Quiet day

Fibrecircle had a quiet day this week, with several members away. It was a bring-your-own-work day. The photographer was also not very efficient, so there's no record of show-and-tell this time.

Tricia was stitching on the work she began at Fibre Forum at Orange a few weeks ago. The class was with Jan Irvine-Nealie, whose work is heavily stitched, and this has really inspired Tricia. This is her class sample, with her own photograph as inspiration. It's a fantastic piece of work, and I'll try to get a photo from her when it's done, to show here.

Carol was making hyperbolic crochet for an art exhibition at her children's school. She likes to contribute something that either the children can do for themselves (last year, it was ATCs using many different techniques)or that stretches their minds (the concept of hyperbolic space should do that quite nicely!). I really love the spherical one.

Helen was embroidering as usual but I didn't take a photo of what she was doing (sorry, Helen!). Hopefully I can grab a photo next time.

Nola was painting with fabric paints, on a piece she's been working on intermittently for a couple of years. She has blogged about it here She now thinks the painting part is almost finished, and soon she'll be ready to add some stitch. She got quite excited when she saw Tricia's hand stitching, so perhaps this piece will have some hand quilting too?

Prue's other activities

Prue spent some time today playing more with sun prints. She produced these beautiful pieces earlier. The green and purple ones were made using Shibori-like bunching and bundling, but using the Setacolor Soleil paints. Aren't they great? The pink one was made with doilies laid onto the wet fabric, but the doilies obviously let some light through while the paint was drying, so the effect is very muted and hard to see in a photograph. It's quite delicate and really lovely.

She also made some pieces for our next challenge, due in June. Carol rescued some coffee mugs that have a space between the clear outer and the inner mug. We decided we would make a piece of art to go in this space, and have our own individual art mugs. Prue made three sun prints today: Aren't they gorgeous? So already she has three beautiful "looks" for her coffee mug. Look out for more finished coffee mugs next month.

Making stamps

Today, we decided to make ourselves some different kinds of stamps, to use in our work. The main reason was the availability of these great cheap erasers: At 15cm x 5.5cm (about 6in x 2 1/4in), they are a great size for larger stamps, though today we mostly cut them smaller to experiment. They carved quite nicely and we got some great results. We also made some string stamps, like the ones Nola made about twelve months ago. Carol brought along a clever hot wire gadget for cutting craft foam safely and cleanly, and some special glue for gluing foam together, so most people tried that too.

These are Beverley's stamps: The top two on the right are really clever, because she carved them as positive-negative of the same images, on opposite sides of the same stamp. You can only see one side of the carved stamps, but you can see the two images in the prints beside them. The left hand one wasn't quite finished at going home time. The bottom one is made from polystyrene foam (a meat tray)cut with Carol's hot wire machine, and glued to a wooden base. Beverley intended it to be used as a border.

Prue was doing other things for part of the time, but she also made some stamps. Most were made with the hot wire machine from craft foam or polystyrene foam, and mounted on wooden blocks. The top right hand one was made with dimensional paint, like the ones Nola made in January from the tutorial by Terri Stegmiller at FibreandStitch. The top left one is a string stamp, made by gluing ordinary cotton string onto cardboard with PVA glue.

Nola made four carved stamps from her eraser. The one that looks like folds was the most fiddly, as the erasers were a little crumbly, under the smooth surface, for such fine work. The top one was made by gluing two commercial foam craft shapes of a frog on top of one another onto cardboard, using PVA glue. Two identical shapes were used to increase the height of the stamp, which would hopefully result in a clearer print. The idea was to test whether PVA is a suitable medium for gluing foam shapes or whether they would fail to hold together or fall apart once they were wet. The bond held well enough for the stamp to be used and washed successfully. The top right stamp was one that Carol made last year to test the usefulness of lightweight craft foam for freehand stamp-making. She found that the surface could be incised, but the pattern was not very deep and is probably better used as a rubbing plate than a stamp.

Carol made some beautiful stamps using the polystyrene and her clever machine. Photos to come...

Artists' Trading Cards

This month we made some ATCs to swap, based on our March playday with Helen. Here are the results: They are by Carol, Beverley, Prue and Nola. (I didn't get to photograph Helen's, sorry!). Each was based on group drawings we did, inspired by various artists. I made some extras, which will be travelling to their new owners this week.

April 27 - own work

Today was a non-experimenting day, so we all brought our own work. We all seem to have been making books this month. Helen brought two she'd made. This one is a gift, to be used as an autograph book. I really like the touch of blue on the page edges. This one was harder to photograph but it has Helen's beautiful embroidery on rug canvas.

Carol also brought two books she'd made for the EWES sale of work last weekend. Aren't they gorgeous?

Nola shared a textile book she's been making this month, a page a day. This was the page for the last Fibrecircle day, based on the collage she made. We all went on with the various work we'd brought. Nola was making the edges for her book pages. Prue was beading a cardigan, adding gorgeous beads and sequins around the neck and on the front. Beverley was making samples, which will probably be book covers: They're really interesting - I can't wait to see what she does with them. Carol had to leave early, because today, though not a public holiday, was an extra school holiday. I can see we'll have to speak to the Department of Education most severely for denying her children this extra day in which to learn!

More collage

Today three of the Fibrecircle group tried another collage exercise. We actually did two exercises, with an optional third for those who felt energetic. The first was working from the imagination, using any materials. The first exercise was to make the house of our dreams. We painted the background of our piece with white acrylic paint, and added some colour, which we rubbed in with rags to disperse it a bit into the wet white paint. Then we tore scraps of paper and attached them to the wet background with gel medium. Some of us crinkled tissue paper and glued it on top. We all stopped there, because it was lunchtime and we were hungry! We had stamps and other media to add to our backgrounds if we wanted to, but no-one did. Later,once they were dry, we began to construct our dream houses, using paper scraps and tissue. The process was interesting because one person was working on paper, another onto fabric and the third onto a canvas-like material.Most people didn't get very far with this, and no-one finished, but it will be fun to see how these pieces develop.

While the first exercises were drying, we did another quick exercise using paper napkins. The brief was to construct "my heart's garden", working quickly with paper napkins. We coated our backgrounds with gel medium and then cut and tore elements from paper napkins to add to the background. We used some of the white layers to build up depth, and added paints to blend the images together. Here's how mine looked: I'm very happy with how it worked out!

Paper collage isn't my favourite medium, because it's so messy and often quite uncontrolled. I prefer working with fabric layers, using fusible web, and adding paint and stitch - very similar in style but much less messy! But it was fun to work with different media.

After everyone left, I started a collage journal cover, which was a third exercise, but I didn't work on it for long. I'll add some more to it over time, when I have the paints set up.
Nola

Later: Carol made this dream house: and this is her "heart's garden":

I am still working on my house, but, after going some different directions, it now looks like this: Nola

March Collage

I've finally finished task 2 that Helen set us in March. She gave us brown paper envelopes - no, not the kind with bundles of illegal cash! Each one contained an article from an Australian Geographic magazine. She challenged us to make a collage from our pages, on the spot.

I didn't want to make a paper collage, so I chose to collage onto fabric. It's taken me some time but I finally finished my collage.

I've talked about how I made it over on my own blog, if anyone wants to know the gory details.

Nola