Habitation

February passed us by in a blur! There seems to be so much happening at the moment, so blogging has gone to the back of the queue. But we have still be busily making things.

I promised to show you the beginnings of our monthly theme, Habitation. Most of us are working in sketchbooks, but Helen decided to make another kind of book. Here is the cover of her Habitation book.

Yes, it's about birds. That's all I can say at this point - you will hear the story as she makes her book.









Cindy's sketchbook began with a door.

At this stage, what's behind the door is a mystery.

But she went on to make up a story about a particular habitation. It's actually the house her mother lived in as a child, but the story isn't about the real family who lived there. It's the story of the Baker family, John, Brenda and their children.

 And this is the door of their house.

First, Maz made a cover and title page for her sketchbook.

Then she began by researching the word Habitation.

Nola's Habitation sketchbook continued on from her Trees book last year.

 
She has been making prints with foam board as the print plate. These prints were experimenting with changing the texture of the printing medium.

The print design was based on an image of Eguisheim in Alsace.

More Habitation coming soon!

 

 

Australia Day

Fibrecircle's second meeting fell the day before the Australia Day holiday. We went ahead anyway but quite a few members were away making the most of the extra-long weekend.

Nola showed us the Flying Geese quilt she's been making for quite a while, from signature blocks she swapped with Southern Cross Quilters back in the late nineties. The top is about 2/3 done and will be a queen size quilt when it's finished.

What a great piece of her history!

Helen was working on a piece of canvas embroidery. Yes, that's such a surprise, isn't it? We love these gorgeous birds!

It's for a challenge in another group she belongs to. She's just at the start, so I expect you'll see more of it later.

We didn't take a photo of what Maz was working on this time, sorry!

Maz and Helen swapped postcards, as we usually do.  Here's Maz's:

She thinks the background fabric was probably coloured with transfer printing. which she embellished with hand embroidery. She added wadding behind it and a piece of card, with a backing of calico.

And here's Helen's:

Helen made it late last year, and she said, "it's so long since I made it, I haven't the faintest idea what I did!" The thinks the background was probably a monoprint with acrylic paint on cotton fabric, which she embroidered "to embellish it". The acrylic paint made is quite hard to stitch through, but made the cloth itself quite robust. She added card for extra stiffening, with a paper backing.

They actually look a little bit similar, don't they?

We talked about how any cards we now have, and decided we needed to have a playday making or extending our postcard storage. I'm sure you'll see the wonderful ideas we come up with!

Our next meeting is... tomorrow, when we'll be sharing our first journals or works of the year based on our 2016 theme, Habitation. We hope to be blogging a bit more promptly from now on this year.

Happy New Year

Kinda late, we know, to be wishing anyone HNY but we finally met for the first time in 2016. As always, it was a quiet meeting, since January is holiday season here in Oz. But it was great to catch up with each others' news and share what we'd been making.

Over the break, Helen made this quirky book, just for fun.

 It's full of shapes of all kinds and references to places and people Helen has known.

As always, clever and beautiful!









The rest of us have mostly been drawing.

Nola was working on sketches for her section of our collaborative work for the façade exhibition in the Palm House at the Botanic gardens in May. Each of us is making a postcard-sized work about a fictional holiday resort called Fibriccerre.

 

Her section is "posh houses" in the area. That looks pretty posh, doesn't it?

 

Cindy has also been drawing a lot. Here are some of her drawings:



Those cherries are luscious enough to eat, aren't they?

Helen was working on a small piece of canvas work.

As always her work just glows. She has an amazing way with colour.

Maz was working on items for sale in the sales area of the façade exhibition.

I'm not sure what it's going to be but I'm sure it will be gorgeous!

That's it for this time. Sorry it's brief, I think we were all in holiday mode - too busy chatting to be technical! See you next time.

And a few more things we've been doing...

Cindy has been drawing  a lot recently. She's been doing an online class but, as we all know, the trick to being this good is to draw a lot and keep on drawing!

Aren't these wonderful?

Helen has been stitching things for Lateral Stitchers challenges:

The Laterals challenges have all been in this square format for a while now. I guess it makes them easy to display!

Here's a book that Robin made, in a Linda Green workshop recently:

 

 

It has maps for some pages - very interesting memento of her travels!

She also took a Chinese Brush Painting class with Maggie Cross at West Dean College, in West Sussex, UK.

Very interesting possibilities!

She also brought along a quilt she's been working on. This is the centre of a queen-sized bed quilt.

We love blue and white quilts, but we love this one particularly for its intricacy! It's going to be just amazing when it's done.

Our next meeting is our last for the year so we'll be having a yummy lunch! See you then.

October postcards

Only four of us swapped postcards in October, because it as a very busy time for everyone.

Nola's postcard was one she was working on earlier. It has a painted background, embellished with Inktense and watercolour pencils and black pen, mounted on Tyvek with a hand picot edge.

Yvonne's postcard was made with tissue dyed fabric, with added organza, dyed unspun wool, embroidery and a whip-stitched edge.

 

 

Maz's postcard was made from dyed fabric, embellished with hand embroidered running stitch and French knots, mounted on card.

Helen's postcard was also made from dyed fabric, with a photo of a peacock, trpped under wrapping paper fibre and mounted on card.

All different again!  It's always fascinating to see how each person approaches the process of making a tiny 6in x 4in artwork each month.

We're so late with this post that the group is meeting again tomorrow. More pictures of our activities soon!

October is a distant memory but...

...due to various complications, our blogger didn't blog at all last month. So here's what we were making back then:

Carol was working on some paper cutouts called Kirigami, from this calendar, which she's been saving for a while.

 

They start with easy ones and get progressively harder. She decided to make them in bright colours to  use as Christmas decorations.












If these are the easy ones, I'd hate to try the hard ones!

Nola was working on a postcard for later in the month. It's one she pulls out of her postcards basket to work on periodically but it never seems to be just right. It's a painted background with various other media used, mostly Inktense pencils.

 

 

 

Later in the month, she was back working on her version of the cereal box book, which we started way back here. Her book was made from a fat biscuit box so it's needed a lot of pages. She's just about ready to star putting in images and memorabilia from her trip to southern Africa last year.



Helen was working on one of her embroidered stones.

They're cute little things and people grab them as soon as she makes them!

Maz has been working on a lot of concept drawings for her work for ATASDA's biannual Palm House exhibition in the Sydney Botanic Gardens, in May next year. The theme of the exhibition is façade, because 2016 is the 200th birthday of the Gardens and artist Jonathan Jones will create an artwork celebrating The Garden Palace, a structure from the Gardens' history. Built for the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879, this massive structure burnt to the ground in 1882. It should be very interesting to see his "ghost building"!

Here are some of Maz's drawings for her work in façade:

Looks very interesting! I'm sure we'll see more of this in due course.

Maz was also working on her piece for the Miniature Round Treasures challenge for ATASDA. The works will be on display at the Epping Creative Centre in December and January.

Isn't it pretty? It's going to be an interesting exhibition.