And the last of June...

Yesterday, four of us had a group outing to see Helen's exhibition at the Embroiderers Guild. We were blown away. We knew Helen was a very talented person but seeing her work on display together convinced us that she's been hiding her light under a bushel! Some were works we'd seen her making; others were completely new to us, coming from ten, twenty and even forty years ago. It's an amazing body of work. If you get a chance, go and have a look before it closes on Wednesday.

After Helen had given us a guided tour of the works and told us the stories associated with them, we took ourselves next door to the Love Life Store for lunch. I can really recommend this place for lunch - friendly staff, very tasty pies and delicious cakes.

We swapped postcards as usual. Here's Helen's, with her signature rug canvas:

She painted over the rug canvas grid and the background, and then added gold to the stitched area.

Maz's postcard comes from a series of works celebrating her years of travelling the world.

Tricia's postcard was a cheerful collection of buttons with a beach mood.

She coloured the background and then added buttons and beads to emphasise the flow of the colours.

Nola embroidered on one of her painted cloths for her postcard.

We also shared the work we'd done in our sketchbooks for the Fish theme.

Maz drew some fish shapes in her book:

Here's a detail of the fish at the top.

The technique is called sgraffito. She laid down a thick layer of water pencil on the piece of film negative and then scratched back through it to form the fish. It looks very sea monsterish!
Helen had been manipulating images in Photoshop.

She also drew a design, a fish made of fish, in unwetted water colour pencil, with a collection of fish names. She insisted, "the best fish in the world - Arbroath smokies."

Nola drew fish too, but her first pair of fish were based on the shape of a set of unusual pegs she bought from one of the local Chinese shops. She also wanted to play with repeat shapes.

Her next fish was made from fabric.

She built up the background pages with layers of watercolour and Inktense pencils and watercolour crayons, using the page wet and dry.  She cut out the fish shape and layers were cut from a commercial patterned fabric and attached to the fish with fusible web. The whole fish was trimmed and attached to the page with fusible web. Then she drew in the shadow fish in the water, so the brilliant fish is surrounded by shadowy echoes.

Her last fish was stencilled through a simple shape, using different  1/2in square stamps and watercolour pencils.

Our next theme is Circle. As our group is called Fibrecircle, that seems very appropriate!

May and June

As you probably guessed, we've been a bit occupied with stuff to do with the Craft and Quilt Fair at Darling Harbour lately. So I'll just do a general catch up for May and June.

First, the Craft and Quilt Fair: As always the quilts in the show were fantastic. Such a high standard of work and so many beautiful quilts. The prizewinning quilts can be seen here on the NSW Quilters Guild website. They are always very efficient about putting images up. The number of quilts was up but the number of visitors seemed to be down. It certainly wasn't as crowded as in past years.

The ATASDA stand was a great experience. We had a large space, 12m x 8m and it looked fantastic, filled with members' art works. We had a lot of good comments about the edgy industrial theme, which you can see here on the ATASDA NSW blog, FibreTribe. It was interesting chatting to people as they came through, too. There are those who would love to try some non-traditional textile skills and those who say, a little wistfully, "I could never do that!" We handed out lots of bookmarks and workshop sheets, and most artists sold some things.

Meanwhile, we've all been busy doing and making. Way back in April, Maz took this workshop at Primrose Paperworks with Peta Lloyd and made this beautiful shrine.



The aim of the workshop was to create a collection of objects and images in a physical structure, in a way that was meaningful to the participants. In the class, Maz learnt how to construct the shrine in in a deep-sided canvas with foam core, covered in paper and fabric, and put together words and items to express her various travels around the world in her younger days. It's really beautiful.

In early May, we spent a day working together to make journal covers for everyone in the group. We all worked on each journal cover, and then we drew lots to determine who received which one.
Here's images of some of the covers:


 

Tricia's book

Each month, we'll take turns to choose a theme for everyone to work on in their journals. The first theme, from Nola, was Leaf. Here are Tricia's pages:

The apple leaf was sent to her by a family friend in Queensland, and the gum leaf comes from her own garden. She did leaf rubbings with crayons.

 

Nola coloured on a damp hand-made polystyrene stamp with watercolour pencils and stamped on the page.

She also picked up a rose leaf which had black spot fungus, because the patterns were pretty. She traced the leaf shape and drew some of the patterns with black drawing pen, choosing different colours to emphasise. She thinks they may make interesting stamps.

She also did a rubbing from a hollyhock leaf and was drawing around the leaf margins when the photo was taken.

 Maz drew a leaf with watercolours on watercolour paper.

 She attached leaves and a leaf set in resin to a page and felted leaf shapes with her embellishing machine.

 She made these leaves by free machine stitching leaf shapes on two layers of net.

 

Helen attached some ginkgo leaves, coated in clear nail polish for longevity, and a verse. It says,

                                      Temple bells ring out

                                      The fragrant blossoms render..

 

                                      The winds that blow

                                      Ask them which leaf on the tree

                                      Will be the next to go.







The second part is a haiku by Kyoshi Takahama.

 She also made monoprints, cut them apart and wove them into a background for the painted leaf shape. She liked the right hand monoprint because it looked like a cat, so she made a page with the cat playing among the leaves.

The next theme, from Carol, is Fish.

 

Tricia brought along her latest spinning to show. She has been plying the yarn..

 

  
Gorgeous!

Here are our latest postcards:
Helen's is made with Suffolk Puff flowers on painted rug canvas and silk paper, edged with satin stitch.

 Bev hand stitched on printed fabric and bound the postcard with zigzag in a variegated thread.

 Tricia pieced commercial fabrics and added a button and machine stitching. The edge was bound and stitched with a zigzag.

Nola's was made from a scrap of  graffiti fabric, hand painted, with a edging of a double row of satin stitch.

This week, we're going to look at Helen's one man exhibition at the Embroiderer's Guild in Concord. If you get the chance to see it, don't miss out! It closes on Jun 27th.

 

 



Darling Harbour Craft & Quilt Fair

Sorry to go silent! We've created a stack of gorgeous stuff to share with you, which I hope we can do soon. But in the meantime, we've been distracted by the upcoming ATASDA stand, displaying and selling work at the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair, Darling Harbour this week. Several of us will have work on display and for sale.

Tricia and Nola have gorgeous silk scarves, bags made from breakdown printed fabric and a range of hand-dyed reusable gift bags, replacing wasteful paper wrapping with something useful as well as decorative.

 

Carol has covered some art journals.

Bev has made some fabric bowls and a cushion from her rust-dyed fabric that is just to die for!

We also have our beautiful garden fragment on display and it's for sale too!

Five of us will be manning the stand at various times during the show, so why not stop by to say hello? ATASDA members will be demonstrating various kinds of textile art work during the five days, mornings and afternoon, and there'll be a visual feast of work to enjoy.

Darling Harbour, June 12-16, 9-5 every day.

Postcards

We thought you'd like to see our latest textile postcards from the past couple of months.

This one is Jan's, made from some of her eco-dyed papers. These are so subtle in colour, with lovely leaf imprints.

 This one was made by Carol, using layers of fabric, applique and beading.

 This one is Maz's. She painted the background and then added hand stitch.

This is another of Helen's embroidered rug canvas postcards. She paints the backgrounds first, which makes them really glow with colour.

This one was made by Carol. She used a felt background and added fabric applique and beads.

This is Nola's postcard, called Octopuses Garden 1. The background is doodled and painted quilters' muslin, built up in layers using transparent paint. The edge is a double row of machine satin stitch.

This one is Helen's latest. She made the background felt with trapped threads in a workshop with Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn, about ten years ago. She added metal, beads and hand stitching.

This postcard is Maz's. She was inspired by the colours of Greece. She layered taffeta and loosely woven cotton and added hand stitching and beads.

As always they're all so different and instantly recognisable as part of each person's work.

Time flies when you're being creative!

We've been slow to share our activities lately, but we've been meeting as usual, and what exciting times we've been having!

Some of us got together last month to have a dyeing day. We used Drimarene K, a kind of fibre reactive dye like Procion. The advantage over Procion is that it remains stable in water for months, so unused dye can be stored, while the dye molecules of Procion dye begin to bond with the water molecules after just an hour or so. We all brought different kinds of things made from natural materials to dye, and the results have been as individual as always.

Bev dyed one of her linen serviettes and some damask linen. She concertina-pleated the serviette and dip-dyed it in ink and lavender. It had some embroidery as well as the lace border, which gave an interesting effect.

 The damask is much more subtle. It's hard to see in the photo, but you can see a little, on the left hand side, how the patterned damask surface took the dye slightly differently. The piece was space dyed  to give the colour variations.

She also dyed some quilters' cotton, using the space dyeing method.

I really like the muted colours on these pieces and the pattern is amazing.

 

Her remaining fabrics were silk twill. These two were space dyed again:

 The third piece was plaited:

I'd call this one her piece de resistance, if it weren't that she also dyed a white cotton blouse.

Isn't this beautiful? I really love the combination of ombre shading and the pattern at the hem.
Maz was working with cheesecloth, which she'd used for dyeing before, at a workshop.

She did a lot of stitching on her cloth beforehand, to get these amazing patterns.

She also dyed a cotton batiste scarf:

This scarf is incredibly gorgeous to wear! It may seem counter intuitive, but it feels fabulous on your skin and I think a few of us considered slipping it quietly into our bags.There was some discussion about whose clothing it suited the best!

 

This scarf is silk jacquard and, like Bev's damask, the dyeing has enhanced the pattern in the weave.

 

She also dyed some silk habotai scarves. On this one, she was experimenting with using very pale colours, rather than the intense shades she'd been using, for space dyeing. It's very subtle and interesting.

These are more of her pre-stitched dyeing. It's labour intensive but you can see the value of it on these silk scarves, can't you?

She dyed some cotton cloth as well, with space dyeing.

They're all beautiful but I especially love that last one. It was dyed by rolling the cloth around a piece of string, and then ruching the fabric long the string and tying the ends together. It's given such a complex pattern.

These silk georgette scarves of Tricia's were plaited before being dyed with a syringe.

This process works really well on light fabrics and results in three very similar scarves. The three below were done with the same technique, but one of the scarves was silk chiffon, not georgette. Isn't it interesting how the chiffon has taken the dye very differently?

 The colours are much brighter and the separation between the colours much more distinct, even though all three scarves were dyed at the same time in the same way.

Sher also dyed some silk tissue. This is very sheer silk, often used as a base for felting.

Both Tricia and Nola also over-dyed some scarves that had originally been dyed with natural materials. Sometimes, depending on the plants used, these scarves can come out quite pale or beige. Here's Tricia's, cheered up with some of the fibre reactive dye...

... and these are Nola's:

 

The third one had been dyed with blocks, giving the chevron pattern. Over-dyeing with turquoise darkened the brown but made the lighter chevrons more obvious.

Nola was mostly interested in dyeing cotton socks.

 

 Some are adult size; others are for primary school kids.

This tee was space dyed and then stitched to yield the mokume or "wood grain" pattern over one shoulder. The pattern is quite fine and doesn't show up well in the photo.

How different they all are! Most importantly, we had a fun day doing it.