Lazy day

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

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!

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

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

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?

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

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....