautifully soft and lustrous. She finished the first bag at our meeting. Here she is spinning:

Nola decided to do some stamping on one of her "paint rags", with the aim to make some cards. ATASDA NSW is running a greeting card swap at the quarterly meeting, as a fundraiser for the library. Members bring sets of six cards, and, for a small donation, five are swapped and repackaged and the sixth donated to the library for sale. So far, the library has raised just over eighty dollars from this small fundraiser.

The fabric is quilters' muslin, painted with leftover Setacolor paints in an earlier painting session. The stamp was carved with a soldering iron from a polystyrene tray. (Do this outside, because it does produce toxic fumes!) It's easy to do and gives an effect rather like lino cut or woodcut images. The stamping was with Setacolor paints as well. She was experimenting with printing first with the bubble insert from a chocolate box, but the effect was very faint. You can just see the fine dots at the top.

Maz was doodling in her sketchbook, as she often does. Nola got quite excited by it and drew this onto another paint rag:

Next time, Maz is going to show us some laminating of fabric onto paper. Stay tuned!

Postcards

2010-08-13T13:47:00.001+10:00

Our second July meeting was devoted to making simple postcards. The WA Group of ATASDA ran a postcard challenge with the theme of Natural Wonders, and we thought we might contribute some cards. The cards were displayed at the WA Quilt Craft and Stitch Show at Claremont from 30 July - 1 August. Not all of us were efficient enough to finish and send out cards at short notice, though!

Helen was already playing with this fabric with cartoon ladies. But you can see her postcard in the centre (sorry, the photographer wasn't having a good photography day!).

Here's a close-up:

Isn't it beautiful? She doesn brilliant work. Nola was playing with some postcards she'd already started, to try to finish one for the challenge. This one was almost done:

It didn't get finished in time, though!

Maz also finished a postcard but the photographer didn't catch it in time.

Prue wasn't making postcards this time. She was busy on a more important work,doing traditional needlework for the Historic Houses Trust. The Trust recently put out a call for volunteers to help repair and stitch furnishing for the houses they care for. Obviously, this requires skill in hand stitching, working with historically correct materials and methods. Prue was stitching lace to a set of curtains.

The others were busy elsewhere on the day, so it was quite a small meeting. But we are busy all the time...

Print Gocco

2010-07-23T18:47:00.002+10:00

I'm falling seriously behind on my blog updates! So much to do, so little time. Our first July meeting experiments were with Print Gocco. Some of us had used the Gocco machines before but for most, it was a new experience. So most of our printing samples were just to show the process.

We had three machines between seven of us, so inevitably the process was slow. We all had a chance to print onto paper and fabric.

First, Nola did a brief demonstration of the process. Print Gocco is a simplified screen printing method. The screens are prepared by imprinting a carbon-based master onto the screens using flash bulbs. The same machine can be used for printing, replacing a squeegee in normal screen printing, or the inked screen can be mounted onto a hand stamper. The screens we printed were B6, so using the hand stamper is more useful for larger sheets of paper or fabric, and the machine is better for small products, like cards.

The whole process is incredibly easy to do. New flash bulbs are inserted in the flash unit.

Preparing to make the screen from the master

The carbon-based master is placed on the flatbed of the machine, and the blank screen is inserted into the unit, matching arrows, and ensuring the screen side is closest to the master.

Placing the screen in the machine

The flash unit is placed on the outside, again matching arrows, and the top is closed down firmly. The bulbs flash and the carbon-based master is imprinted onto the screen.

To print, ink is drizzled onto the screen, between the plastic backing and the screen, and the plastic is laid back over the screen.

Inked screen in the machine

The screen is inserted back into the machine, the item to be printed is laid where the master was, and the cover closed again, forcing the ink through the screen onto the print surface.

Printing

Printed image

Similarly, the screen can be placed into the hand stamper, and the screen printed by manual pressure onto yardage, larger sheets of paper or other materials.

Helen's prints from the same screen

Here's Prue printing from the same screen. She printed a series of pages with the image.

Beverley made this screen and printed with a metallic ink.

Here are Maz and Nola setting up to print from Maz's screen. The mmaster was a pencil drawing, based on designs in her sketchbook. Maz has a sheer fabric, like an organza, which is laid on top of Nola's cream quilter's muslin.

Maz is inking the screen for printing. She laid down some blue and green inks next to one an other, and mixed the blue and green together on a palette to achieve some blending. Gocco inks generally don't blend, if just laid down side by side.

You may be able to see the different coloured inks on the screen. The screen is mounted in the stamping unit, which has four small springy feet, visible around the edges of the screen.

The printed image looks blurry because it is actually two layers of fabric.

The image was stamped fairly regularly over the surface of the fabrics.

This is Nola's fabric, which was layered underneath. There are slight changes in the design, where the fibres of the organza acted as a slight resist.

The print images are wonderfully clear and the process is simple. It’s a great way to print exact multiples of an image. There are some disadvantages to the process, however. There seems to be some doubt about whether the process will continue to be supported, especially these older B6 machines. However there seem to be new models of the machine available, including one at B5, which would be a more useful size. We managed to buy supplies from Eckersleys without any problems, and there are other Australia suppliers online, notably NEHOC in Sydney. It’s possible to buy the screening material by the yard, now, so theoretically, if the B screens are no longer supported, you could make your own. Nola bought some screening to try, but it wasn’t used in our session.

As printing goes, it’s an expensive method. The screens are expensive, the bulbs are expensive and single use, and the inks are expensive. Most of all, the machines are expensive. A new machine with a few screens and other materials was listed online at $289. Making a single screen and printing a single run of multiples from it came to about $10. A long run would be more expensive as it would use more inks.

The requirement that the master be carbon-based is trickier these days. The system was invented when photocopiers were carbon (toner) based. Nowadays, photocopiers don’t use toner, they are more like inkjet printers and the inks aren’t carbon-based. We had access to an older toner-based photocopier, which simplified matters, and members drew their own designs in 2B or heavier lead pencil or coloured over their inkjet designs with the special Riso Pens. One member had access to a laser printer as prints from that are carbon-based. Charcoal pencils also work. But some thought has to go into the medium used on the master.

It’s a fun and simple method of making multiple prints. We didn’t explore any of the many possibilities in our session. For example, theoretically, a coloured image could be separated into colour layers in a graphics program, the individual layers switched to greyscale and printed as masters on a laser printer. The three layers could be created as individual screens and three print runs in different colours onto a single work might yield a coloured print. It wouldn’t be a photographic print, but manipulating the colours could result in an interesting series of similar prints. The print structure of Gocco makes problems of register (getting the second and third prints in exactly the same position to avoid blurring) much simpler. Similarly, you can over-print a primary print with a second different screen. You could over-print the primary with the same screen in a different colour, deliberately offsetting the second image. As a tool, it has a lot of possibilities for the textile artist, and it’s just as easy for the Scout group to print t-shirts for their camp. Assuming the materials continue to be available!

While we were playing with Gocco, Carol was playing with another kind of printing. She wanted a simple printing method to use with her group of Joey scouts. She mounted a sheer curtain fabric between card to make a simple screen. Then she mounted a fine sticker of a butterfly onto the screen. She painted over the screen with PVA glue and allowed it to dry. Then she peeled off the sticker and, using a piece of card as a squeegee and Permaset printing ink, printed the image.

The image looked a little ragged, so Carol tried with the Gocco inks, which are a finer medium, since the Gocco screens are finer than most silk screens. The result was much clearer.

Isn't that amazing? You can make prints like this with the most basic of materials!

Something new

2010-05-30T16:35:00.002+10:00

Don’t you just love trying out something new? We do! We felt we were getting a little jaded so we decided to take a workshop in block printing with Diane Groenewegen, a fellow member of ATASDA in her sunny studio. You can see pictures of a 2009 ATASDA Textile Taster with Diane on the ATASDA blog.

Five of us were free to attend, and we made the most of the time! We used Permaset paints, including Supercover, and our own and Diane’s extensive collection or stamps and print blocks. Our first task was to just play with the stamps, to learn how to put colour on evenly and without skimping. Nola stamped this one

and Beverley this one.

. This was Prue’s first try

and here are Maz’s

and Tricia’s .

Next, we tried using the same stamp with different colours, slightly offset. Diane also urged us to think about the effects of negative space, between our blocks.

Maz, one stamps, two colours

Tricia - a corrugated card stamp

Beverley, using supercover paint

Prue - the light is supercover - the block was a hair band glued to a block

Nola -this stamp is a block wrapped with string - how easy is that?

Beverley stamped over her first attempt in this one

and over this one too.

Prue - using Supercover

Nola, corrugated cardboard

Then we used two stamps. We had to think about how they would work together to enhance the design.

Nola - overlaying stamp and adding second stamp

Prue - overlaid with second colour using two stamps

Beverley - using positive and negative of the same stamp...

and using two stamps with different colours

Prue using two different sized stamps and Supercover on dark fabric and...

that hair band stamp again with a corrugated cardboard circle.

Tricia stamped this one with two stamps onto a dark shirting fabric...

..and this one with corrugated card and a commercial stamp.

Maz- two stamps, different colours...

and again...

.. and then moving to a different colourway, with corrugated cardboard stamp and another one like a tree texture.

By now, we were exhausted by our creative efforts and needed a sustaining morning tea, kindly provided by Diane’s husband Guy. We look pretty sustained now, don’t we?

Back at work, Diane encouraged use to use two colours on our stamps, by laying the colours down on our palettes and rolling across the two:

Beverley - a quarter block stamp rotated

Prue used two stamps, one using two colours.

Tricia used a corrugated card block with red and purple.

Maz - rotating the block.

Diane also demonstrated the different technique of inking the large print blocks. She used overhead transparency sheets as the palette and showed us how to tease just enough printing ink onto the roller evenly.

After pausing for lunch on the sunny veranda, we felt confident enough to graduate onto doing our own thing on our own fabrics. It felt a little like getting our pen licence in the third grade!

Prue

Maz printing onto striped fabric (apologies from the photographer, I should have been more careful of stray threads!).. and ...

.. overprinting her earlier one with two colours of ink, remember?

This one was a paint rag of Nola's which was pretty messy...

...stamped with very dark blue. which gave it much more cohesion and depth.

Maz used two print blocks, with turquoise and yellow, which blended on the stamp to give lime green.

Beverley used a print block on the diagonal with two colours. Blocks on the diagonal often give a fantastic effect!

This was Beverley's own dyed background, which she stamped with a single stamp but moving from pink to orange. Taken mid-process!

Maz's red and black phase!

Prue experimenting with borders on an old sarong...

..and more borders..

..and more borders - isn't this a beautiful Celtic pattern?

... and with this block with a tiny all over leaf pattern.

Remember Tricia's eco-dyeing samples last post? She stamped over this one:

It's another string stamp - they're very effective, aren't they?

This is another of Tricia's eco-dyed piece, overstamped twice in dark brown and then gold.

This silk piece of Tricia's is much larger than it looks - it's basically a wrap, with these gorgeous border and motif prints in burgundy and purple.

Beverley stamped this coloured background in red, then white Supercover with the string stamp.

Nola- diagonal block, turquoise and yellow, with a yellow border stamp carved from an eraser.

Another of Nola's paint rags, with not much colour in it...

...printed with positive and slightly smaller negative blocks on the diagonal.

It was a fascinating workshop and I think you can see how we developed in our thinking about stamping! The final pieces we made were all terrific and able to be used for actual works.

Diane has an upcoming workshop for ATASDA in Sydney - really worth attending if you can! She's a very generous tutor and it will be a fun day!

Lazy day!

2010-04-20T21:45:00.002+10:00

Today was a lazy day. We were supposed to bring our own work to do, but somehow no-one was in the mood for working! Here we are browsing some books instead.

Carol and Helen were the only ones working. Carol was knitting a gorgeous blue scarf to sell at the EWES (Epping Weavers Embroiderers & Spinners) sale of work next weekend at the Epping Creative Centre, Dence Park, Epping (in Sydney).
Helen was working on an embroidered work that she brings out when she has nothing else to do.

Isn’t it lovely? She asks if you can see the missed stitch! Can you? She knows it’s there and was just about to fix it when I caught her with my camera!

Part of the laziness was probably due to post-Forum blues. Some of our members attended the Textile Fibre Forum at Orange last week and had brought back amazing class samples to share.

Tricia took a class with Hilary Petersen. The class was quite complex, but Tricia became interested in the eco-dyeing and focused on that. These cocoons and “stuff” were dyed in a bath of prunus leaves with alum as the mordant.

These are pieces of mulberry bark. The left side piece was dyed in a bath of bark and ferrous sulphate; the right was dyed in a red onion skin bath.

Don’t the red onion skins give an interesting rich colour? I wouldn’t have expected lime green! But it's quite different if the red onion skins are placed in the folds and the fabric is dyed in another bath. This one was dyed in a bath of brown onion skins, with the red onion skins in the folds.

This one was dyed in a bath of unknown eucalyptus leaves with cheap black yarn wrapped randomly. The mordant was copper sulphate. The black yarn has left delicate black patterning, rather like the bark of scribbly gums.

This one was dyed with bark and ferrous sulphate, and sticks were individually tied inside it, giving the witchetty grub effect.

The bark and ferrous sulphate bath used for the mulberry bark above was used to dye these ones. The first had cinerea leaves inside; the second, red onion skins.

This one was dyed in the same bath of young eucalyptus leaves and copper sulphate, wrapped around a bamboo mat.

(I hope I have these samples right!) This is just a glimpse of the samples she made. It’s astonishing to see how much colour variation there is in dye baths made with natural products you’d find in your garden.

Maz took a workshop with Kerr Grabowski, the queen of deconstructed screen printing. Her samples were just amazing. In this technique, you create a unique screen with dye and alginate, using any of several methods to put pattern on the screen. You can paint directly on the screen, but you can also use leaves, cut-outs, contact paper, fibres, anything you can imagine, to put the initial pattern in the dye on the screen by pulling a print over them. Then, once it is dry, this colour is released by printing with just the alginate. Each screen produces multiple prints as the dye is slowly released, and no two are exactly the same. The damp fabrics are then batched in plastic bags in the sun, to set the dye.

This screen was prepared using leaves and drawn elements.

This one used contact paper, strands from a mop, play coins and cut-out paper.

This time she used the same method but the coloured alginate in the well of the screen was taken out after the first pull, and colour and more alginate added for the next print.

This one uses the same method again but the blue was painted on afterwards.

Here, Maz used cut-out stencils as a base. The two colours were mixed with the alginate and spooned onto the screen, mixing on the screen when the initial print was taken.

It’s a fascinating process, since it takes away the primary characteristic of screen printing, the repetition of the same image exactly the same each time, and allows the possibility of serendipitous effects. The result is a series of prints that are clearly related but not identical.

Maz also brought along her finished toran. Some ATASDA members have been participating in a round robin activity, as part of the run-up to the Palm House exhibition, Voyages of the Imagination, to be held in August 2010 at the Sydney Botanic Gardens. The round robin theme was Passages of Intrigue, and the structure was a hanging to go over a doorway, like the torans found in some Asian countries. Here’s the front:

And here’s the back:

Maz printed the elephants along the top. Aren’t they gorgeous? Hopefully, more ATASDA members' torans will be available to enjoy on their website soon.
So we may have been lazy this week, but hard work has been done! Perhaps we were just due for a rest?

Abstracting from photos

2010-04-05T12:24:00.002+10:00

Our second March meeting was a small one. I think perhaps the topic scared some people away! We did some drawing exercises, working from photos to create abstract images. Only three of us did the exercises and one is too embarrassed by her work to share it. I think we all know how that feels.

Nola drew up an activity sheet, with some thoughts about abstraction and some drawing tasks. The tasks were pretty easy ones, since drawing is so scary for many people. There was no central organisation: people just worked on whichever exercises interested them.

Here’s one way of thinking about Abstract vs Non-Objective shapes:
Abstract shapes share a relationship with a realistic object. A shape can be various levels of abstractions, from almost representational through to barely representational at all. Non-objective shapes have no connection to a representative shape, though they may be inspired by a shape, colour or mood. We’re working with abstracting – i.e. we began with a photo of something specific.

Before you start drawing, you could consider some basic design elements.
• Decide whether you are working in portrait or landscape. You don’t have to use the same orientation as your photo or even the same orientation each time.
• Choose a focal point for your design. High on the page, low on the page; central or offset.
• What movement might you want in your drawing? Horizontal movement is calm and restful, vertical movement suggests growth and change.
• How will balance feature in your design? Balance has a strong influence on the mood of a composition. Designs with symmetrical balance or repeated similar shapes, colours, tones, lines are stable, calm, even rigid, and can organise many busy elements. Informal or asymmetrical balanced designs have dissimilar shapes, with unequal visual weight, which can feel casual or natural, or even unsettled. Circular or radial balance from the centre of a composition feels stable, while the same kind of balance from an offset point feels informal or unsettling. “Crystallographic” balance uses all-over pattern without a focal point, with equal emphasis over the whole composition, and a balance between positive and negative space.

Shape exercises:
1. Draw or trace outlines of shapes from your photo, without any interior details.
• Isolate one shape and doodle it into something else, by adding more exterior lines
• Isolate one shape and repeat it in a pattern. Make your pattern dense. Draw it again with a less dense layout.
• Mirror your shape.(If you don’t have confidence in your drawing skills and you don’t want to fold your paper, you can do this by holding the paper up to the window and tracing it onto the back of your sheet, tracing this copy onto another sheet and then tracing from that one onto the front side of your paper.)
• Rotate the shape
• Draw the shape as a circular repeat
2. Look at where the light falls on the main shapes in your photo. Draw contour lines to show the brightest areas and the darkest areas. (Can’t see it? Try squinting – it often helps to see tonal values. It’s also easier to see on a black and white image.) Make sure your contours are whole shapes, not just lines. Erase any lines that are not shapes. Play with your contour shapes – pattern them, colour them, interlock them.
3. Look at the negative space in your photo. Draw or trace these shapes a couple of times
• Pattern the shapes with doodles.
• Colour the negative space. One colour? Adjacent colours on the colour wheel? Will your shapes have an outline (which brings back the object more)?
• Use the same shape, without a strong outline, and add outlines in successive colours or tones to make contours in the negative shapes. Try different shaped outlines – ones that mimic the shape, ones that accentuate it, ones that are unrelated to the shape.
4. Use the dominant lines in your photo to make geometric shapes
• Look at where the strongest lines are on your image. Draw these on a piece of paper.
• Turn the lines into geometric planes.
• Add colour to the planes
5. Silhouettes – use the shapes from an image as silhouettes against a different background. Doodle a patterned background or use one of your earlier pages. Make your silhouette dark to contrast with a lighter, more open background. Try a light silhouette against a denser, darker patterned background.
Scale:
1. Focus on a small part of your image. Draw it in large scale, taking up the whole page. Don’t worry too much if your shape isn’t exact.
• Add pattern elements within the shapes.
• Experiment with different patterns – swirling and geometric, patterns that mimic the overall shape, patterns that contrast, small patterns and larger ones.
2. Use the shapes of your image and miniaturise them.
• Repeat the shapes in a regular pattern.
• Repeat the shapes in an irregular pattern.
• Experiment with closer and further apart spacing.
Colour:
1. Using some of your earlier shapes, work with unexpected colours. Try to establish a specific mood – excited, sombre, spooky…
2. Try shading colours from one to another.
3. Use different tones of a hue to suggest depth, but in a different way to the shades in your photo.

Nola worked from this photo:

The obvious element was the flower shape.

First she drew the outline and doodled it into a butterfly.

“This was really a warm-up exercise, just to get my head into a drawing place.”

Then, with two L-shaped scraps of paper, she isolated a small part of the photo...

… and drew the main design lines. Then she extended the design lines beyond the original shape (marked with a rectangle) and added some internal lines and pattern.

This one took elements from this image and rotated them around a central point. It still looks very flower-like, though. Interesting twist happening...

This one was from the contoured activity, using the original base shape, but the image was quite small and it was too hard to work with.

"I can see this has possibilities, drawn larger and with the original lines removed."
This one uses the negative shapes around the original flower shape.

"They all look like weird bats! But interesting shapes..."

“This one was colouring contour lines and it’s pretty uninteresting. None of my drawings will set the world on fire, but it was a fun exercise and gave me some interesting things to think about.” Maz's drawing to follow...
Show and tell:
Meanwhile our members have been abstracting in other ways.
Maz took a class in screen printing with Marie-Therese Wisniozski and she brought her class work to show us. Her first prints were made using a circle, which was torn apart and used as positive and negative screen stencils.

"These were really to get us used to the process of printing."
Each student had taken along a prepared stencil. Maz’s was based on a garbage bin design she had done previously. Isn't it fascinating how the most mundane things give really interesting patterns? She pulled repeat screens, putting two colours, blue and green, in the well and allowing them to mix as she pulled the print.

In this print, she printed the screen area in black several times, and allowed it to dry. Then she positioned a simple stencil on the screen over the top and pulled prints with several colours in the well, allowing them to blend.

This screen used torn pieces of masking tape as the stencil. The lower sample was printed several times with the same screen and different colours.

This sample used multiple layers of screens – first without a stencil, then with positive and negative versions of the same few stencils. Some printing inks were opaque, so they were unaffected by the colours underneath, while others were transparent and changed according to the colour previously printed.

Isn’t it wonderful? Maz really recommends Marie-Therese as a tutor! You can see how she built up the complexity of the tasks, until, by the end, the students were making really complex pieces of printed cloth.

Meanwhile, Beverley took a dyeing workshop - pictures please, Beverley? (Since our official photographer was too busy admiring them!) Tricia was working with pattern of a different kind with her beautiful crochet scarf.

Can you see the way the colour of the variegated yarn works perfectly with the design?

Our next meeting will be delayed by Fibre Forum at Orange. Expect to see the results of wonderful workshops here, after April 19.

Now adding a little colour to life...

2010-03-31T16:09:00.001+11:00

For our first March meeting, we decided to play with colouring silk in its various forms. Tricia brought us a selection of silk products to play with, and her landscape dyes. We also brought food colouring to try out.

It’s basically a pretty simple process – mix up some dye in bowls, dump in the fibre or trickle the dye over it, put the fibres in a plastic bag (or in the case of the trickled ones, roll it up in the plastic wrap it was sitting on) and leave it on the grass in the sun until the dye is absorbed. Rinse out later.
Here are the dyers at work:

And here are the treasures in their bags

Obviously, most of the treasures went home in their plastic bags but I can finally show you what wonderful things were made. This is a compilation of Tricia’s dyeing.

Gorgeous colours and textures!
She says, “I really wanted to try out some colours I hadn’t used before.” In a little more detail, we have:

Top – dyed cocoons, and below - silk cap, which has been chained without spinning, just by pulling out the fibres. It’s a lovely silky chain, perfect for all sorts of uses in textile art.

Silk top, dyed with berry and mustard dye. She plans to use this for silk paper

Silk rods and other bits, dyed with turquoise

Silk cap – this one had mustard dripped on it and then crystals of sky blue

Silk cap – dyed with bloodwood

Tussah silk dyed with watermelon

Other Tussah silk

Beverley dyed some cocoons and rods…

And some “other stuff”…

She had also turned some of her fibre into silk paper:

Here’s Prue, busy dyeing, but we don’t have photos of her pieces yet.

Carol spent some time knitting and watching the others hard at work.

Nola painted her cocoons and a rod with food dye…

(The white sheet is the paper towel she used underneath - worth saving!)

… and then with metallic paints.

Paint sits on the surface, while dye or food colouring wicks in, so they look quite different. The paint added some interesting highlights.

Hopefully we'll have photos of the other girls' work soon!

Collaborative project

2010-03-30T17:32:00.002+11:00

Our meeting a few weeks ago saw the return of the Round Robin book project pages to their owners. We have been working on pages for each other since early 2009. Each person set a theme and provided A4-sized background fabric in landscape orientation. The idea was to make a double page spread that could be assembled into a book, but could also be used in other ways, if the owner preferred.
Beverley's pages
Beverley’s theme was leaves. Her folder went first to Carol, then Helen, Nola, Prue and Tricia. It’s interesting to see how we were influenced by the seasons during the project, as the book passed from hand to hand.

For her autumn leaf page, Carol appliquéd leaves onto the fabric and added touches of gold. She wrote an autumn Haiku to accompany them:

Round and round

The autumn winds swirl.

Another leaf falls.

Helen was also inspired by the autumn and swirling leaves. Her leaves were appliqued with narrow machine satin stitch. She also added text, a haiku by Kyoshi Takahama:

The winds that blow

Ask them, which leaf on the tree

Will be the next to go.

Nola – "I wanted mine to be a single huge leaf. I was inspired by a photo from a National Geographic magazine, which was an aerial shot of fields and roads, surrounded by forest, that looked like a leaf. I wanted to combine that shape with the colour patterns on a leaf in another photograph I have. I drew some sketches with that in mind but I got interested in the pattern and colour, my leaf became less and less like the photograph." Sketched in watercolour pencil and painted in Setacolor paints.

Prue made a complex layered page. She made a lace leaf, and added leaf prints on a folded page stitched onto the flat page. It's very delicate and absolutely gorgeous!

The front of the fold

The centre fold

The back fold

Tricia - “Leaves was a good theme to explore as I'm quite fond of trees. After getting carried away with some Shiva stick rubbings, I suddenly thought, "I wonder if you can Vlisofix over Shiva paint?" Answer - you can! What's more, as the fabric I used was silk organza, you can still make out the Shiva rubbings underneath. I then added some acorns using my fabric pencils.”

Carol's pages
Carol asked for paper dolls, in a book she had made. She gave each person their choice of background papers as she made the book. Her book went to Helen, Nola, Prue, Tricia then Beverley.

Helen made some gorgeous Japanese paper dolls, inspired by an actual little doll from Tokyo that she owns. She added to the background pattern with silver pen.

Nola was intrigued by robot figures after seeing an image of a robot “family” of servants. “They looked far too block-like and utilitarian – surely any red-blooded engineer would design a lovely feminine robot, with curves in all the right places? She may be “on charge” in the utility room, but she still loves deciding what to wear at the start of the day.” The images were drawn in pencil and then painted in acrylic paints, with some detail added in pen and pencil.

Prue wanted to make some fairies in the garden. They are cleverly hidden among the real ferns and pressed flowers.

Tricia had the book during the hottest days of summer and her paper doll is lying on a beach, surrounded by admiring young men. “I originally thought that I would like to make a whole lot of paper-doll chains and arrange them on the pages in some sort of pattern. However, when I started producing the paper figures, another design appeared and so I worked to a sort of paper-doll beach theme. My beach lady has lots of admirers.”

Beverley made sumptuous paper dresses for her page.

Helen's pages
Helen’s theme was Faraway Places and she gave us a little book of “travel” poems for inspiration.

Her book went to Nola first, who was inspired by the poem by Oscar Wilde:

The almond groves of Samarkand

Bokhara, where red lilies blow

And Oxus, by whose yellow sands

The grave white turbaned merchants go.

And from there to Ispahan

The golden garden of the sun

When the lone dusty caravan

Brings cedar and vermilion.

She researched the exotic cities in the poem and became fascinated with “Ispahan”, modern Isfahan in Iran. “I found a quotation about Isfahan in a book, "under avenues of white tree trunks and canopies of shining twigs, past domes of turquoise and spring yellow, in a sky of liquid violet blue… across bridges of pale toffee brick, tier on tier of arches breaking into piled pavilions; overlooked by lilac mountains…" (Robert Byron). That’s just how it looks, and I wanted to incorporate these vivid colours into my page. The older buildings of the city are all spectacular, but in the end I simplified my page to just one building, inspired by the beautiful Shah mosque. The many bridges are beautiful things in Isfahan, but I used the shape of the gate of Chahar Bagh school as the arches of the bridge.” The shapes were sketched onto the fabric with watercolour pencils, and then painted with Setacolor fabric paints. The tile details were added with Prismacolor pencil.

Prue was inspired by the aurora borealis, shining on the ice. She said, “I know when we've been out of town late at night, the stars are just mind blowing, millions of them! We forget, when we live in our cities…”

Tricia - “From Helen's list, I chose the poem, "Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I scanned in an Asian print and some of the words of the poem. I happened to have a piece of printed fabric decorated with a nice Chinese temple in the right colours, and a very nice stamp that I've been wanting to use. I also had a go at foiling but I think my glue's a bit old.”

Beverley chose the Australia poem Clancy of the Overflow by A.B. Paterson.

I see the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended

And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.

She works in an abstract way, so she played with the Southern Cross image.

Carol was also inspired by the Australian landscape. She drew her image in black pen onto the background.

Nola's pages
Nola’s book theme was “Travelling to Byzantium” and she supplied an excerpt of the Yeats poem of the same name. Her backgrounds were hand painted to look like palimpsest vellum, i.e. traces of previous writing in the alphabet of Byzantium could still be seen.

Beverley’s research found that the peacock was a common Byzantine symbol.

Carol’s page focused on Empress Theodora, using the beautiful Byzantine art in Ravenna as her inspiration. She included an amazing tatted cross that she made from gold thread. She also played with the palimpsest idea by adding more Greek text under the images.

Helen became fascinated by the sea battles of Lepanto, between the Venetian fleet and the Muslims, now based in Byzantium. “It was a part of the sometimes violent history of Byzantium.” Knowing Nola’s interest in maps, Helen printed one onto fabric as the underlay and then images of ships of the time and Ali Pasha, who died in the battle.

Prue also played with the idea of a document having multiple previous uses. She printed layers of images and text on her page, to reflect the complex images of Byzantine art. She was reminded of her visit to Greece, especially Agios Dimitrios. “Set several metres below current road level, it itself was built over Roman shops and a street (now in the crypt)… It demonstrated to us the layering of history.” She included a plan of Hagia Eirene, the 6th century Byzantine church commissioned by Constantine in honour of the emperor Justinian. Images of Byzantine mosaics and a sailing ship were “aged” on the computer. Prue commented, “I had forgotten how important Byzantium was – such a melting pot... Wonderful to see the texts decorated with strapping and plaiting and birds & beasties, then introduced to Ireland in the early 5th century.”

Tricia was inspired by a Coptic tapestry from the Byzantine period. Ancient textiles are so rare, since our medium is not known for longevity! “I scanned it, and to make life simpler, I blotted out the whole background of the original tapestry, including the red flowers so that I could print it onto the lovely background Nola had provided. I then made a stamp and put the flowers back on again. I've highlighted some of the red swirls and stitched in some lines for a little texture.”

Nola added, "I an totally blown away by my pages. I plan to make a final page myself and then assemble them into a book."
Prue's pages
Prue’s theme was Gardens, passionate garden-lover as she is. Her folder began with Tricia, then went to Beverley, Carol, Helen, and Nola.

Tricia - "This is the first time I've machine embroidered anything. Prue's beautifully printed fabric practically screamed the design at me so I thought I'd give it a shot. The scene suggested a stream with overhanging branches and plants by the water's edge. I've finished the piece with some fabric paints and pencils."

Beverley – “I feel comfortable working in a non-representational way. I added layers of fabric and stitch until the page felt finished.”

Carol – “I went with the shapes on the background fabric, which suggested a pathway. Then it needed a wall. I went on adding elements by appliqué and stitch, first the shrub in the garden, then the flowers by the pathway, and then the cat strolled through the gate and sat in the sunshine.”

Helen - “My inspiration for Prue's flowers was a series of window boxes I
photographed in Switzerland.” Helen loves to embroider on rug canvas, and the riotous colour within the strong linear structure perfectly captures the window boxes.

Nola – “I found Prue’s page the most difficult, I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was because, as I was last, I had fewer choices in background. I chose a white damask fabric and painted in light green, mostly to take away the brightness. This made the surface elements stand out, so I took those as my starting place and painted brightly coloured flowers. There was enough variation in the background colour I painted to give the feeling of light and shadow.” Background painted in Setacolor transparent paints, flowers in Setacolor opaque paints.

Tricia's pages
Tricia’s plan was to use warm colours and the designs on her shibori-dyed cotton, in whatever way we liked. Her folder travelled to Beverley, then Carol, Helen, Nola and Prue.

Beverley’s background piece had a lot of variation. “I wanted to keep the background colour visible, so I stitched in a grid over the top, and embellished it very lightly.”

Carol - “I had some trouble with this piece. I added a lot of Sashiko stitching but it really didn’t look right, so I painstakingly took it all out again. I realised it needed only the simplest of designs, so I worked with the famous Chinese story of the butterfly lovers.”

Helen - "The background and Tricia's request for warm colours but no yellow fed the idea for her page." She used a range of different machine stitches and threads to enhance the pattern on the cloth.

Nola - “My fabric has only small areas of blue dye on it and was mostly white. I found that quite difficult, but the pattern suggested a pathway, or road. I saw a friend’s photographs of autumn leaves in Toronto, Canada, and I was inspired to paint an autumn road.”

Prue – “My fabric piece had a rippled pattern all over, which immediately reminded me of water. I found it hard to add any warm colours, as Tricia had requested, so mine is basically blue and white.”

Tricia added, "My pieces of indigo dyed fabric have all come back to me as five completely different artworks. I have decided to put them into a quilt/wall hanging, using some of the remaining pieces of fabric."