Just a heads up to join up for Sharon B’s Take a Stitch Tuesday, a great way to atitch along and try out some new ideas.

Begins first week of January

Cheers

Jo

Hopefully I have a large enough colour range to begin designing and making a ‘Monet’ quilt in the style and techniques of Gloria Loughman.

Purples & Blues

Greens

Yellows through to reds

Most of the fabric has interesting patterning such as this blue one:

Beautiful!!

Our class was taught by the ever enthusiastic master craftswoman, Alison Cole.

We need to complete two minor pieces of stumpwork and one major piece. I have completed a stumpwork Coneflower which I designed to cover an antique brass based pincushion inherited from my grandmother.

Design sketches

My second piece is a beetle mounted onto a teeny circular box.

Design sketches

The major piece is inspired by Art Deco and is a monogram style design to fit a jarrah box:

Design sketch

Are we there yet??

The boys drove up through the Mallee to visit relatives, continued north to Mildura and then west across through the Barossa to Adelaide (almost 1000km and 3 days).

Claudia and I flew direct to Adelaide, South Australia from Melbourne (1 hour) to meet up.

First stop was the seaside suburb of Glenelg where we stayed for two days in a fun retro apartment. We looked at Port Adelaide, the City Centre and drove into the Adelaide Hills to visit the quaint town of Hahndorf.

As we drove south along the coast we deviated to a few beaches and wineries/breweries including Thomas Hardy’s historic Tintara at McLaren Vale.

Moreton Bay Fig at Tintara winery

The river meets the sea

More sensational scenery on the route south

Our big destination though was Kangaroo Island. At 150kms long this is no small island. Three days on the island was not enough to really enjoy all the beautiful and fascinating spots to see, however it gave us a taste. We travelled over in comfort on the car ferry (50 minutes) and drove to American River, our base for the 3 days. The island was celebrating with an Art, Food & Wine festival so there were plenty of events to keep us busy.

Fishing at Vivonne Bay

The Remarkables

Seal at Admiral's Arch

Snorkelling at Stokes Bay

To get to Stokes Bay you need to walk through a tunnel in the rocks, fun for the kids.

Pelicans at Emu Bay

After catching the late ferry to Cape Jervis we drove in darkness to Victor Harbour for our next stop.

Harbourside at Victor Harbour

Being the long weekend there was a definite carnival atmosphere until we escaped to walk around Granite Island just across the boardwalk.

Granite island has lots of granite!

And lots of wildlife but we were too late/early for the fairy penguins.

As we continued on, the boys stopped for a surf with the whales:

Spot the whale!

We drove around The Coorong on the Limestone Coast, stopping at Robe for the night.

Wise words

We continued on to Mt Gambier and trekked around the ‘Blue Lake’.

Final stop on the trip was Warrnambool which is close enough for us to go back and spend longer.

Firstly I will follow up July, these are the ATC’s we sent in July to Anne in France:

Mine is FME and beading over a linoprint.

I won’t repeat news that is already blogged on the GeeTAG group blog. Visit there for recent workshops including today’s dyeing day at Anglesea. My pots of fabric, threads and napkins are looking good in their little jars and will be left to brew for a fortnight before being rinsed out:

These will result in 24 clear colour gradations plus a few variations. Some of our ‘dyehards’ altered the original recipe, adding brown, olive green or aubergine to the dyepots. It will be interesting to see our results in a fortnight.

My clean up rag was predominantly green:

My dyed fabrics (and matching threads) are destined for a large (KS) quilt based on Monet’s waterlillies and incorporating Gloria Loughman’s quilting techniques.

Last weekend was our Guild’s Bi-ennial exhibition(but has been three years due to the Johnston Collection christmas exhibition in 2009). I don’t have my bits and pieces back yet but this is a picture of the piece for one of our group exhibits. Everyone took one of Pauline’s linoprints to embellish how they please:

I used Kim Thittichai’s Hot Spots and glitter on the border.

Yesterday we received some beautiful autumn (in France) stitchery from Anne:

I will blog our swap ATC’s shortly after Anne has received them.

I’ll finish this post with a photo of my amazing daughter at her graduation with distinctions in Arts-Journalism & Indonesian from Deakin University.

Coming up next: a photo tour of our road trip-Adelaide to home.

I will post ours when I know Anne has received them.

I have been quietly beavering away at some stumpwork embroidery. I am hoping to post some finished pieces next week, now I am on school holidays. The long term aim is to make a casket but for now I will do some small pieces for the Intermediate certificate I am doing with Alison Cole through the Embroiderer’s Guild. I couldn’t resist Alison’s latest beautiful book full of her gorgeous embroidery.

Our Creative textiles group (now renamed Gee TAG-for Geelong Textile Arts Group) has been working on linocutting and printing. This is a print of the two linocuts I made during our meeting:

and then Pauline’s which has been printed out for everyone in our group as a challlenge. It will be interesting to see how differently they all turn out.

Cheers

Every time we went to listen to one of Dale‘s talks I had to go back to her stall to purchase something!! Totally deliberate on Dale’s part I am sure. Should be set now for the remainder of the year!!

Claudia and I went to watch a spring opening Japanese bag being made as we missed booking in for the class. (a project for the holidays) and then Claudia booked in to the Brother stall to make an origami bag. The lovely lady on the stall also gave her a pink one to make at home (another holiday project).

Claudia loved the quilt exhibitions and took photos of her favourites (she was especially into 3D and texture!). Sorry I didn’t get to note down who made which quilt.

Finally, just a pic from the Herald Sun. We tennis girls had fun sloshing a little champagne around for a HeraldSun photo shoot down at the beach:

You can read the whole story here.

.

Some amazing woven work:

Mandy’s lovely piece from Angie Hughes workshop:

Some gorgeous felting:

And some pieces from my group. One of our briefs was to create a memory a day:

And a lovely compositional memory piece:

Now to the dragonflies: in June I hope to begin an Intermediate course on Stumpwork with the Embroiderer’s Guild. Our wonderful friend, Jenny, arranged the course to run when I expressed an interest in making a stumpwork casket. Sadly Jenny died late last year and is sadly missed at the Guild.

Here is a typical photo of her, she was always such an enthusiastic member of our Creative group. She was also a perfectionist, her embroidery and textiles were always completely, professionally finished and presented.

To get ready for the intermediate course I have been going to fortnightly lessons in stumpwork with another friend of Jenny’s, Jillian, at Van Loon’s Nursery in Wallington. It is a lovely setting. The cafe is very handy for lunch and the nursery plants are very tempting on the way out! It is also lovely to sit and stitch in great company for 2 hours. So far I have one wing and one body of a dragonfly:

Cheers

Claudia and I have also been practicing our sketching and watercolouring via Jane Le Fazio’s online class.

First attempt!!

Getting better??

And then we moved onto leaves:

Just before I go and alter two dresses for daughter number 1′s 21st this coming weekend, here are Claudia and I getting some tips from Roger at the Australian Open Tennis!!

Cheers.

Jo.