Forest challenges!

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

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!

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!