Craft, Quilt and Stitch Show

Day 2 of our Perth sojourn and Carly headed off to the state library to do some uni work online and finish an assignment.

I jumped on a train to the craft quilt and stitch show at the showgrounds. As I got off the train I started chatting to a lovely lady who was there for her second day, so she showed me the way. The first person I saw as I came into the fair was the ‘infamous’ Maggie Grey. It was so exciting to meet her and Clive in the ‘flesh’ after chatting online and admiring her textile prowess for so long. After meeting her I can say she is the one of the most open, friendly and welcoming people I have ever met. It was quite amusing that she continued to call me ‘aussie’ over the next few days.

(This photo was actually taken at the workshop on the Tuesday)

Maggie gave a wonderfully professional talk about her textile work (despite the technical difficulties) to packed houses, and demonstrated at the Thread studio stall, surrounded by her beautifully crafted creations.

The first and most obvious port of call at the fair was the emporium of “The Thread Studio“; Dale and Ian’s stall was massive!!! Of course that meant all the more goodies to tempt you with and of course I managed to find some (well quite a few) items that were absolutely necessary. It makes it so much easier to pick out the colours in the flesh. 

After Carly had flown home I amused myself making a wrapped cord (a la Effie Mitrofanis) with one of the Thread Studio’s beautifully dyed stranded cottons.

Read on for “The Workshop!” 

Sampler Debut

We have just returned from a wonderful week of Junior Country Week tennis in Ballarat. The kids had a fantastic week of tennis and hanging out in the pool at the caravan park afterwards. Most of the Tennis Geelong families stay in the one park so we all get together for a fabulous week. We also have 30 – 40 children bussed up each day to play (for those whose parents are working). Paddy played in the U16 section and my niece and nephew were in U19. Paddy’s team made it to the semi’s and the others made it to the Grand Final. (Photos by the Ballarat Courier here). I took some embroidery with me and made a start on my sampler. I have been following along with Sharon B’s documentation of her sampler and decided I would try the stitches out myself. This initial sampler is 16 cm x 50cm (just over 6 inches x 20 inches) and is some linen I had bought when doing Sharon’s PLOS last year.

The title is backstitch in perle cotton. This first line of stitching is an exploration of Laced Triple Running stitch as seen in Sharon’s bands 1-4.

And some close ups.

While in Ballarat I also popped into the local needlework shop and bought some hand dyed silk threads:

I might try some of these for the next bit of stitching on my sampler. I intend also using it for the Stitch Explorer Challenge that Sharon is running for 2009. The stitch for this month is ‘chicken scratch’.

We had a meeting yesterday for the Geelong Embroiderer’s Guild to get started on our xmas exhibition for the Johnston Collection (I blogged about it here). The group were happy with my proposal for ‘Sea Angels’ based on the figureheads of sailing ships. Mr Johnston travelled the world collecting Georgian, Regency and French Empire furniture, ceramics and decorative arts. There are many paintings of sailing ships in the collection and the theme of the xmas decorations will be based on his travels around the world. I am planning on experimenting with the process explained by Maggie Grey here to form the head/neck of the angels. The body will be based on a triangle shape to reflect the xmas tree centrepiece and will possibly incorporate fabric paper a la Pauleen’s sample, silk paper, fabrics, hand and machine embroidery, beading, hand dyed wool for the hair etc. The idea is to have the angels look like they are ‘of the sea’. I will be looking for lots of help from the new Creative Fibre Arts Group, who will also be invited to join in a workshop to create the xmas tree.

Finally, a request. I have been looking for a simple beading pattern to dress up this plain, black cardigan below. Any links or suggestions gratefully received. I have lots of hermatite beads of various types left over from this bag.

Cheers

‘Tis the season to be jolly

I have stayed up late to work on xmas presents (and to make sure 16 yr old gets home from party at decent hour!)

At the moment I am making a gift to match these shoes of a friend of mine. She mentioned how much she liked Carly’s beaded bag and how she needed a bag (and a bracelet would be nice) for the shoes she wore to the valedictory dinner. Quite a broad hint I couldn’t possibly miss!!!!

I doodled around on paper and came up with the following design. As she goes to the gym quite often and lifts weights, I thought it quite appropriate that it actually looks a bit like a weightlifter. I wonder if she’ll notice.

This was the beading onto the fabric, the closest colour match I could find. I then shopped around for some beads, glass and crystals, to make the bracelet. The lovely coloured glass beads are from Treasure Island Beads.

This picture also shows the bag made up before the drawstring is added. I will have a look for some perle cotton to make a twisted cord and sew some beads as loops to thread it through.

Last week we went on a lovely outing with the Embroiderer’s Guild to visit the Johnston Collection in East Melbourne. We only had two ladies not quite make it to the right carriage on the train! (we boarded at three different stops in Geelong) The Johnson Colllection is displayed in one of Mr Johnson’s houses and each Christmas a different region decorates the house. This year was Bendigo’s turn. The Embroiderer’s Guild of Bendigo decorated the Green Room, the CWA (Country Women’s Association) decorated the kitchen, ceramicists decorated the French sitting room, spinners and weavers had a room upstairs, as did the fibre art group and the patchworkers. All the displays were amazing. Next year it is Geelong’s turn so our Embroiderer’s guild branch will be decorating the Green Room. If you get a chance to visit, xmas is a great time to see these fantastic displays of art.

Cheers

Valedictory Dinner

Last night was Carly’s Year 12 valedictory dinner (Graduation). I received orders for her bag in different colours from a few friends! It was big enough to fit her camera, phone and id.

Rather than a picot edging I decided to FME over the top of the bag with metallic black thread. The zipper foot came in handy to sew the seams close to the beading.

 

Carly looked absolutely beautiful and did a sensational job of her last speech as School Captain.

 

Beads, beads, beads

I’m full on into Year 12 graduation preparations. Firstly I’ve beaded on some black dupion silk for a wristlet drawstring bag for Carly. We surfed the net to find a bag shape that she liked and then I drafted a pattern using recycled paper and a coffee cup.

When I went to Spotlight to buy the fabric there were three clearance bins full of packets of beads/findings etc. where I found lots of hematite beads to bead on the bag (as well as lots of other bargains-all $1- at the current exchange rate that’s 60c US). This is a small sample of the ones I bought.

I grabbed 5 of the chains, they will make good handles for bags, a few packets of the beaded balls in different colours as well as some packets of beads for Claudia.

This is the beading on the bag, I’m trying to decide whether I’m finished or whether to do a few more seed beads inside the hearts. I’ve sewn the lining and I have a satin ribbon for a drawstring. I will do a picot bead edging around the top once it’s sewn together.

After this I need to finish my capelet from the workshop I went to in July!! I’m going to wear it with a little black dress.

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

Back, at last

Well, it has been a tumultuous two weeks.

Two weeks ago the laptop refused to do anything but a flashing question mark. After a weekend of to-ing and fro-ing of emails and on-line forums I received the diagnosis – dead hard drive. And it’s only two years old. As I was working all week I didn’t get the chance to drive to Melbourne to buy a new hard drive until the following weekend  (only cost $73 for a hard drive more than twice as big as the former one and also faster!). I performed the operation myself, just a few screws and this week has been spent re-installing programs, I still have to load all the files I had backed up to an external hard drive, including all our photos. The moral of the story, don’t trust any of your equipment, and back up, back up, back up.

These two beautiful ATC’s were sent  to Claudia and I by Anne from France. Sorry Anne but I have lost all my bookmarks so I can’t link to you. The embroidery is so fine, it is a wonderful example to Claudia to aspire to.

I will post the ATC’s Claudia and I have sent in return, hopefully they will have arrived by now, although you never know how long it’s going to take!!

Claudia has added some buttonole stitch, beading and couching to hers. My base was constructed from pieces of offcuts of painted fabric and silk paper, machine stitched and hand stitched with beading. Claudia has also finished a postcard for a trade with Susan Lenz and is working on an ATC for Susan as well. We’ll post those when they have been sent.

As I had to go to Melbourne to pick up the hard drive, I took Claudia to her first Stitches and Craft Show which was on at Jeff’s shed (aka the Melbourne Exhibition Centre). We had a lovely day and Claudia had fun in a couple of workshops. I was amazed at how many children there were at the show this year. Below is the bag Claudia decorated with fused fabric flowers and Shiva stick rubbings. She also had fun with fibres and angelina.

The Stitches and Craft shows are great to find items that are not readily available in our local shops. I borrowed the following book on beaded embroidery from the local library, but could not start one of the embroideries until I found the smooth gold metallic purl. Luckily I found some on Alison Holt’s booth at the show. I would have loved to do Alison’s embroidery workshop but we couldn’t fit it in.

Cheers, till next time, happy embroidering.

Stash busting -almost

I have begun the stitch along for Stitchin Fingers’ hand stitching group and also incorporated a little stash busting. I have a large collection of fleecy offcuts from making trackies and pJs for my four children. I have been wanting to utilize them as the base for textile-ish experiments, but had a sudden brainwave while lying down having a back operation from 8 year old daughter (we were playing doctors) to use some bits for the stitch along which began on July 1st. This will become the centre ‘A’ square for a blanket which I’m sure said daughter will love, as I plan to use quirky colours and shapes.

These are the ‘a’ stitches, algerian eye stitch and arrow stitch. I began drawing the squares for the algerian eyes and then decided to go for the free style approach. Claudia is busy working on her ATC’s and postcards for gifts (to family) and swaps and I’m hoping she’ll be able to incorporate these stitches also as I work through the list.

At our last textile group get-together we spent an hour or two chatting while winding up some bead in various materials. I used painted tyvek and various papers, some not so successfully. The thinner papers probably need to stay adhered to a straw (they are the mangled ones on the right!)

One of our members was very lateral thinking and made beads from all sorts of things, including bark from the paperbark tree. They were extremely effective. I also added to my stash as Pam brought along some vintage fabrics and embroidered collars to share, and Pauline gave us a goody bag of bits and pieces (she had Claudia in mind with some flower sequins).

The last photo is some more stash ‘adding’ kind of! I’m getting ready for the Embroiderer’s Guild of Victoria bi-annual conference starting this weekend. I’ll be having some fun at Kirry Toose’s Victorian Capelet workshop. Although I enjoy hand stitching and find it very therapeutic I also love machine work so it’ll be a great two days of playing on the machine. I chose my colours from some cushions in a Vogue Living magazine, teal dupion silk as the base colour and the aubergine for the lining. I anticipate we will be doing quite a bit of layering and embellishment, so I’ll be taking lots of beads, threads and fabric scraps. (quick visit to the bead shop in the morning methinks!).

Cheers

Postal Excitement

Claudia was extremely excited to receive more ATC’s in the post yesterday, from Doreen and Ebony in Canberra. This truly is a great way to encourage young textile artists of the future. Thankyou Doreen and Ebony, Claudia absolutely loves them.

Claudia is keeping all her trades in a small photo album (pink being the favourite colour of the moment).

Susan has received her ‘garden’ postcard so I can post it here.

After painting the base fabric I fused some silk paper and purple op shop scarf

then FME’d over the top. I then hand beaded, couched some bumpy fibres and added the little butterfly charm.
I have finished the journal cover (1am Friday morning) but forgot to photograph before handing in my assessment Friday morning. I’ll have to wait until it comes back marked. I was a little disappointed in the fitting of the cover. I didn’t allow for shrinkage from the FME and had to trim the journal to fit (luckily it was just cardboard and plastic and easily cut). I also made a small tassel and machined cord to dangle from the spine.

I also began knitting a scarf (it’s getting colder here now although August is our coldest month). All the local retirees are packing up and heading north to the warmer states, we have a quite a few years to go before we can do that. (WordPress has obviously decided I have my quota of photos on this post and refuses to load anymore).
Next Thursday we have our textile group get together and are supposed to show our progress on the boxes we are making. Hmmm, I have a cardboard template so that is the task for tonight – make some progress. We are also going to dabble in fabric and paper bead making so that will be fun.
Cheers

A little bit more

This is rapidly becoming Claudia’s blog, she definitely has more to show this week. After Junior Embroidery Group on Friday she has spent all weekend stitching on her sampler, see below:

The project worked on at the session was a lining for this basket of which she is very proud. The fairies in the left over fabric are destined for a new series of ATC’s.

Claudia also managed to finish a couple more ATC’s. She was keen to use some of her stitches from her sampler, but we didn’t use the more complicated ones as she didn’t have the threads to count.

Apart from helping Claudia all weekend, I have actually managed some FME on the ‘fireworks’ journal cover. The words are xpandaprint and embossing powder and I will add beading tomorrow at the Embroidery Guild Sit and Sew.

This is the front and back, the flaps will be just the painted fabric and the lining is an offcut of gold satin.
I have finished attending my uni sessions for this semester and just have to complete two assessment pieces. However as it is a three hour round trip for me to go and hand these in at uni I’m looking at other alternatives. I need to have this Researching Arts journal ready to hand in at uni on Friday as Number one daughter and I are heading to Melbourne for some retail therapy (she has finished her midyear VCE exams) so I can get this journal there if it’s finished. I have written a poem for the title page which I’m hoping to print onto acetate sheet and place over a picture of fireworks, however the sheets I saw were only for laser printer or photocopier. Is it possible to print these on normal bubblejet printers anyone????
Cheers all.