Journals

Meanwhile, Helen and Nola have been working on their Birthstones journals.

March offered us two choices, aquamarine or bloodstone. Helen chose to work with aquamarine.

Helen wrote in her journal, "Aqua is Latin for water, so aqua marina is sea water or sea-coloured. This colour became very popular in the 1940's and 1950's, and was known as Marina blue or Marina green after Princess Marina, the wife of the Duke of Kent, who was Greek. She was CIC of the WRNs and used to wear her uniform while wearing high heeled shoes!"

Helen was also interested in the chemical formation of aquamarine. "Be₂Al₃Si₆O₁₈  Beryl is made of beryllium, aluminium, silicon and oxygen; it's one of the rarest elements in the earth's crust. The extra element that makes beryl green is chromium - an even rarer element. Beryllium forms in areas far distant from chromium and only by accident, e.g. tectonic plates bumping into one another, would the two elements meet. If a drop of iron meets with beryllium, it becomes aquamarine."

"Cleopatra is reputed to have had aquamarine mines. The gems is named after the deep salt water so is lucky for sailors. To appease Poseidon, travellers wore aquamarines and even threw them into a stormy sea to appease the god."

Nola chose to investigate bloodstone.

She mostly focused on ancient uses of the stone, and the name, which clearly refers to the blood-like inclusions in the stone.

She quoted Pliny the Elder's Natural History, "it has been thus named from the circumstances that, if placed in a vessel of water and exposed to the full light of the sun, it changes to a reflected colour like that of blood... Out of the water too, it reflects the figure of the sun like a mirror and it discovers eclipses." (Pliny, Nat Hist, 37.60) Pliny is an interesting figure for historians, because although he was credulous about fantastical stories from the edges of the known world, he developed an historical methodology that credited sources of information and attempted to verify his facts as much as possible.

The birthstone for April is diamond. Both Helen and Nola found this a challenging topic - it was hard to find interesting things about diamonds that might work their way into a later creative work.

Helen started out with a brainstorming session - "Diamonds are forever", Neil Diamond", "Diamonds are a girl's best friend", "rough diamond", "Peter Diamond". "thy eyes are seen in d'monds bright"...

Then she added a poem,

"Scintillate, scintillate

Globule vivivic!

Fain would I fathom

Thy nature specific

Loftily poised

Above ether capacious

Closely resembling

A gem carbonaceous.

(Yes, it is indeed Twinkle Twinkle Little Star!)



 Then she began playing with diamond shapes...

She added, " a diamond is graded according to four characteristics:

• Cut e.g. American ideal Cut
• Carat - 100 points to a carat
• Clarity - flawless is best, there are 13 grades, VSI very small inclusions, VVSI very very small inclusions and so on
• Colour - diamonds can be any colour, white to yellow, pink, red, green, even brown but they will usually have been irradiated

Where from? South Africa, Australia, Namibia, Botswana, South America, India, Russia

 

Nola began with a drawn image of a specific cut of diamond, into which she wrote the names of some famous diamonds and some characteristics of diamonds.

 

Then she wrote the stories of two famous diamonds.

 

The Koh-I-Noor or the "Mountain of Light", once the largest known diamond in the world, has a bloody history.

• It was allegedly the eye of a goddess idol of the Kakatiyas, a Hindu group who lived in South India 1083 - 1323
• it became the property of an unknown Afghan emperor who was then forced to give it to...
• Alauddin Khilji in 1294, of the Muslim Khilji Dynasty of Northern India. He was a Turkic Afghan (1296-1316) and the dynasty ruled a large area of central Asia. When that dynasty collapsed, it passed to...
• Tughlaq Dynasty, another Muslim Dynasty, which ruled over most of India (1321-1414), but then it was taken by the...
• Lodi Dynasty (1451-1526) who ruled Northern India and Pakistan. They in turn were defeated by
• Mughal Empire (1526-1857) led by abur, a Turko-Mongol invader from Uzbekistan. They were Muslims and spoke Persian and later Urdu. In 1726, they were invaded by...
• Afsharid Dynasty (1736-1796), a Persian dynasty who ruled most of the eastern Middle East from the Black Sea to Northern India. The conquering Nadir Shah allegedly exclaimed, "Koh-i-noor!" on seeing the stone. Nadir was assassinated in 1745 and...
• Ahmad Shah Durran, his general, took it. Then in 1830, he was deposed by...
• Rajit Singh of the Sikh Dynasty. Rajit Singh died in 1847 and..
• The British took the stone and the Punjab. The stone became part of the spoils of war in the subsequent treaty and came to Queen Victoria as Empress of India in 1877. After being worn as a jewel, it was set in the crown of Queen Elizabeth II and is displayed in the Tower of London.
• India wants it back.

Moral of the story - blood diamonds are not a new thing.

 

The Regent Diamond

Once upon a time in 1698, a slave in the Kollur diamond mine in India found a huge diamond (410 carat, 82g). He hid it in a wound on his leg and smuggled it out. Naughty man, but understandable.

But, an even more wicked English sea captain stole it and killed the slave. He sold it to an Indian merchant for a filthy sum. The merchant must have known it was well dodgy.

Three years after the original theft, it was sold to the English governor, Thomas Pitt. He had trouble flogging it off, though he took it to most of the royal houses of Europe. 

Eventually, the French Regent, Philippe II of Orleans, who was obviously doing very nicely out of being regent, bought it in 1717 for 135000 English pounds, roughly equal to 17 1/2 million in today's money.

Five years later, it was set in the king's coronation crown for Louis XV and again for Louis XVI in 1775.

Marie Antoinette wore it in her hat.

Then the locals tired of kings and cut off quite a few heads.

The jewel disappeared.

Napoleon relocated it (probably not to the advantage of the thief!) and it turned up on his sword.

When he died, Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, his second wife, quietly took it home to Austria but her papa made her give it back.

It was mounted on the crown of Louis XVIII, Charles X and Napoleon III.

Then it came to Empress Eugenie, who liked to wear it.

Since 1887, it's been on display at the French Treasury.

No-one remembers the slave's name, or the sea captain or the merchant.

 

Moral of the story - huge diamonds can only ever belong to the rich.

 

Nola also came across the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist text in the British Library, which is the world's earliest dated printed book. The title is a reference to the use of diamond as a cutter for jade.

Next month is Emerald!

 

 

 

 

And here's a few things we've been working on...

Remember this scarf that Carol was working on back here? No, it still isn't finished but it's getting very long! She says it's about half way now...



Jan's been working on this embroidery for a while too, but I think it missed being photographed.



 

















Maz has been working on a piece for the ATASDA display at the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair in June. The theme is Celebrations, in honour of ATASDA's 40th birthday this year.

Tricia came to visit us and brought along a couple of quilts she's making. One is a surprise so we can't show it here, but here's the other one. She made it from a jellyroll of batik fabrics she bought in Arrowtown in New Zealand, so she's called it Seasons of Arrowtown.

 

Nola has been knitting mittens for her daughter....



... and a vest for her husband...

 

She's about to start a new project. So we're always busy here at Fibrecircle!

And yet more postcards...

What an interesting mix of postcards this month!

Helen's latest postcard was machine stitched freehand on a base of Sinamay. Never heard of Sinamay? It's made from a fibre made from a variety of banana called abaca, which is native to the Philippines but is now grown in plantations elsewhere. Its main textile use is in hat-making, though a quick Internet search says it's also used in teabags, filters and  banknotes. So now we know..

Helen mounted her stitched Sinamay on card, leaving the edges ragged, though Sinamay doesn't fray.

 

Maz made her postcard using painted fusible web, mounted on sun-dyed silk.

She edged her postcard with running stitches, fraying the silk edges to a fringe.

 

Jan's postcard was hand embroidered on fabric she had hand-dyed. She left some of the fabric edges raw for more interest.

The edges were turned under and slip-stitched.

 

Yvonne made a Houses postcard. The backing was painted cotton cloth, as were the houses she glued on. She added strands of yarn and lace. The edge was hand stitched with buttonhole stitch.

 

Nola's postcard was called Moon Lantern. The background was painted with fabric and acrylic paints, with rows of hand running stitch. The edges were finished by turning the backing over the front, and couching a narrow ribbon over the raw edge with herringbone stitch.



Five postcards all using different techniques and edged differently. We certainly seem to take these postcard challenges to some interesting places!

Postcards again!

Here are our postcards for the month of March. As usual, they're an interesting mix of techniques. We love doing postcards because they are small and quick but, unlike trading cards, they're big enough to explore a technique or play with colours.

Maz painted fusible web (Vliesofix) as the background for her postcard. Then she added drawn lines, overlaid it with organza and added straight stitches. The edges were folded under and slip stitched.

Jan added hand stitching to a commercially-printed silk fabric, for her latest postcard. The edges were turned under too.

Carol's postcard combined metallic paper, ribbon and scraps of printed cloth, hand stitched together on a black felt background. She hand stitched the edges with straight stitches.

Nola's postcard reflects her interest in deep sea monsters, since our Under the Sea theme last year. Her Kraken postcard was hand painted, with double satin stitched edges over two different fluffy yarns.

For her latest postcard, Helen combined fabric, paper flowers, buttons and beads on a felt background. She made this as a thank-you to Nola, who supplied the house fabrics for a House project that Helen was doing for another group.

We hope there will be more postcards next time. Yes, it's true we swap these late in the month but we want to make postcards together for the ATASDA Ruby Postcard exhibition and swap, to celebrate ATASDA's 40th birthday. Helen has already made a postcard for this exhibition! We'll share our postcard playday next time.

Some bits of work...

Sometimes, it looks like we create things from nothing, on this blog. So here are some photos of us actually doing something in our times together. Plus some things we've made.

Here are some owl canvas embroideries that Helen has been working on at our meetings.

 Yes, well spotted, the second one did become a postcard!

Nola was braiding multiple strands of embroidery threads to create a watchband. It's quite fiddly because, even braiding many strands, the braid is quite fine.

Yvonne is working on her favourite activity, tapestry weaving. She has no special plan for these little pieces - they will find their way into something one day.

 

Helen had a challenge from another group, Lateral Stitchers, which she brought along to show us. She had to make a book wrap and a matching postcard in response to one of those paint sample cards you get at the hardware store. Her paint card was turquoise.

Here's the book wrap. It has a pocket in one end and a button, and the other end wraps around the book and attaches to the button.  She trapped fabric snippets behind netting.

The gorgeous blue netting is from a bag they sell fruit in, at her local greengrocer!
Here's the matching postcard:

Beautiful!

Carol has been bringing this scarf along to Fibrecircle for a while. Not surprising, as it's going to be a real Doctor Who scarf, metres and metres long.



 Here's some embroidery - can you guess whose it is? Yes, it's Helen's. She does such beautiful handwork.

 



She made this beautiful sea scene as well

 



Jan was working on this piece of  cloth - it will be a postcard sometime soon.

And last meeting, Nola was working on her rigid heddle loom, creating a sample piece for warp and weft floats.

You'll see a photo of this when it comes off the loom.

Happy creating!

Journals - Birthstones

Last year, we had a lot of fun (and some challenges) working to a theme in our journals. This year, some of us thought we'd like to continue, and Yvonne suggested we work on the theme of birthstones.

Birthstones are quite challenging as themes! First of all, there are so many lists, as stones have fallen in and out of fashion or become more or less precious. We decided embrace the variation and compile  a list for ourselves that reflected all the others, rather than limit ourselves to a single arbitrary list. Here's our list, laid out nicely in Nola's sketchbook:

We can approach the task in any way we choose, even work outside our sketchbooks, if we like. We can focus on any aspect of the birthstone that attracts us. The idea is to build up a resource of things that interest us, that we can use later in our work.

First, garnets.  Many of us were away in January, which is summer holiday season in Australia. Only Helen and Nola found time to work on the garden theme, though the others may come back to it later.

Helen initially focused on the stones themselves, raw and worked. The worked stones yield such interesting geometric shapes.

These planes really interested her so she began playing with lines to create geometrical shapes.

Nola was also interested in geometric shapes, but she was fascinated by the natural shape of the garnet, which forms a rhombic dodecahedron, a twelve-sided shape with each side a rhombus or specific proportions. This shape, like a bee's honeycomb fits together in three-dimensional space with no wasted pockets between them. 

This led her into the composition of the stones. She was very interested in the exotic names of different forms of garnet and what these names mean; pyrope meaning "fire-eyed" , grossular, not relating to grains but to gooseberries. The name garnet comes from Latin granatus, "seed" an d may relate to the pomum granatum or pomegranate.

Archaeology is a lifelong interest for Nola so she researched cultures where garnets were widely used. There are lots of Roman artefacts with garnets.

Stay tuned for February... amethyst!

March already!

Sorry, everyone. This year seems to have started at a gallop, leaving our blogger gasping to catch up! As usual, we have been busy making things for the last two months.

First of all, our postcard swap continues. In January, Yvonne made this postcard using angelina and silk fibres and hand embroidery. The edge was created with a line of whip stitch.

Maz painted fusible web (vliesofix)  for the background of her postcard, stamped with a hand carved stamp and machine stitched. The edges were turned under and slip-stitched.

Nola painted and hand-coloured her postcard, which she called The Bonny Road, a reference to the road to faerie. The edges were finished with a hand-stitched picot in embroidery thread.

Carol's postcard combined felt, fibres and an embellishment. The felt edges were stitched together with a running stitch.

This postcard from Jan was made from embossed and natural-dyed paper on fabric. The edges were turned under and slip-stitched.

This one from Maz was made with a painted background, embellished with straight stitches. It has a machine satin stitch edge.

Yvonne made this one with mulberry and rice paper on Lutradur, embellished with fibre and stitch.

This is another of Jan's postcards made with natural dyeing. She dyed paper with plant materials, stitched it and mounted it on rust dyed fabric.

Helen has become interested in owls lately, so she made this postcard in her trademark canvas work.

There'll be more postcards towards the end of the month.