Always creative

Sometimes, I look back at the things we make and my mind boggles at how varied they are! Between the six of us, we seem to cover most kinds of creative activity. Here's some stuff we've been doing lately:

These cupcakes were made by Carol, and they tasted very good indeed. She's been making Easter cupcakes for Scout fundraising, and we got the benefit!

These roses were made by Bev and her daughter from the pages of an old dictionary, for her daughter's engagement party recently.

Carol is still on a roll with those zippers and Gang Show scraps, making this brooch at one of our recent meetings.

These are more Orizomegami papers, made by Helen with food colouring. The red one has spray gold web, a rare thing these days as everyone hoards the last of their cans!

Here's Tricia's quilt top finished - looking very good!

Recently, Helen gave each of us a kit of fabrics to make a Harlequin Bag. I suspect she might be taking the opportunity to clear out her stash! Tricia made this one...

... and Nola made this one. They are very quick to make and rather sweet.

Nola finished off one pair of her earrings, which we saw in pieces last time.

She was also working on some postcards for future swaps. They came from the one piece of fabric, which had been painted and drawn on, but each one is being individually painted now. In the beginning, they were all the colour of the light one in the centre of the lower row.

Bev has been doing some rust dyeing, with oddments from her Dad's shed. I love how the washers and other bits have yielded such clear outlines.

Bev also brought her breakdown printing.

And here's another piece.

Maz brought along hers too. This one is on organza, so it's very delicate.

Here's a quirky doll that Helen made. Her name is Inga. Isn't she wonderful?

Last year, we did a lot of printing and painting, so we bought some cotton fabric as  drop cloths on our worktables. At the end of the year, we cut them apart and shared them out. Helen brought along one of her pieces, to try to workout what to do with it.

Here's Maz's piece of the cloth. She was printing on it with a round stamp made from furniture protectors - those little rubber shapes you can buy to stop furniture scratching the floor.

Here's Nola's piece of one of the drop cloths. She printed hers using breakdown printing and here's how it looks now:

It's looking very interesting, isn't it?

Bev was using up the last of the transfer dyes, by stamping with the thickened ones onto paper, using her own hand-carved stamps and some Indian woodblocks.

Carol was working on her inkle loom. She was making a sageo, a kind of strap, for her iaito, a blunt Japanese sword used for kata practice, in the style of Japanese martial arts that she follows.

Helen was beginning a new canvas work piece.

Tricia was working on her embroidered landscape, which she brings out and works on every so often. It's really coming together now, isn't it?

She was also pondering border options for her quilt. This was her favoured choice on the day, but it may change again before she finishes.

So as usual, we've been busy in so many different ways. I wonder what we'll see next fortnight?

August part 2

Today, Helen showed us how to do Orizomegami. It's a method of dyeing folded rice paper with water-based dyes to give complex patterns. We each folded rectangles of two different weights of rice paper into small parcels. We dipped them quickly into a bowl of water to dampen the paper, and then dipped the edges or corners of the packets into bowls of ordinary food colouring. (Wear gloves! Food colouring loves to dye human skin!)

Then we pressed the packets between two small sheets of stiff cardboard and carefully unfolded the wet paper using tweezers or a paper knife. The paper can tear quite easily, depending on the weight of the paper. Then we laid the sheets out to dry.

The way the parcels were folded affected the pattern. We were also struggling with Sydney's spring winds, which chose today to arrive, and some drying sheets were splashed with falling droplets, which added to the interest. We also saved the drips from when the papers were pressed between the cardboard, and it gave interesting semi-blended colours, not always the brown that might have been expected. Although we all started with exactly the same papers and colours, it's remarkable how different they all are.

Here are Beverley's:

and Carol's:



These are Helen's own:


These were a collaborative effort for Tricia:

And these were Nola's:


See, all different! You can see the fold marks (this is a feature of this kind of paper dyeing) and how the folds affected the way the colour went into the paper. It's a very interesting technique, and easy to do with the minimum of materials. We talked about ways to use the papers. Obviously, most paper uses would be fine, but you could also adhere the paper to a cloth backing with diluted PVA glue, which would make the paper robust enough for stitch.