Slow and Steady

…..wins the race.

I love the idea of slow cloth, takes the pressure off completely and makes the whole process so much more enjoyable (as long as it doesn’t degenerate into procrastination). It’s all in the mindset, I find. If you look at the process of mulling over the possibilities in a positive way it becomes a constructive thing to do. Of course there is still an important place for the frenetic when inspiration comes pouring out, because work that is totally spontaneous can have fantastic results.

Most of my current projects are of the ’slow’ variety.

I am still working on my ’sea angels’ and finding many possibilities opening up as ideas are sparked from viewing lots of creative blogs.

I am also still working on my ‘killed catalogues’, a new idea for which was sparked off by Heather’s fantastic chessmen.

Here are a couple of great ATC’s we have swapped.

On the left is Gillian’s first try at ATC’s, very interesting textures, and on the right the amazingly talented Ebony’s sent to Claudia.

Claudia’s return ATC to Ebony, which should have arrived by now (which I can’t find a photo of, whoops) was part of this random felting she did at our March textile group. Claudia used her ATC window to choose the sections she wanted to cut out. She chose some colours of machine embroidery rayon and had fun FME’ing the circles and outlines. I always make sure Claudia puts on the safety glasses for this stage in case she breaks a needle. She also chose one to finish and send off to Val (forgot to scan that one too!!)

Here are a few more of Claudia’s in production.

I have been also slowly continuing with the Stitch Explorer for April and May. April was Casalguido embroidery and May was needleweaving. These two are complementary styles of stitching so I decided to combine them for this sampler.

The first stage, casalguido or padded raised stem band stitch, shows stranded cotton laid down, couched with sewing thread and then satin stitched with more stranded cotton. The perpendicular stitches are then placed in the second photo and I will try some cotton a broder to cover this with the final layer, stem stitch.

The base is four sided stitch using two strands of DMC. I will be doing some needlewoven autumn leaves in a hand dyed variegated pearl  bought from Sharon to finish off.

I found Effie Mitrofanis’ book a wonderful guide to this stitch, with clear directions and some inspiring contemporary embroidery.

I have also ordered Effie’s needleweaving book from the library as well, so I’m sure that will also contain some more great ideas and instructions.

Time to get off the computer and finish the housework, so I can sit and stitch!!

Cheers

Quilts galore

I was going to call this post ‘just a quickie’ as it’s late and I’m tired after a couple of big days in Melbourne, but thought better of it.

Thursday we took the school on an excursion (two hours driving each way) to the Ceres Environmental Education Centre in Brunswick. This is an area in the inner suburbs which is teaching sustainability by example. There is a fantastic cafe with yummy food, mostly grown on site and many environmentally friendly systems operating, showcasing recycling, solar power, water conservation etc. We all had a wonderful, if tiring day.

Friday I had to pop up to Melbourne once again to uni, so I took the opportunity to drop into the Australasian Quilt Convention at the Royal Exhibition Buildings. Unfortunately this building is too cavernous to air condition so it was nice to stop every now and then in front of  a fan as it was a very warm day. Dale’s Embellisher Challenge was on display with some really lovely and interesting pieces. I booked in for an Embellisher workshop to have a try at the Babylock. We made the scarf below which was great fun.

There were also some lovely textured quilts in amongst the more traditional styles. I took a few close up photos of the texture and stitching and also enjoyed seeing Dijanne Cevaal’s beautiful art ‘in the flesh’.

 

 

And finally some purchases: some rubbing plates for shiva sticks, beautiful hand dyed silk thread and silk carrier rods from Dale (Dale had some great pieces and little books made from the carrier rods that she showed in her little talk/demo); some cotton lace which will be used to add texture; inkjet printable fabric; some lovely NZ batiks (from Tulis textiles); and I also bought a bias strip maker, a beading foot for my sewing machine, a pendant threadcutter to use on the plane and a little bunny Japanese button for Claudia.

Time for bed

Cheers