And more works ...

Here's Carol's latest piece of weaving - a luscious scarf. It's hard to see from the photo but it has a beautiful subtle pattern from the colours of yarn she's used. Gorgeous!

She's still going on her knitted Doctor Who scarf as well.

 

Helen has finished her little Memory Blanket, her personal version of the Traveller's Blanket. This has been a work in progress for some time but I don't think we've shown it here.

It has many small pieces of fabric that are significant to Helen. She plans to make it into a book cover.




Jan has been continuing to work on this embroidery, which you saw here a while back...









... while Maz was working on this embroidered rock paperweight, inspired by Helen's work. Helen is the group's go-to person for anything relating to embroidery!

Meanwhile, Nola was beginning a new knitting project.

It's going to be a jacket called Metro from the book Swing Swagger Drape by Jane Slicer-Smith. You can see images of the coat here. The yarn is a variegated wool called Murano from Bendigo Woollen Mills. The jacket is knitted with intarsia, so each section has a different ball of yarn.

Yvonne has been away collaborating on a community tapestry called 
'My Place', involving year 5 & 6 students from Jervis Bay School, members of the public, Denise Stevens and herself. This project was part of Synergy, the collaborative artworks section of the "See Change" Jervis Bay & Basin Arts Inc. Winter Arts Festival. You can see more about this project on Yvonne's blog.

We meet again towards the end of the month, with more postcards to swap and more work to show you!

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!

September: our own work

We've all been working on our own things as usual, but not many have been photographed. 

Our new member, Yvonne  has been tapestry weaving. She is making a weaving every day for a month, inspired by the colours she sees that the day. Here is one of her pieces:

Tapestry is such complex and time-consuming weaving, it's hard for us to imagine making one every day! 

Helen brought along this embroidery to work on at one of our meetings this month. This is how it looked at lunchtime...

... and how it looked when she finished it.

Aren't the colours gorgeous?

Tricia and Nola have been dyeing again - no surprises there. But they decided to compbine their dyeing with some other techniques.

These ones of Nola's were screen printed using Permaset printing inks:

The intention was to over-dye them, but this hasn't happened because the sample ones didn't like the rinsing process and some of the colour flaked off. It worked fine with lighter screen printing, which had less medium on the cloth.

The challenging part was choosing colours that worked well together. Here, Nola was looking for contrast, but it obviously needs a contrast in tone rather than just colour. It's interesting but it lacks wow factor.

Their second experiment was to draw with Tsukineko inks before dyeing. Tricia had happier results with this than Nola did.

This one used a stencil, while the ones below were hand drawn. 

 Nola drew around a stencil on this one.

 This one shows the kinds of problems Nola had. The inks behave like fibre reactive dyes, since, unlike the screen printing inks, they are affected by the dye process. The roses above were quite a strong red but have become purple when over-dyed with blue. The pattern on the one below is almost invisible, because they are the same tonal value.

So it was an interesting experiment to try.

Afterwards they did some fun dyeing with the fibre reactive dyes. Here are Tricia's scarves:

 This one was created by plaiting three chiffon scarves together, so there are three like this.

Here are Nola's scarves...

... and she also dyed two tees for children.

See you next month!