So many interesting things...

... in the world to do, so little time! Don't you find that?
Last play day was a Do-Your-Own-Thing day.

Prue has a plan to work on UFO's for a while this year, so she brought along this embroidery to work on. It was from a workshop, some time ago, on using photographs as an inspiration for stitch.

I love the way she's created texture on the surface using different stitches. It just makes the image sing.

She also brought along her finished graffiti work. She's turned the fabric she hated so much into a cushion - doesn't it look terrific?

Tricia was working on different things but mostly on Carol's Round Robin book page.

Carol's book was a challenge to many of us, since it involved working in paper. I think this one looks wonderful! So clever. Stay tuned for a full update on our round robin book pages soon.

Beverley was working on her exhibition piece for The Maharajah's Garden travelling suitcase exhibition. I can't really show you an image yet, but images will be on the ATASDA home page in March sometime.

Carol was working on her laptop, doing things for her Scout Joeys group, so there's nothing to show! And Helen was led astray by a recalcitrant car.

Nola and Maz were painting fabric again, using the Setacolor transparent paints we used last time. Maz was painting more graffiti fabric, to add to her fabric from the ATASDA Christmas party. She had created and acquired three more pieces, including one graffitied by some kids at the Yacht Club. Here's how they looked:

She put a piece of fabric underneath her painting, to catch any paint that came through, as she was painting wet-on-wet. After her last piece of graffiti, she had this underneath:

Isn't it an interesting idea?

Nola had stamped some fabric with an Indian block stamp she bought from Lynne at Batik Oetero, and was over-painting it.

She also put fabric underneath to absorb any extra paint. These two pieces were underneath...

... and these were monoprints she took from the plastic tablecloth underneath and from the underneath fabrics.

So many ways to get colour onto cloth!

Next play day, we're going to play with silk rods and cocoons - and any other silk stuff that takes our fancy. We plan to paint them and dye them with food colouring in the microwave, and see what else we can do with them. It should be an interesting day!

Painting fabric and other colourful excitements

Yep, we're still on the graffiti kick. At the ATASDA Christmas meeting, the tablecloths were actually cream quilters' muslin (over plastic), and members were supplied with fabric pens to draw on the cloths. It certainly generated some enthusiastic art! Each person took home a small piece of graffiti fabric at the end of the day. This week, Fibrecircle decided to paint on our fabrics, inspired by Nola’s shaded painting on her Fibrecircle graffiti piece.

We used transparent paints, because this allows the lines underneath to show through and you don’t lose the sense of graffiti about it. Most of us used Setacolor transparent paints, which is what Nola used on her fabric.

We managed to find a bit of sunshine to dry our artworks, which suggests that our cunning plan to hire ourselves out to drought-stricken country areas with the promise of the rain that always seems to follow our painting endeavours may be be doomed.

We don’t have Before photos for the fabrics, but Nola took a photo of hers after she added more drawing but before she started painting. Her fabric was very sparse, with just the turtles and one fish, the lovely leaf shapes on the right, the trailing leaves (which were on all tables, to encourage people to start drawing) and the Christmas baubles. She add lots more shapes, based on what was already there, and on what had worked well on her previous piece. It looked like this after she had finished drawing:

Here it is halfway through:

The shading is done in the same way as graffiti artists - by overpainting with a second colour or blending wet paints with the finger or brush. The background was done in Inktense pencils, coloured on dry and then painted with a wet brush. Some of the highlights were done with the Inktense pencils on wet. And here it is finished. Looks great, doesn’t it?

Here’s Beverley’s graffiti:

Her original already had a lot of fluro colour from textile pens, and most of the drawing was in red pen.

Carol made one with Christmas graffiti but she didn’t like much:

It also had a lot of different colours already, in small areas that made it look spotty. So she took a monoprint from the wet tablecloth and used that as the basis of another one, mostly painted, on cream quilters’ muslin:

Our new member, Maz, produced this beautiful piece. We suggested she might be too high an achiever for our group!

Here is Prue’s:

And Tricia’s:

Isn’t it amazing? They are all so different and yet all so fantastic!

Helen couldn’t find her graffiti so she printed patterns onto paper-backed fabric with her computer and painted over the top. We wondered if the inks would run but they don’t seem to have.

During show and tell, Nola showed the bag she made with her Fibrecircle graffiti fabric and Helen’s cast-off suede leather scraps. It looks great but the leather is crocking red over everything that touches it. Does anyone out there know how to stop suede crocking?

Helen showed her book cover, made from her Fibrecircle graffiti, which she had also painted today. She made the new fabric using the stack and slash technique.

Prue brought along her graffiti fabric too. She really didn't like it, so she's changed it completely. You could hardly tell it was the same fabric! All the fabric strips were turned into tubes so there are no raw edges, and then they were woven together by hand. Isn't it clever?

She says it's going to be a cushion when it grows up.

Prue also finished her rug canvas piece from November and made it into this clever clutch bag.

Carol has been dyeing fleece with food colouring. She spun the fleece using a technique called fractal spinning. There’s a description of this process on A Sheep in Wool’s Clothing http://asheepinwoolsclothing.typepad.com/a_sheep_in_wools_clothing/spinning/  Then she knitted the yarn in garter stitch into this headband.

It's a great colour exercise, for you spinners out there!

We also swapped back our book pages today - stay tuned for more about that!

Happy New Year!

Another year of Fibrecircle, our third together! We have many plans for creative play this year. However, our first meeting was rather quiet, as is usual in January. Some of our team members are away, and, after Christmas and in the steamy summer weather, it's hard to feel creative. So we browsed interesting books to get our enthusiasm levels up, and worked on our own projects. We also had our annual visit from our honorary member Jan from Pittsburgh.

Prue was trying out Iris Folding, from some books she found in her Christmas box.

Here's Prue hard at work...

Here's Jan, opening out envelopes for her.

By the end of the day, Prue had made some amazingly intricate folded and overlapping shapes! It was really surprising how much variation in colour and pattern there was inside the envelopes. Check out inside the next business envelope you receive and see what's there!


In between times, she leapt out to rout some pernicious weeds from Nola's garden.

Nola has many pernicious weeds in her garden - I wonder if this can become a regular feature of Fibrecircle days?

Meanwhile, Beverley was adding some embellishment to a t-shirt. Clever idea!

Nola was painting her graffiti fabric from the Graffiti project in September. It's a pretty slow process...

We persuaded Jan to add to Nola's piece of graffiti fabric from the ATASDA Christmas party. Here she's just getting inspired!

Our second January meeting was much like the first - small and rather quiet. Carol was decorating a frame for her work in The Maharajah's Garden travelling suitcase exhibition.

Her work was inspired by Indian Mehndi patterns.

Helen was unpicking some rug canvas embroidery that didn't look the way she wanted it.

Finished!   

Next month, we're painting our graffiti fabric from the Christmas Party!

No, we're not tired of graffiti yet. Just rebels at heart, I guess.

       

October bring your work day

Today in chilly wet Sydney, we enjoyed a bring-your-own-work day. Lots of interesting show and tell, and some progress on our graffiti project.

Prue opened her bag to find the gremlins had been at work on her knitting:

"A metaphor for my life," she laughed.

Last meeting, we were talking about transfer media that you paint onto paper pictures, allow to dry and "just rub the paper off". We discussed how easy, or not, that might be to do. Today, Helen brought a piece she made using that technique, on which the paper stubbornly refused to depart. Eventually, she incorporated the white sections into her design. The original print was mostly just colour shapes, but the resulting print looked like a figure in front of a rolling sea, so that's what she made!

It's called Windswept Girl. Without the story, you'd never know there was a problem, would you?

Beverley was working on her ATASDA nametag. It's like an ATC - how clever!
Helen brought along her finished Graffiti Project piece. Last meeting, she had combined the fabric with a red fabric in a Stack and Slash method. Here is her finished book cover. Isn't it striking? She is, of course, the first to finish!

Carol was also working on her Graffiti project piece. She coloured in her fabric with Sharpie pens, cut it into A4 sheets and laminated them. She cut holes along the edges with a hole punch and, by the end of the day, had constructed this much of a bag. The sections were sewn together with ribbon. Brilliant!

Next meeting, we plan to play with rug canvas. Last year, Helen gave each of us a piece like this: We all had great plans to use it but somehow that hasn't happened. So we are going to work on our rug canvas pieces next month.

To inspire us, Helen brought along some pieces she has made. This one is a little triangular bag, about 12cm high. She layered ordinary canvas, scraps of fabric and the painted rug canvas, and machine-stitched between the grids of the canvas with a metallic thread in a zigzag stitch.Then she cut the strip into three segments and hand stitched them together, adding a plain base. The stitching threads became handles for the bag.

Helen often uses the rug canvas as the basis of book covers. This one has quite simple stitching - satin stitching along the horizontal lines of the grid, which had been painted green. The feature hand stitching uses a more complicated knot stitch and some feather stitch with variegated ribbon.

This one has the rug canvas painted orange, with brightly coloured fabric strips woven through the mesh. Some of the horizontal lines of the mesh has been satin stitched by machine. This one also has the rug canvas painted orange, but the stitching is with threads by hand. Most stitches used are variations on embroidery stitches, such as stem stitch, satin stitch and chain stitch. A square of felt was inset into the rug canvas by cutting away the mesh and stitching from behind. Some lines of the grid are machine satin stitched as well.

This one has the canvas painted black and is stitched by hand with bright blue ribbons. The book pages are also blue, though the book has not been assembled yet.
This satchel shows the colour of the rug canvas if it isn't painted. The colour shows through much more, which is why Helen usually paints it now. This one has woven strips of ribbon and cord, and inserts of very fine cross stitch, one on the front and two on the back.
The rug canvas can also be deformed, even though it is quite stiff. This sample has beads stitched along some sections, and the canvas brought around them and caught together, to make a hollow. The horizontal lines have also been machine satin stitched.
The canvas also can be shaped, by dampening it and tying it to shape while wet. Once it dries, it holds the new shape very well, as this wonderful bowl deomstrates. The grid was satin-stitched in variegated thread first, to hold the layers together.
Finally, Helen has made exhibition pieces using this medium. Here is one of a series on the seasons, Canada Autumn: The canvas was painted red and woven and embroidered with strips of fabric and ribbon.The third strip from the right is made with waxed paper, twisted into beautifully even shapes as it was woven.The whole piece was mounted on Plexiglas for hanging.

Stay tuned to see what we can manage with this medium next meeting!