Bag and books

Another catch up on items made in 2021. Early in 2019 we had a mini workshop at GeeTAG on using Inktense pencils and crayons. I decided to research different sea stars and created a panel of 8 on cotton fabric. I have used 4 of these on the komebukuro bag I made of leftover and recycled denim fabric. I added hand stitch and beading. The drawstring is half kumihimo cord and half wrapped cord with beads Effie Mitrofanis style. The lining is a cotton sateen second.

Sateen lining

My bookmaking has come to a standstill in the last 6 months due to working long hours but these are two coptic binding books I made earlier in 2020. The covers are some of my handmade paper using t-shirt material and recycled paper. Each signature has two sheets of drawing paper with a sheet of watercolour paper in the middle. The signatures are also wrapped in a sheet of contrasting hand made paper. The handmade paper seems to tear a little with the coptic binding so I need to investigate that further. I am currently also investigating how to prevent the cardboard cover from showing through the handmade paper and came across the process of making bookcloth here using rice or kozo paper and wheat paste. I will have a try at covering first with rice paper followed by the handmade paper to see if that gives a better result.

Coptic binding

The beginning of 2022 will be spent reorganising the creative making spaces and giving away anything I will not be using in the future. Then it will be onto my WIP list.

2021 Round off

For the last 6 months of 2021, I was working 3 part time jobs as once gain the research project for the PhD stalled due to Covid restrictions and lockdowns. The jobs were interesting and all consuming so not much was created on the textile front. Here are a few items that were completed:

This year we resurrected the ATASDA VIC group under the enthusiastic guidance of Caz Rogers as Convener. Due to Covid restrictions, we met once a month on zoom and completed a few challenges and swaps. Below you can see the results from our latest challenge/swap which was for an ATC on the theme ‘girl power’.

I forgot to take a photo of mine before they were posted, however this is the base fabric before they were handstitched with v’s in a variegated thread. The base is needlefelted and Free Machine Embroidered (FME) with ‘suffragette’ machine stitched all over.

The previous and first challenge was about ‘My Place’

Mine was the gum blossom as we are literally surrounded by gum trees, not a good thing if a bushfire ever comes through! Below are also my set of gum blossoms ready to be finished off and posted to the swap partners.

To announce the arrival of the VIC group into ATASDA we held an Australia wide challenge. Each member of ATASDA was posted a sheet of mulberry paper to make into a Paper bag shaped Luminary. There were some quite interesting and beautiful luminaries created. ATASDA members can view these on the website members’ gallery. Mine was based on the endangered orange bellied parrot which visits wetlands close by:

My upcycle is based on an apron I found in an op shop. I coffee dyed the apron, cut it up and tacked on some ecodyed and printed fabrics. I did attempt some shibori stitching but the coffee wasn’t strong enough to dye it clearly. I will make it into a ‘button bag’ and use up some of my collection of buttons. Quite often if I am ecodyeing I will pop some of the dye liquid in a jar and add some bits and pieces like threads and buttons:

Lots of hand stitching to go.

I was struggling for inspiration with the items I was given for the name badge when I saw some Art Deco brooches that gave me an idea, just waiting for my dremel to arrive!