Out of the Blue

These are the 2 pieces that I have put in the ATASDA exhibition, currently in the Botanical Gardens. As Nola mentioned, I was definitely very 'unproductive' on Monday, as I was recovering from a last race to get them finished - but I'm pretty pleased with them. Of course, like most things, they look better in 'the flesh'.

I knew I would never wear a necklace of charms, so I put my charms down the spine of a book, that I made. Inside, I have named it 'Collections' - with several pages of samples of things that I have been known to collect. A page of samples from my much larger collection of lace - a page of stamps - a feather found on the footpath last weekend - and the last page has all the names of the Charm makers.


the pics are to do with the HMAS Sydney - another long story, which I wrote about for the exhibition.
In this photo you can't see the 3D bits of organza - I really enjoyed seeing what the heat gun did to scraps!! My daughter also joined in on this one. (One of the teenage boyfriends wandering through wasn't quite sure what he had struck - but he got dinner - and that seemed to make up for the madness!!)

BUT - I can still see my traditional quilting background - next goal ... break away from the straight bindings (if I'm brave enough?!)

August do your own thing

Due to a mental failure, few photos were taken this month and none at the last meeting. Here's what I did capture:
Tricia's gorgeous Tunisian crochet wrap

This has a beautiful necklace to go with it, which I was not quick enough to capture.

Carol was working on bookmarks for sale at ATASDA's Palm House Exhibition, in the Sydney Botanic Gardens from today until August 26. Aren't they gorgeous?

Beverley was in a post-creative mood, after finishing her work for the Palm House Exhibition. She was working on a patchwork friendship block, here roughly assembled so we could see what it would look like.

I didn't photograph Helen's work - sorry, Helen! She was making kits for her embroidery group to applique as a group project.

I'm sorry to say I was hemming pants, but I must add, in justification, that I'll be carrying them onto a plane later this week. However, my show and tell, which I was working on last meeting, was a newly-finished fine wool wrap. I'm very happy with it, even though it was made with leftover baby wool. I wanted to improve my selvedges by working with fine wools, and I'm very pleased with the way it looks.

Fibrecircle Monday

Another fun day playing! Today, we made silk paper. Some of us had made silk paper before, while others were making it for the first time. I made one multicoloured one in blues, reds and golds

and one in red and gold with sparkly Angelina fibres embedded in it. This one is hard to photograph, like all shiny things, even without flash. I plan to iron this one, because the angelina fibres are very much on the surface and I'd like them to melt in.

I always seem to be a bit stingy when I lay down the fibres, so the result is always quite thin and lacy. I quite like that but I need to learn to apply the fibres with a more liberal hand!

Our method:

Lay down a piece of tulle (netting).

Lay silk fibres onto the tulle until it looks like enough, making sure the fibres cross one another and are not all lying in the same direction.

Lay another layer of tulle over the top.

Brush over a detergent solution on both sides, with a sponge brush, to open up the fibres and make them receptive to the adhesive.

Brush over textile medium on both sides, with the sponge brush.

Hang the resulting soggy sample out to dry.

When it's dry, peel off the layers of tulle.

There were some variations on the method. Some in our group peeled off their tulle before the samples were dry. Carol peeled it off one of her samples (a silk/wool mix) immediately, in order to form the paper over a cup. Atelier Gloss Medium and Varnish was used to give the mini bowl body:

Out of the Blue Madweave

Today, Wednesday, 2nd July, has been a very cold and windy day, I'm sure that the wind is coming straight off the South Pole, and then via the Snowy Mountains to reach us here. Consequently, I've had a busy indoors day as you can see on the left.
The overalls front is now madwoven on both legs and looks just a bit 'over the top', but I like things to seem a little crazy. It looks just like the quilting style of 'tumbling blocks' but is woven in 3 directions at once so it's a triple layer without even any batting or backing. I can stare at it for hours as there are a few extra little surprises in there.
Of course it's nowhere near done yet, as I've got the top to alter yet, as well as put a backing on and join up the legs. This is a fun project, maybe even a 'show stopper' - in my dreams!
Blogging is most enjoyable. I like to think of it as a way to write and show something to celebrate the day or some part of the week. I'm beginning to like the word 'Celebration' . Peter Cundle ( the gardening Elder) says that "every day is a celebration of life". And it is necessary to celebrate life, in some creative way.

Beads etc

I hate ironing!! But, as a consequence, I seem to have too many plain long sleeved T-shirts at the moment. Yesterday, at Fibrecircle, I finished sewing beads around the neckline of a black one, and today I was able to wear my new creation. I found 2 packets of tiny, mixed metallic coloured beads in a discount shop and just sewed them around the front, about 3 or 4 'deep', following the line of the rib. I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself - the top looks good, and it feels great to get something finished.
Sorry I don't have a pic yet - need to sort out the camera next.

Beverley

Fibrecircle

We're a small group of textile artists, who met through the Australian Textile Art and Surface Design Association. This year we decided to get together regularly and explore different aspects of textile media. With this blog, we want to share all the fun things we discover.

Playing with Foils

Today Fibrecircle played with foiling onto fabric. We used fusible web, foiling glue, fusible thread, the hot glue gun and bonding powder. The foils were packs from The Thread Studio and Jones Tones foils from Spotlight. The Jones Tones foils say they do not need heat to transfer, just pressure & glue, but we found they were not very successful cold-foiled, and transferred much better with heat as well as pressure, so we used the iron with both types of foils.

First we played around with glues. We used a grey glue sold by Diane Groenewegen in her classes and a white foiling glue, just called Glue for Foiling, from Craft Depot. We tried painting the glue directly onto fabric, stencilling it through paper stencils cut with scrapbooking punches, stamping it with wooden stamps and drawing freehand using the applicator nozzle on the white glue. We also made patterns with the hot glue gun. We set these aside to dry and moved onto fusible web.

This one was done with a piece of fusible web, with straight strips of a type of hemming tape, marketed to quilters to adhere 1/4in seams, ironed onto the fabric. Fusible web gives a very strong transfer, which is fine for big patches of colour, or when the foil sheet is almost exhausted, but generally is a bit strong.

This sample was brushed with glue. This was acrylic fabric Nola had melted over a candle, with the top brushed lightly with the glue. Then a copper-coloured foil was ironed over the top, at a low heat.

These images were stencilled with glue using a stencil made with a scrapbooking punch. This was a scrap piece that had previously been painted and stamped. Nola made glue stencils of tiny leaves to foil. The stencils were not always very successful, perhaps because the stencils were so small, but they do look somewhat leaf-like.

There was quite a lot of difference between the various bonding media we used. The grey glue gave very clear stencils, though the second stencil was also from a punch, measuring about 1in square and with a lot of detail(second left bottom). The white foiling glue was not as clear when stencilled (first and third left bottom). Drawing with the white glue applicator (centre) was not very successful here. Using very fine bonding powder gave quite coarse results through the stencil (upper right) and some of the bonding powder adhered to the baking paper and retransferred when the foil was moved. The bonding powder was very hard to control for this kind of use.

However it's fine for general sparkle effects.

Nola had used the hot glue gun to draw a combination of thicker and spidery lines onto red velveteen. It was foiled with a gold iridescent foil. The hot glue gun took the foils extremely well but the glue didn't adhere to the red velveteen at all well. It would be possible to peel off at least part of the design. But it looks great, doesn't it? It would be fun to try the hot glue gun on baking paper and then foiling it - maybe you'd end up with free-standing elements that could be stitched to other work.

The hot glue gun glue took the foil so cleanly that there was a lovely negative shape left on the foil. It was attached to a deep blue, possibly silk fabric using fusible web. It also looks great! Much more exciting than it looks in the photo.