My RSS feeder has gone haywire and I am getting everyone’s entire list of blog posts every time I turn mail on. I’ve had to delete all the feeds so if I take longer to comment that is why.

Cheers

Unfortunately, not so great weather for building ponds. I had arranged a working bee at my school to create a frog pond for our environmental studies unit on water. However it has been bucketing down rain all night and all this morning so far, so we have had to postpone. However I am not complaining. After 4-5 weeks of no rain it is very welcome. As a completely amazing contrast, today Sydney is to have 41C . Let’s hope there are no raging bushfires up there.

In the first week of November I was lucky enough to participate in our Guild Branch’s Phyllis Brown Scholarship workshop, held annually. This year the workshop was two days with the embroiderer extraordinaire, Annie Huntley, making a beautiful felted bag. It was supposed to be an ‘embroidered garden’ bag, but once again I went off on a tangent, changing the basic shape  so that mine became more of a ‘turkish’ bag. More stitching and beading is to be done on this:

It was a great class in great company where we felted the bag on the first day and embroidered on the second. Everyone’s bags were slightly different but all were gorgeous. I will post some pics of the other bags on the Creative T’Arts blog when they come through.

Claudia had fun at her last Junior embroidery meeting for the year, where they stitched xmas brooches. It was a great atmosphere as all the girls sat around stitching and chatting, they are a lovely group. This is Claudia’s, not quite finished.

Our November meeting of the Creative T’Arts was last Saturday and we began with a tyvek/paper/tissue/PVA exercise. It was great fun sharing around all the bits people had brought along. Once again the pics will be on the group blog when I get them, but this was my result.

Pauline gave us each one of her lovely teacup paper napkins, Pauleen gave us some lovely glitzy leaf wrapping paper and I added some shiva rubbings on tissue paper and coloured tissue paper. For the final layer I coloured the PVA with some yellow and red acrylic paint. As the base is Tyvek it can be easily stitched into so I may cut it up to try a few different stitch possibilities.

I didn’t get onto the metal part of this workshop so that will have to wait until ‘after thesis writing’. (Probably after xmas).

Cheers

Just taking a very quick break to update this blog.

I have a deadline of this Friday to produce a few thousand coherent words for review by my supervisor on the thesis.

The Sea Angels are finished and on display at the Johnston Collection. We are not too happy with the display at that end of the room. The tree and angels were supposed to be displayed in a group, the tree flanked by the angels. However it was too crowded due to the furniture arrangement so they have dropped the tree down the step and split the angels off to the side. Then the step was a safety issue so they have place two plinths with big, ugly, empty, white urns on them in the central position. It is horrendous. Hopefully the ‘interior designers’ will rectify such a disgraceful placement. Even taking the urns off would make a difference. After the months of work spent planning and constructing it is very disappointing.

I am flitting about doing a few little items in between thesis writing but also extremely busy at work at the moment and hoping to start preparations for xmas soon. We have our Creative Group on Saturday so will post photos on Monday.

Check out this great giveaway on Candy’s blog and new website, she has some delicious hand dyed pieces.

Photos are from my morning walk

Cheers

That is what it was like the last afternoon of the fibre forum as each class member attempted to finish their bag ready for display on the public day Saturday. It is a funny thing that a hand embroidery frenzy is actually very, very quiet. All the chit chat and storytelling ceased! I had completed my bag (which was much smaller) the previous day and was relaxedly stitching a ‘fritillery’ tassel (another of Catherine Howell’s beautiful designs) with the help of Claudia who had come along for the last day.

My finished fritillary:

So here is a photo journal of the week’s stitching and some photos of the very lovely ladies with whom I had the pleasure of spending the week: Calm Catherine, Terrific Tina, Super Sue, Krafty Kate and Marvellous Marlene

Catherine and Marlene:

Kate sewing her bag together:

Sue constructing her bag:

Tina also happily constructing:

Claudia offering the resident nun, who popped up in a different place continuously, some smarties:

The other cane couple who were often up to no good:

Here are some photos of my bag as it progressed during the week:

Felt flowers added:

Beaded and frilled flowers added:

Berries and dangles added and bag completed:

Here is our lovely tutor Catherine with the finished bag display:

A close up of some of the bags:

And a picture of all the happy gang:

Thankyou all, it was wonderful to share this week with you and get to know you all.

Perhaps we could reunite at another Catherine Howell workshop!!

Cheers.

What an absolute pleasure it was today to sit and stitch with Catherine Howell and the other lovely ladies in our Geelong Fibre Forum Class. Handstitching must be the most therapeutic activity I know and when it is with a tutor as lovely as Catherine it is bliss. A big thank you goes to TAFTA for the bursary to attend.

I am making Catherine’s Venetian bag and my box of goodies is just delicious: beautiful hand dyed fabrics, silk ribbons and threads to work with.

Here is stage 1 of the ribbon roses (looking like Madonna’s pointy bra!)

Then the completed roses sewn with the beautifully coloured silk ribbons:

And the roses attached to the silk velvet front of the bag:

Originally I was supposed to be doing Catherine’s Fruitful Abundance bag but I felt I would have more use out of the Venetian bag, and it would also look great displayed on a mannequin with my Grandmother’s wedding dress from the late 1920’s.

Also this bag may not take as long to make so I’m hoping to make one of Catherine’s Fritillaries, gorgeous embroidered and beaded flower tassels.

Off for some more stitching tomorrow.

Cheers

The Greatest team of all………………..

Well done boys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cheers

The stitching is on-going as I add little extras to the sea angels; here are a couple of snippets (I have been powering through the romeo for all the metallic lace):

I am into buttons at the moment (after the workshop making some) and I’m currently reading this really interesting and informative book on the history of buttons:

And this one on making all sorts of interesting buttons (some of which may find their way onto the rose sea angel):

Now for some bargains picked up from the local Op Shop, handily opposite the furniture warehouse where I was checking out beds for youngest son. This would have to be my favourite op shop for picking up great stitching supplies. For $14 I scored over a metre of good quality wool gaberdine, 2 metres of a silky polyester (feels very similar to the fabric in my favourite Basque dress and would look sensational printed with a gold motif), a fat quarter of a toning batik cotton (also good quality) – I can see a bag happening here, 4 new zips, 2 silk ties, a chiffon scarf, large piece of red synthetic felt, assorted buttons, a reel of a very nice variegated pink cotton, a spare bobbin case for my Janome (I can now use this for fiddling with the tension), a thin strip of velcro and over a metre of hand crocheted cotton edging.

What a haul!!

Yet again we have missed out on tickets in the Geelong Footy Club ballot so we will be watching from home; at least we won’t get wet!

GO CATS

Cheers

Or Dyeing with Dijanne.

Today I was in Leopold for a dyeing workshop with Dijanne Cevaal, textile artist from Gellibrand in the Otways (organised by Geelong Sewing Centre). Dijanne specializes in the most beautifully designed and executed machine and hand embroidery over her own printed and/or dyed fabrics. We were able to view and touch her beautiful artworks up close as she brought a huge selection of finished large and smaller pieces to show.  It was a small group of seven which meant plenty of personal attention, lots of room to spread out and much sharing of information. Dijanne was very generous in sharing her tips and techniques and all participants had a wonderful selection of dyed fabrics by the end of the day.

One of the techniques demonstrated was that used by Dijanne to produce her wonderful forest piece. Here is my version, 146 cm long x 77 cm deep.

This one is a smaller piece which I pleated diagonally and scrunched a little before dyeing:

Some moody blues:

And a variety of red/pink/orange:

Finally this is the wool I dyed a couple of weeks ago as the hair for the sea angels. I was very relieved when the colours came out perfectly toned for the rest of the bits I have done.

Cheers

Just a P.S. from the last post, I have discovered how much easier it is to sew on the romeo with my teflon foot, just magic!

Cheers

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