Victorian EG Challenge and the winner is….

I was very excited when returning home from a week at the TAFTA Geelong Fibreforum (post coming) to find I had won the Challenge exhibit at the Embroiderers Guild Exhibition for my goldwork bag– on in Melbourne for two weeks until 20th October. Today I received a certificate and an amazing box of  goodies donated by the wonderful Sequin Bazaar – Yahhh! Even better when I emptied them out. Thank you to Alison Cole – goldwork master tutor.

 

 

Goldwork finished

I have been very busy over the last 3 months working on samplers and pieces for the Intermediate course in Goldwork with Alison Cole for Embroiderer’s Guild Victoria.

First piece was to be an initial (very little gold thread in there!)

Second piece was to be based on a traditional form of design-I chose Art Deco style and decorated this very cute round bag I found in an Op Shop (lots of gold, black and purple-Art Deco colours). The dodgy cotton padding was fixed before the gold purl was added :

Art Deco bag

Final piece was to be a major study of A4 size (approx.). This is to be the cover of a Triptych, which will be completed for our EGV Geelong 50th anniversary exhibition in September. The piece was embroidered as a set of separate slips (technically mostly silver work), I hand painted the background silk:

Peacock

 

 

Leaf-May ATCs

I’m assuming these ATCs have been received so I will show a little of the process I used to make them. I decided to go with a macro version of a leaf for this ATC so I started by doing an image search on the web for inspiration. I also had a couple of photos taken in our garden for inspiration as well, then sketched up a design.

To make the base I layered coloured strips of fabric and vliesofixed to a base calico fabric.

This was covered with chiffon and I added some extra colour with watercolour sticks and auditioned some threads for free machining.

and then FME’d using some cording to make the veining stand out.

and a close up with some beads hand stitched for dewdrops.

A couple of the beautiful ATCs received for this month’s theme:

And my walk this week on the beach- still winter chilly but some welcome sun and blue skies.

I almost have my May/June fabric swaps, June ATCs and a wall quilt for SWTAFE finished. All were held up by three days in bed with a winter virus but I’m hoping to get them all posted before we head off north for a welcome holiday in warmer climes this week.

New work, no photos

Hmmm, I seem to always forget to take photos before I send off finished work. I have decided I must get into the habit, as out of sight, out of mind and I forget totally about them!

On Friday I posted off my flag to India Flint’s ‘solace’ project, I used the sleeve of an Op shop linen shirt to cut out the flag shape and embroidered my words in silk/wool thread from Beautiful silks. The button and buttonhole were very handy for attaching the ties. There is still time to participate, here.

I have also sent off my finished dragon for Dijanne Cevaal’s Medieval Project. This is currently on display in  Nantes, France and will also be on display in Australia.

I do, however have some photos from other exploits and stitching.

Over the Easter holiday break, Claudia and I headed off for a few days to the Dandenongs and Melbourne. I have not been to the Dandenongs for at least 25 years. We stayed at a great BnB in Olinda:

View from our BnB bedroom window

We stopped in Sassafrass on the way for lunch and a browse and also enjoyed the quirky shops in Olinda. There were a couple of great pubs in Mt Dandenong for evening meals, Claudia was in heaven in the vintage shop there as well. Within very close proximity to our accommodation we visited many gardens including Cloudehill– $10 entry and not very friendly or helpful but lovely gardens, RJ Hamer Arboretum, which was a wonderfully quiet walk among the trees, William Ricketts Sanctuary with all his magnificent sculptured carvings, the National Rhododendron Garden which was glorius in autumn colours and by far our favourite, Alfred Nicholas Gardens in Sherbrooke which were a wonderful walk along terraced paths but unfortunately the famous ponds were drained for maintenance works and the Karwarra Australian plant garden which was quite small but had a good range of native plants for sale.

We could easily return for another few days to visit all the gardens we missed out on seeing. I highly recommend a trip in autumn, a beautiful, mild weather time for travelling and viewing all the beautiful gardens.

Autumn colour Olinda

We stopped in Melbourne on the way back to see a few exhibits including the excellent ‘Exquisite Threads English Embroidery 1600’s – 1900’s’ at the NGV.

I loved the embroidery with Australian native flowers on this gown.

NGV

Last weekend our branch of the Embroiderer’s Guild held a little exhibition at Wintergarden for the Heritage Festival. We were asked to contribute a postcard on the ANZAC theme of ‘care and compassion’, this is mine here:

I used offcuts from the aforementioned Dragon embroidery fused to pelmet vilene to form the cross, symbolising the amazing work done by the nurses during the war (there is also a great exhibition at the National Wool museum detailing many of the contributions of women during WW1 which I visited last weekend). This was covered with organza printed with a map of Flanders in France taken from my Great Uncle’s Atlas published in 1920. I added the FME of a mixing bowl and spoon, some silk, organza and beaded poppies and some hand dyed wool knitted on the little chopstick knitting needles with painted air dry clay on the ends.

Now I am heading out to the ‘studio’ to finish off:

1. ATC’s for swap with Guild

2. Indigo dyeing for fabric swap

3. Pink trophy for Cancer fundraiser netball game

4. Notebook cover (below) for the stall at our bi-annual exhibition in October

Embellishment to be added, patterned Japanese fabric will be the lining

 

Studio update

I managed to finish my ATC  and Fabric swaps on time and all have now been posted . I won’t blog about the fabric yet as it will take at least a week to arrive at destinations in USA and England. The ATCs should have arrived as they were local.

The theme for the EGV December ATC swap was green. I started with vliesofixed strips and scraps of sari silk, dyed silk rods and other fabric onto a cotton sheeting that had paint overspray from an Angie Hughes project. This was overlaid with green organza and then fine black netting. I have used FME and Flower stitcher over the layers and then burnt back sections using the heat gun. The whole piece was vliesofixed onto pelmet vilene before being cut to size and then zigzag edged. They are named ‘Eucalyptus Forest’.

Now I need to do some cleaning up in the shed so that I can start on the wedding dresses.

I have also finished off the tiling above the sink in the studio. I sourced tiles from Restorers Barn, Mill Markets, Bunnings and some beautiful handmade tiles from Gillian’s gorgeous shop, Leaf & Stone, at Wintergarden. I am really happy with how they turned out given it is my first wall tiling attempt and I chose a variety of sizes, shapes and thicknesses of the tiles. Kind of reminds of Mexican adobe style.

I also used some vanilla coloured grout out of the garage so a good, cheap, recycling effort all round.

Close up showing the different thicknesses-lots of fun grouting!

ATC and tiling

My November ATCs for the EGV swap have been received so here is the process I followed. The theme was music so I did an image search for soundwaves and came up with several stimulus photos. I had fabric from a resist dyeing challenge which had great patterning.

The fabric was ironed onto pelmet vilene and then FME with three different metallic threads to form the soundwaves

Next step was hand stitch, using a lovely hand dyed perle and space dyed silk perle. The stitch is Sharon Boggon’s TAST Beaded barbed stitch.

To complete I added ‘speakers’ using buttons and a buttonhole stitch covered washer.

The backing was formatted in text box on a word doc and printed onto canvas.

Johnston Collection Christmas

The Johnston Collection Christmas exhibition ‘Twas the Night before Xmas’ is up and running so it is now okay I think to put up photos of the items I made to contribute to the front hallway. Our brief was to think about Mr Johnston’s travels and the focus was India so the colours chosen were the rich vibrant colours typical of textiles in that region.

As my contribution to the 12 days of Christmas I decided to FME in gold thread. As the size was limited I opted for one piper and the musical notes are in multiples of 11.

Drying the FME on a meat tray after washing out the solvy

Backed and framed

The main piece I contributed was the Christmas tree. I had hoped to light the tree using a battery operated tea light but it was deemed to be too tricky. The first step was to dye the silk fibres and shiboried silk. While I was dyeing I also dyed some silk thread and silk rods.

Next step was making sheets of silk paper from the dyed fibres which were sewn onto a wire frame I constructed using the dyed silk threads.

Top of the tree showing wire to hold the dome

The shibori silk was steamed to heat set the paints. I had intended to use my Flower stitcher foot to embellish the edge of the silk, but even with paper underneath it was not successful. So I used paper and FME’d in gold thread along the edge of the silk.

Attaching the shibori silk

It was then attached by hand stitching to the frame and silk paper with variegated red silk thread.

The next stage was constructing the dome using silk strips, gold mesh and beading.

Constructing the dome

Back to the sewing machine then to make a FME gold thread skirt, this time I did use the flower stitcher to embellish.

Flower stitcher on solvy

I also made gold tassels which were added to the bottom after washing out the solvy.

The completed tree

Close up

Next item was a casket to join others made by various Geelong Artisan groups at the base of the tree. The casket was to feature the colour green. The gold motifs were made first using gel stamped onto vilene, embossing powder added and then heat gunned. Other materials used were silk fabrics, the dyed silk rods, braid, beads, FME gold thread, handstitching threads and cricula silk cocoons.

FME on the casket

Front of casket

Attaching the lining

For some reason I didn’t take a photo of the casket when it was finished.

Claudia also contributed, making some embellished decorations for a small elephant which is to be in a gift box.

She drew up her design, painted the calico elephant and then used lots of embroidery and beads to embellish (unfortunately I also did not get a finished photo).

elephant rug design

Elephant headpiece design

We are hoping to visit the display after Christmas, it is reported to be an amazing exhibition of the talented the artisans of Geelong, the Bellarine and Surfcoast.

 

 

 

 

Crewel work finished

I have had my crewel work returned from assessment (yet to receive the written summary but received positive feedback so all good). I really enjoyed crewel work, the texture of the wool, the quickness of the stitch up and the relaxation of hand stitchery. The intermediate course was a perfect winter activity!

Here are my finished pieces below, I haven’t photographed the samplers, maybe next time. All coursework will be on display at our upcoming biannual exhibition and should be mind blowing, there have been some wonderful portfolios of work produced over the last two years by some creative and accomplished stitchers. Well done everyone including the tutors.

The first piece is a bag made from a Nicole Mallalieu design. The embroidery includes free machine embroidery as well as the crewelwork and is on a pocket at the front of the bag. The design for this began with the vintage fabric I bought on a trip to A piece of Cloth. (I thought I had blogged about this visit but cannot find it, will do later) It includes left over light grey woollen fabric from a long ago project, dark grey woollen fabric from a pair of Op Shop trousers, heavy black fabric from a discount shop and some lovely red linen as lining. I have a magnetic catch on the pocket and a zipped gusset on the bag. Nicole’s pattern was a dream to sew with very explicit directions, however it is an advanced pattern so I wouldn’t attempt alone without a good background of sewing skills. It is very roomy and will be perfect for carrying lots of gear to GeeTAG group and workshops (and shopping trips!)

This cushion was designed from the roman blinds in our family room where this chair sits. It was great fun to stitch as we had to use 15-18 stitches so I could be very creative in applying the stitches even though it is a quite traditional design.

This paperweight is one of the minor pieces made from one of the samplers. I chose a nice flat river stone from the garden and felted the wool over first. The embroidery was cut out and then needle turn appliqued into place. I had originally designed a lotus flower to embroider for this but ran out of time. Might do a matching one at some stage.

Another minor piece: we had to do crewel embroidery over  a patterned piece of fabric. Most people embroidered over tapestry but I decided to make Claudia a cushion when I found the red patterned fabric. I cut out a motif and ironed onto a heavier fabric with vliesofix to make a sturdier base for the wool embroidery.

 

Stumpwork

I think I have forgotten to update on the completion of Intermediate stumpwork with the Embroiderer’s Guild.

I really enjoyed stitching stumpwork. It appealed to me because of it’s history, it’s quirky nature and the potential to be very creative and textural.

The certificate required two minor pieces and a major piece of stumpwork. The first was to be a flower.

I had my grandmother’s very old pincushion, I think the bottom might be copper?? so I decided to cover it with an embroidery. I didn’t want to alter the original permanently so it is a loose cover held on with colourful pins. The flower is based on the coneflower and I’ve included detached leaves and tendrils (a bit of a fantasy design which takes a few liberties with the botanical correctness!!)

The second piece was a beetle. My design incorporated the features of a few different beetles which were slightly ‘stretched’ to enable me to try some different techniques. Hence it has needlelace wings and a raised stem band body.

My major piece is based on Art Deco styles of design and is a monogram for a large jewellery box. I love the Macintosh stylised design so the tulips are based on that style. There were a few technical difficulties with this piece which held me up but I am very happy with how it turned out and glad I redid a few items to a better standard. I am especially happy with the crispness of the lettering which I did over pelmet vilene painted with acrylic paints to match the thread colour.

 

 

Hmmm, might have to go back and trim the threads off that leaf!!

 

 

On Thursday I begin Intermediate Crewel work, should be another fun exploration of stitch-I just love Jacobean designs.

Stumpwork: Progress and Design

Currently I am completing pieces and a folio for the Intermediate Certificate in Stumpwork with the Embroiderer’s Guild.

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