Birthday Giveaway

Sewjourn is having a birthday giveaway, be quick it ends at 5pm tonight.

I have just downloaded my September copy of WOW, great inspiration there and well worth the miserly subscription. I am about to incorporate Julie Smith’s wonderful article on making a mermaid’s purse (or cuff actually) into my sea angels. I have just about finished all the machine stitching and will spend the next two weeks with the hand stitching.

Here is another taster.

 The first is the twin needle stitching on the neck of one dupion silk gown:This is the other gown painted with a mixture of acrylic, opulence ink and dyn na flow then sprinkled with salt:

I painted some pearl cotton with the leftovers but they are a bit stiff, even after being in the dryer. They might be okay in a twisted cord or couched on. This is in the wet stage, it actually dried much lighter and will be toned down with overlays.

The last photo is another of the wing pieces. On the corners I have stitched using the Maggie’s technique from the Perth workshop. I’m hoping these will look like fragments of fishing net once dissolved.

Sorry about the flash off the glass cooktop.

Cheers

Wings take flight

Linda over on her textile blog was talking about trying machine stitched flowers on soluble with wire edges so they can be manipulated into shapes. The scan below shows part of the angel wing for the Sea Angels (it was too big to fit in the scanner).

I drew the outline in fineliner, stitched the diamond grid twice over with straight stitch, then went over in a small zigzag stitch. Then the dissecting lines were stitched twice over with straight stitch. I had a nice easily bendable wire (probably jewellery wire) and zigzagged that around the edges, then went over again with a close satin stitch. I used up as much of the romeo as I could stitching the little bubble fragments. I dissolved it in a sink of warm water, rinsed in cold water, patted dryish with paper towels and laid flat on baking paper to dry.

Cheers

Fabricate 09

Today Pauleen and I made the trek up the Melbourne/Geelong Rd to the opening of the Fabricate 09 exhibition by the TAG (Textile Art @ the Guild) group.

There was a wonderfully diverse range of textile art by invited artists from Australia and internationally, including art dolls, indigo dyeing, felting, weaving, free machine embroidery and printing. The exhibition is beautifully hung, with the ‘luminous’ indigo dyed panels of Rowland Ricketts 111 dividing the space.

The photos below are taken from the catalogue, designed to allow them to be used as postcards, with funds from the sale supporting the TAG group activities (there are more photos on the TAG site).

All art pieces at the exhibition are for sale as well as the patterns for Jennifer Gould’s exquisite dolls. Well worth a visit.

Cheers

Embroiderer’s Guild Exhibition

Just a quick post as it’s been a busy weekend. Thursday morning all the items were dropped off to the hall for the exhibition. Friday morning the exhibition was officially opened by the Governor of Victoria’s wife, Mrs de Krester (Actually I think she might be Dr) who admitted to having a drawer full of UFO’s. She is the patron of the Embroiderer’s Guild of Victoria. Friday night Claudia and I went to Junior Embroidery group, then Probus club held a lovely function at the exhibition to raise funds for charity, with a guest speaker from the Geelong Botanical Gardens. A special feature of the exhibition was a botanical display, where embroiderer’s guild members interpreted botanical illustrations from the gardens.

Claudia and I were supposed to be ‘on duty’ Saturday afternoon, but I found out at the last minute that I had a full day at Melbourne Uni. We will go in this afternoon. Claudia is very excited as Pauleen told her she could be a white gloves person and show the items to people.

These are the items I entered, I ran out of time for my final piece so that will have to wait for the next bi-ennial exhibition!

The box is a piece our textile group decided to do Based on Janet Edmonds book, so there was a great variety in our display (must remember to take some photos this afternoon). Mine is called ‘I am Woman’. The base fabric is a sandwich of hand painted cotton, pelmet vilene and kunin felt. The silhouettes are bayeux stitch, the windows are daphne paper (quite appropriate to the subject I felt) and the hands dangling are a sandwich of organza and glitter fabric with words from the sheer heaven stitched on. This was great fun to make. One of our members, Beryl,  loved them so much she made three. I think this will be Claudia’s summer holiday project as she wants one.

Mostly machine stitching, the sky is inspired by Van Gough’s ‘Starry nights’. This one is called ‘Endangered’

And I finally dyed some hand spun wool to finish off ‘Lilliana’. She was almost finished during an on-line Joggles class with Barbara Schoenoff. 

Claudia finished her pincushion:

and had great fun making some of Annette Emms‘ fairy shoes:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These were made using her sunprint fabric, some angelina, machined cord, hand dyed silk thread, beads and sequins.

Cheers