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.

December: Journals

We had our last meeting of the year today. Yes, we managed to eat a delightful lunch and chat about all sorts of things.

We also shared our finished journals. Most of us have been too busy to work on the last  few themes, but Nola and Helen had explored the idea of Under the Sea.

Helen's first idea was coral reefs.

She made this image with acrylic paint and a sponge.

These pages are about Neptune (and his girlfriends).

She found this photo of a yellow submarine. It was called "A Yellow Submarine with the Nose Cut Off", as indeed it does! It must be going so fast, it jumped right out of the picture.

She added the surfboard because she liked it.



These images and drawings are of shells that her father brought back from his travels around the world as a sailor.

Nola began by drawing a concept map of what might be under the sea,

Then she chose some of them to focus on. She got very interested in seahorses, when she realised that the males carry the young in a pouch, and that mating pairs hold tails, like holding hands.

She also got interested in shipwrecks, especially the Vasa, a Swedish ship that sank in 1628 and was raised in the 1960s, in remarkably good condition.

Last of all, she investigated the amazing animals found in the deepest part of the sea, the Marianas Trench. Here is one of the animals..

This is the last of our journal themes, though there may be a few late ones coming in. Next year, we plan to do something different. We'll be back in the New Year with lots of new ideas. In the meantime, a very happy Christmas to everyone and we wish you all the best year in 2014.