Textileplay - musings about, and examples of my work

Fabric postcards

2011-04-03T17:04:00.000+10:00

Hmm, I see it is April already - where did March go?

Having cleared the deck of a number of fairly conventional quilts I needed to get done, I indulged myself doing what I really want to be doing - dyeing and printing my own fabric using a range of surface design techniques. And just for fun, made up some fabric postcards - I like working small.

Some quilts finished - and some... almost!

2011-02-13T14:23:00.000+11:00

I finished my first quilt for the year - the Ordinary Times quilt for my old parish church in Canberra - been dragging my heels on getting it done, so pleasaed that I can tick it off the list at last.

The colour for ordinary times is green - representing growth. So I cut squares from as many different greens as I had - which was quite a lot! As always with a scrap quilt, I interpreted 'green' as widely as possible - not quite letting it go into blue -but definitely lots of olives and yellowy greens, shading down into some browny shades too. And lots of soft grey greens representing eucalypts. I wanted a sense of movement, and originally intended using Martha Thompson's Square Dance technique, where you arrange and sew together lots of squares then using a pinwheel template, cut new squares which have four different adjoining fabrics - its a good tessallating pattern, with lots of movement. I even made a small sample just to remind myself how to do it.

But then I hit a snag. First, I went ahead and cut out all the square the WRONG SIZE. Failing to read the instructions properly (now that's never happened before!), I cut the finished size. I did some quick maths and realised that while I could still go ahead with the technique, it was going to be very, very tedious indeed. The quilt is big - 80 x 110 inches - 200cm x 275cm, and the thought of wrestling it on my cutting table cutting out new squares and sewing it all back together a second time made me feel faint.

So, I looked at my pile of squares and thought - hmm, what to do. In the end I settled for stacking four different fabrics and just free hand cutting to get a sort of pinwheel shape and sewing them back together. I did think that I would put some autumn colours in a few to be highlights of swirling leaves, but I soon realised that it made the whole thing look spotty and disjointed - there was no focal point.

Ordinary times goes for a total of 32 - 33 weeks of the year - although not continuously, but it is still a long time for people to be looking at this thing, so I wanted it to have movement and be interesting, but also to allow for quiet contemplation.

So, I decided it needed a focal point, and to make that a simple cross in the upper right. I did a quick mock up in EQ7 and went from there.

I sorted out my fabrics into darks, med darks, mediums, medium lights and lights, and just started stacking, cutting, sewing and constructing blocks. I ended up with a big pile - well, several piles.

Then I started laying them out on the design wall, I started with the cross shape, using the lightest fabrics, then arranged stuff around them. Once I had that big together, the rest just fell into place.

Here is the finished top, hung from the railing of our deck. It is the only place I had to hang something this big and stand back and get a photo. I loaded it up on my quilting frame and did a leafy type pantograph design, whacked a facing and a hanging sleeve on it and now it has gone to its new home. Hope they like it. But its a gift, not a commission, so I guess I am not going to worry too much - someone will like it! I have always found that when I give quilts, I never look back, wondering whaat happened to them. My pleasure is in designing and making them - what happens to them after that doesn't really worry me too much. Of course, I don't gift quilts to people who I think aren't going to appreciate them - if I thought there was a real chance a quilt I made was going to end up in the dog's basket, or being used to wrap furniture in a removal van, I would give that person something else that I thought they might value more.

Once I got that out of the way, I could get on and do something for myself - or more correctly for one of my grandsons. Last year I started making some letters but they got put away. When I saw Tonya's book being advertised in the blogosphere, it prompted me to pull them out and get finished.

Making these letter is a lot of fun - no real rules, just a few simple guidelines and off you go. I realised when I looked at the photo that I made a mistake putting that band of red white and black fabric under the date - it should have just gone straight to the spotty sashing, but by then I had the outer border on and really couldn't be fussed unpicking it all. I am sure Leo won't mind. I am binding it with the same black and white spots, and that will get done this afternoon, while watching some old episodes of Dr Who that I missed the first time around, then it is in the mail to Melbourne. So, that will be two completed quilts so far this year. I'm on a roll!

I have a nearly completed top on my design wall. Lots of white, which isn't normally my thing, but during the fund raising that went on around a number of blogs following the floods in Queensland, I came across this designer who was offering to donate the sales from her patterns to the flood appeal. Well that sounded like a pretty good deal to me, so I bought a couple of her patterns. Kate is obviously part of what I believe is christened the "modern' quilt movement! Lots of white, bright fresh fabrics and free cutting. Her quilts and others in that style certainly do look bright and fresh, and if is attracting a whole new generation to quilting, then it is a damn good thing, I say.

Anyway, I whipped this up - not quite following the pattern (sorry Kate) with some brights that I bought at the end of 2009, while suffering cabin fever in the apartment. Don't know what possessed me, as they aren't really me, but what the heck. This will go to Canberra Quilters Quilts for Others program, once I get it finished.

I just noticed a dark rectangle shape shadowing behind this quilt. Canberra Quilters has an annual challenge, which is always 70cm by 50cm. I am not good at visualing space, so I arranged some leftover strips on my design wall to mark out that area so I could get my head around how big this needed to be. I just plopped the quilt top over it.

The theme for the challenge this year is "HOME". I have been thinking about how to represent that. I could of course use my new found letter-making skills too make a HOME SWEET HOME quilt, with a couple of wonky houses, but that is a) a bit obvious, b) a bit naff, and c) not really me. So, what else?

Homes and the loss of them is very much to the forefront of peoples' minds here. With the floods/cyclone in Qld and fires in Perth, many people are homeless. We have just marked the second anniversary of the terrible fires in Victoria which killed over 170 people and destroyed many homes - almost entire villages. Some of those people are still homeless, too traumatised, emotionallly or financially to think of rebuilding.

In Qld, there are seven people still missing when a fllash flood swept through a small farming community, tearing houses from their foundations and washing away the occupants within. We think of homes as our sanctuary, our safe place. But for some it is anything but. There was an article in the paper this weekend about some adults who had been sentenced to jail for systematically abusing and starving a number of children, supposedly in their care. For these children, 'home' was a hell from which they have now been rescued, but the physical and phsychogical scars will remain with them for life. A few years ago, the state government ran a campaign called 'home is where the ~~heart~~ hurt is', highlighting domestic abuse.

Lots to think about there - I had better get cracking.

Colours of summer

2011-01-07T13:00:00.000+11:00

On my trips to the local shops I always pass these wonderful displays of red hot pokers and agapanthus - they are growing wild on the reserve above one of the local coves. I keep meaning to stop and photograph them, so on my way back from the hairdresser this morning, I did just that.

I love the colour of agapanthus - in Victoria they are a declared noxious weed - but here, they seem to be everywhere (I guess that is what noxious weeds do!). Shame to call something so pretty noxious.

This and that

2011-01-06T08:55:00.000+11:00

This is the time of year when I would normally take down the Christmas decorations - but as I didn't put any up, I am saved that chore! I have always made a big thing about our christmas tree - but for Christmas 2009, we were in the apartment, so had nowhere to put it, so I gave it to daughter number 2, as we were having Christmas at her house. And there it stayed - I didn't feel the need to bring it down to the coast - firstly I don't have anywhere to put it up without moving a large piece of furniture, and secondly, it just doesn't seem to fit. All that northern hemisphere emphasis on mid-winter looks a bit silly against the deep blue backdrop of the Australian summer sky and the Pacific. My girls weren't too impressed at the lack of a tree - it was obviously part of their childhood memory of christmas, so they were a bit put out. Never mind, they'll get over it.

One concession I did make was to make stockings for the two grandbabies. The girls have had stockings since they were little, and over the years, I have made extras for special people who have spent Christmas with us. I can just about get away without having a tree, but would have a full scale riot on my hands if I dispensed with the stocking tradition. This was Leo's first Christmas, so in the few days I had after starting leave before they all arrived, I made this for him.

Lincoln's was the same style, but I had to make a thermofax screen to fit his name on - too many letters to applique in a reasonable size - couldn't the girls thing of these things before choosing names for their children??! Here is Leo enjoying his first visit to Nanny and Poppy's place for Christmas and visiting the beach. I guess for my grandkids, memories of Christmas will be of sea and sand, not evergreen trees decked in lights - and that's ok!

Here is a clever shot of Lincoln in a typically thoughtful pose. My eldest daughter took this using my new camera - I don't know how she managed to get this two shots combined - I must read the instruction manual and find out - apparently you can take videos too - not sure I am up to that yet.

We have been doing quite a bit of kayaking over the holidays. Trouble is the waterways are very crowded at this time of year with all the holiday makers - some of our favourite spots are completely ruined by the arrival of skiers and jet skis - I really can't see why people have to tear around churning up the water, creating pollution and noise and spoiling a beautiful spot for every other user. Completely inconsiderate. We even heard someone yesterday complaining that they had to slow down, because the damn kayakers were in their way! I had a birthday just before Christmas (as I usually do!) and Karl got me a new camera that can tolerate getting wet - I was a bit worried about using my normal camera with wet hands and water sloshing about while kayaking. But there are so many wonderful things to photograph. One of the delights of being on the water is that you get to see things from a completely different perspective, and you get to see things you normally would never see at all.

These lines are the ripples caused by a fishing boat going by. Interesting lines!

There is a sea eagle nest at Lake Corunna, about 10 minutes from home. This was the first day I had my new camera, so didn't get the zoom right - although you can click for a bigger version. Shortly after I took this, the other one (don't know if it was male of female) came to join its partner on the branch. Very majestic and beautiful birds.

This is an old jetty on Wagonga inlet.

Lots of oyster farms in the inlet. I can safely paddle about in these areas without fear of speedboats mowing me down, as it is too shallow for them.

And finally - to show that the investment in the paddle kayak for fishing was worthwhile - Karl's first big catch - a flathead from the Tuross River. We had it for dinner last night - yum!

New Year catch up

2011-01-02T14:45:00.001+11:00

Hmm, I have been a bit slack in the blogging department - so thought I had better catch up - start off the New year as I mean to go, etc.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year celebration. From reading blogs and watching the news, it is obvious that many people didn't. The heavy snow in Europe/UK and US obviously caused havoc - I can't think of anything worse than being stuck sleeping on an airport floor (or indeed, any floor) for days - good reason to stay home, I reckon! Which is what we did.

Daughters, partners and the two grandsons came down for their first Christmas with us in our new house. It was noisy, hectic and fun - mostly!

I did a bit of sewing here and there. I saw Maria Elkins work in QA and decided to give her method of fabric portraits a go. This was my first attempt, with the source photo below - actually I am not sure it is exactly that photo, but it was one taken at the same time.

My second attempt, with daughter number two. Thank goodness she wasn't wearing her glasses, which would have made it more difficult!

It is a very simple, and very effective technique, which depends on using double sided, sticky webbing - Steam a seam Lite2, I think it is called. Trouble is, it isn't readily available here in Oz, so I had to mail order some. By the time I added in postage, it worked out at around $13 a meter!!! So next time Hancocks of Paducah had their terrific, free postage (yes, even to the other side of the world!) deal on, I ordered some from there - less than $5 a metre!

There is a big debate going on here at the moment about people ordering things online and avoiding GST (the national sales tax) - retailers want the $1000 limit (under which, you don't have to pay GST on goods ordered from overseas online) scrapped. But they really don't get it - even if I paid an extra 10% to bring the stuff in from the US, I would still be miles ahead.

Yes, I know businesses have overheads, and Australia is a small market in a big country a long way from everywhere, so we don't have economies of scale etc etc. BUT, businesses are just that - not charitites - and if I have a $ to spend and I can get nearly three times the value by shopping online/overseas, then I will.
I also made a quilt late last year, quite a large one. It was an advent quilt for my previous parish church - I first made Lent and Easter quilts about ten years ago and had intended to follow up with others for the main liturgical seasons - but life got in the way, and I didn't get around to it. So late last year (as in 2010!) I started putting together an Advent quilt - in many different mauvey blues, with the starts of the southern cross in rose - the colours reflect the Advent colours used in Australia, and the southern cross is a far more relevant emblem of light in our southern summer skies than the candles traditionally housed within an evergreen wreath - light in the winter darkness is fine for the northern hemisphere at this time of year, but doesn't quite work for us!

Unfortunately, I don't have a photo,as it was too big to hang anywhere here - but I have asked that they take a photo in situ and send it to me -I'll post it when it arrives.

I am working on an Ordinary times quilt now - the last one - lots of greens - lots of sewing - I worked out yesterday that it will have 1,280 pieces! Yikes, better get back to sewing.

Ups and downs

2010-11-14T11:21:00.000+11:00

A definite up for me this week was being the lucky recipient of Cynthia St Charles' mail art project. Look what arrived in my letter box on Friday.

Lucky me!

The biggest down - not just of this week, but for a very long time indeed, was losing our beautiful miniature schnauzer, Belle, to a paralysis tick. We are heartbroken. She would have been fifteen next month, and she had been part of our family since she was eight weeks old. As we are learning the hard way, the price you pay for all those years of unconditional love and devotion your dog gives you is the gaping void they leave in your life when they go.

Misadventure

2010-10-17T14:25:00.000+11:00

The weekend weather hasn't been as good as could be expected for this time of year. Friday it rained most of the day with big swells, and Saturday was forecast to be pretty grim with all sorts of weather warnings, including snow - snow?? What's going on? Various parts of the east coast did cop some nasty floods, storms and winds, but we escaped largely unscathed. Sunday dawned bright a sparkly.

This was the view from my table as I had my morning coffee. The white splash in the centre, helpfully highlighted - is actually a whale slapping its tail about - but you needed the binoculars to see that level of detail. With a day this lovely, we decided to go kayaking.

Off we went down to the local lake - it is very local, only five minutes away - lots of boat trailers in the car park - many fishermen off fishing. And a few enjoying non-motorised sailing activity.

Flushed with the success of my shakedown cruise last week, I merrily launched into the lake - and - my kayak drifted off, without me in it! Oh dear, that wasn't supposed to happen. I stood, rooted to the spot with my feet stuck in the mud watching it drift away out into the centre. I finally yelled to Karl who was busy unloading his kayak and he jumped in his and pedalled off to recover mine. Lesson learned - always have the kayak between you and the shore when attempting to board!

After that misadventure, I went off paddling in some quiet spots and he kitted his out for fishing and ventured off to somewhere he hoped the flathead were lurking.

I got tired and decided to come in before he was ready so I got the camera and wandered around the shore taking snaps of textures that caught my eye.

Printing on fabric - and a new diversion

2010-10-10T09:07:00.000+11:00

I have mentioned from time to time that I like to ride my bike - in fact I love my bike - it even says so, right on the handlebars! Which, I have noticed, are starting to show signs of rust. It is wonderful living by the sea, but it is an unforgiving and very harsh environment - still, that's good for rust printing fabric - I have to admit I have my eye on the grid that goes over my neighbour's drain - it is wonderfully rusty and would look great on fabric - wonder if they would notice if I borrowed it for a few hours next hot sunny day we have??

Oh sorry, I digress. Well, I now have a new mode of locomotion to entertain (and occasionally terrify) me - a kayak!! There is no shortage of waterways down here - in fact, I believe that Eurobodalla, the name of the shire, means land of many waters, and ain't that the truth. There are lakes, inlets, rivers, estuaries and all sorts of other watery bits, the correct geographical description of which eludes me. There is of course also the mother of all watey bits, the Pacific Ocean, but I have absolutely NO intention of ever venturing out there!

So here is my new baby -- a Hobie Lanai kayak. Mine is yellow - I figure if I do ever get swept away and lost at sea, the yellow will be easier to spot than the grey one behind, which is Karl's and intended for fishing - apparently you are supposed to sneak up on the fish and not draw attention to yourself, so yellow kayaks are not popular with fisherpersons.

Now as a woman of a certain age, let me tell you that getting in and out of a kayak is no mean feat. Fortunately, my first attempts last weekend when we borrowed a neighbour's kayak to have a go were not captured by video - at least I hope not - if you have heard of a You Tube video of a large middle aged woman trying to exit a kayak and not succeeding going viral - don't tell me.

There are countless helpful (not) videos on the internet showing the 'correct' way to enter and exit a kayak, but I note that these all feature young, supple, strong 'fitness instructors' who lithely and gracefully lower themselves into the vessel and then effortlessley lift themselves out. Well let me tell you, that doesn't work for someone my age as my knees are well past the stage of being able to effortlessley lift me from a position of sitting on the ground - assuming I have managed to get myself onto the ground to start with.

After a bit of experimenting, I have found that the best way to enter is to walk the kayak into water just below knee depth and then back up to the boat, drop my backside into the seat, then swing my legs in. I didn't initially try this approach, as I assumed that it would cause the vessel to tip over, but these touring kayaks are so stable, that doesn't happen. Exiting is pretty much the reverse, but with the added assistance of sticking the paddle into the sand and using it like a staff to help me get up and keep me stable. It works so far. I saw another lady my age getting out of her kayak yesterday and she pulled into shore, worked here way from sitting to getting on here hands and knees then eased herself up from there. Fortunately all our watersays have sandy shores - don't think that would work so well in rocky places, or with mud or mangroves.

Okay - so now I can get into it. The instruction manual says to take your kayak on a 'shakedown cruise' before venturing off on a big trip, to make sure you know how it works and how to handle it etc. So off we went on our shakedown cruise, five minutes from home, along the estuary between the local lake and the sea. We had paddled about there last week in our borrowed kayak and found it accessible and safe. Unfortunately, this time, we went when the tide was running out very strongly - as I tootled down towards the mouth I got caught up in a strong current and nearly came up close and personal to a large concrete pylon holding up the pedestrian bridge. So, shakedown cruise behind me, I guess I am ready for my maiden voyage! Trouble is I don't have a life vest yet, as they didn't have my size (they only stocked small/medium - doubtless to accommodate all those lithe fitness instructors). I will be picking it up next week, so for now, I am not venturing anywhere out of my depth or where I run the risk of getting thrown out of the kayak - that leaves pretty much everywhere down here, except for the ocean, which is fine by me.

Oh, and I found out that life jackets aren't called that anymore - they are PFDs. Now in my world, PFD means prepared for dyeing fabric. I couldn't immediately see how swathing myself in undyed Kona cotton was likely to keep me afloat, but in the seafaring community, a PFD is a personal flotation device.

But in relation to PFD fabric, I have been playing with printing on soda soaked fabric using thickened dyes - the ones that arrived from the US a couple of weeks ago. I had an urge to play with letters and numbers. These have been screened using both positive and negative images.

These are largeish wooden numbers I got at a craft store. I place the '0' under a screen and screened through thickened dye. For the '2', I loaded up a screen with thickened dye, then pressed the number and some smaller letters onto the back of the screen and let it all dry (it took about 24 hours). Then I carefully removed the letters/numbers and screened with thicked dye paste, so it released the colour that was dried on the screen.

I have been keeping an eye out on the local craft store for other things to use for letters and numbers. I found a pack of thin card cut out numbers and arithmetic symbols - these will be good for negative images, placed under a screen. I don't know how many times I will be able to use them before they fall apart, but at a couple of dollars for a big pack, I think I can reasonably consider them to be 'disposable'.

I also found a pack of 3 inch high card stencils for individual letters. These will give me a positive image. Although the cut out bits could be kept and used to produce a negative as well I guess. And there was this stencil as well - these letters are only about an inch and a half high, but having the same images in a range of scales is useful.

Here I screened some big 0s using my wooden template. Then I went back and added some more 0s and some Xs in a different scale.

Just having fun at this stage. Although I think I want to explore printing fabric with numbers and letters some more. I found an old school report of mine the other day, which said that 'weakness in arithmetic has cost her a better position in the class". I have never been a numbers person - spreadsheets make my eyes glaze over, and someone only has to mention data at work and I slip into a catatonic state. I am a words person. Top of the class in English, bottom in arithmetic - oh, and you should see what I got for Book-keeping (this was 1965, remember!) - "Book-keeping is lagging badly, Hilary, and there is NO excuse for this. 100% is a pass in this subject. See to it that you master it immediately."

This was followed by the statement "Hilary is a keen student" - clearly not of arithmetic or bookkeeping!

Cost of dye supplies

2010-10-01T14:04:00.000+10:00

When I decided to pull out my dye supplies last week, I realised I was pretty low on just about everything. I hopped onto the website of the two local (Australian) suppliers I use for procion dyes and was horrified to find that the 250g tubs I wanted were $69 each!!! So I checked a couple of American sites and found that I could get what I wanted from Dharma trading for, on average, $15 a tub (each colour is priced differently - I bought 8 and they varied from $6.59 to $19.89).

Given that the Aussie dollar is heading towards parity, it only added a very small amount to convert from US to AU$ - and even with $55 postage, I still saved over $350 ordering from overseas! That is unbelievable. And to cap it off, I ordered on the website on Friday, and it was delivered to my door on the following Wednesday! It takes longer for stuff to come from Canberra, three hours drive away!

Now only Hancocks of Paducah would hurry up and have one of their 'free shipping' events while the dollar is still around 96 cents, I would be in seventh heaven!!

Back to dyeing.....

Update

2010-09-30T11:54:00.000+10:00

Oh dear what a bad blogger I have been! Well at least I now have something to show you. My sewing space is finally finished. I have had a sewing table made for my sewing machine and embellisher.

The piece de resistance, however, is my mobile worktable. I can store it away in my sewing room when we have visitors and the downstairs space is in use. Or I can wheel it out and rotary cut or do whatever. It is the same height as my kitchen bench and on big castors - it is easy to move about. I have 24 spaces for baskets of 'stuff' - fabric, tools, you know - stuff.

I am in heaven! Now that I have my space sorted, I can concentrate on making things. As the weather is warming up, I dedcided to get out the dye stuff again. I tried breakdown printing earlier in the year, and was somewhat underwhelmed. I decided to give it another go. I think I had the thickened dye not thick enough. I am much happier with this blue piece. It needs more to turn it into something, but is a good start - I do like the organic look.

Here it is on the design wall (at last, I have a design wall again - I didn't realise how much I missed having one until I had it back again!). There are some other pieces of fabric that I have dyed/painted over the past few days, being auditioned with some commercially produced stuff.

Well that is a start to my resuming blogging. I have lots of other stuff to show, and a story to tell about restocking my dye supplies. But right now, I am hungry, so am going to take a lunch break.

Leo Campbell

2010-06-07T17:41:00.001+10:00

I have just got back from five days in Melbourne, visiting my new grandson - isn't he gorgeous?! Pretty good photo - that's what you get when Mum is a professional photographer!

And lo and behold, an article today in the Daily Mail, welcoming new baby Leo Campbell - what?? - turns out that is the name of Jimmy Barnes' new grandson, born last week - amazing - I never thought Barnesy and I would have something in common!!

2010-06-01T17:59:00.000+10:00

I have just realised that it is a month since I updated this blog - that isn't because nothing has been happening - on the contrary. I am now back at work part time, so we divide our time between the coast and Canberra - so not so much play time.

This past weekend we copped a huge storm - winds of 130kph - it was like a cyclone - rather scary in fact.
We were without power for 36 hours - because of this - a very large gum tree on the power lines opposite our house.

Far more welcome was the arrival of grandson number 2- Leo Walter Campbell - welcome to the world little lion.

A new day...

2010-05-02T08:11:00.000+10:00

We get some spectacular sunrises here - I have never been what is known as a 'morning person' so sunrises aren't normally something I can wax lyrical about, except in abstract terms - but down here I often wake early enough to witness it - especially now that we are off daylight saving. It is far more interesting when there are clouds to bounce the light off and create extra colours and shadows.

Interestingly, these photos are all of the same susnrise, taken over a period of about 15 minutes. They inspired me to get out my fabric paints and try some sky painting. First attempts were a disaster - I was using the liquid radiance paints I got when I did the Helen Godden class back in Dec. Trouble is, they are very liquid indeed and I misted the fabric first so I just got puddles with all the colour migrating out to the edges of the puddle. Then I remembered that Helen likes to paint on cheap as chips nasty unbleached calico full of sizing - as the paint stays exactly where you put it. That's true, but I found that the yellowy undertone of the calico messed with the colours of the sky. I tried some ordinary white undyed quilters cotton, without any misting, and things looked a little better - but I still need to minimise the addition of any further water - am still trying a few ideas, so will report back when I get a satisfactory result. I also tried the Setacolour translucent paint which are thicker and got better results, but I am nearly out of them, so only had limited colour to choose from. One thing about living here is that it encourages you to make do with what you have, as there isn't anywhere to buy supplies. Of course there is always the internet.....if I get really desperate!!

Breakdown printing results, and, rust dyeing

2010-04-26T17:36:00.001+10:00

Here is the result of the breakdown printing I did from the screen I prepared a couple of days ago. I am somewhat underwhelmed by the outcome.

This piece started at the drop cloth under the screen while it was drying. Then I printed over it with the screen. Again, fairly underwhelming. I like the idea of this style of printing, and I have seen some wonderful examples -clearly it takes time and planning to get good results, although I also understand that part of the appeal is that you can't plan too much, and there is a significant element of serendipity and surprise. I guess right now, I am looking to focus on things that will help me produce the sort of work I have had in my head for a long time - and right now, this technique isn't going to help me achieve that, so I am happy to put it aside.

I did however get to try another one of those 'must give that a go sometime' things - rust dyeing using iron sulphate, tannin and lye. There is an excellent tutorial here, which I followed (more or less). If you visit, follow the links to Lynda's (Purple Missus) blog where she tried it too - lots of wonderful photos.

Here are my results

This piece started off as a failed early attempt at breakdown printing using thickened dye - just about anything would make this look better, so I had nothing to lose.

This was the hand dyed piece from yesterday that I monoprinted on from the last of the gelatin plate. It was already dyed in blue/orange, so this treatment just enhanced those colours.

This piece started off as a traditionally rusted piece which was a bit eye-poppingly orange for my taste, and the contrast with the stark white background was too much. I much prefer this version.

I need to go and buy a cheapo iron so I can iron this lot - I only have my good one here - the other one is in the apartment.

Tomorrow's activity - some more rubber stamp carving, I think.

Gelatin plate

2010-04-25T15:18:00.001+10:00

I forgot about the gelatin plate, and when I opened the fridge, found this. It had shrunk to almost half its original size and cracked a lot more. I should mention that we have a spare fridge in the laundry for dog food, fish bait, dyes and booze - the gelatin was residing in there, not my kitchen fridge!

I did a monoprint and liked the door shape. I mixed some black and white textile ink to get a charcoal and applied it to the gelatin with a spatula. Printed onto plain white fabric. I was rather pleased with this.

So I did some more....

I wondered how it would look on a lightly rusted background

and finally, on a hand dyed background.

I like this gelatin plate printing - there is an element of the unpredictable, especially once the plate starts to break down, but it isn't completely random and unpredictable.speaking of which, I printed off my deconstructed screen - it is batching now, so will post about it tomorrow. I don't think it is going to be my 'thing', based on my experience of it - more on that later.

It is Anzac Day - I am remembering all our servicemen and women who have fought for and died for Australia. I am especially remembering my friend Prue, who died a year ago today in NZ on her way to an Anzac Day ceremony. And this morning the tragic news that three people were killed in a helicopter crash in NZ, while taking part in a rememberence ceremony.

Lest We Forget.

More mark making

2010-04-24T13:01:00.000+10:00

I have had an instructive and occasionally frustrating couple of days playing with various mark making techniques.

I tried deconstructed screen printing - or breakdown printing - once before with fairly disasterous results. I now know that the paste mixture I made up was far too thin. I had another go and although I got better results, they still didn't meet my expectations. Again, the paste wasn't thick enough to hold the impression - it gradually oozed back to fill up the gaps as it was drying and I got virtually no impression. I tried again, with something that made deeper impressions - some bubble wrap, and at least got a result. I checked Claire Benn and Leslie Fenton's book "Breakdown Printig" and found some really good, simple instructions and recipes.

I have now made up a new batch of thicker paste, and have followed their instructions to turn the screen flat side up, glob the paste on, then impress the objects you are using to create texture and leave until nearly dry (which by my guestimate will be at least a day or two), then remove, so the paste can't settle back. Here is the screen set to dry. Intuitively, this seems more likely to work than the method I followed for the above piece which was to place the object (bubble wrap in my case) under the screen and squeegee through the dye paste, then remove the bubble wrap straight away and let the screen dry. We shall see.....

We upgraded to a new computer when we moved, and I took the opportunity to get Adobe lllustrator, which I have been wanting for a while. It is a steep learning curve, but I am having enormous fun working in tandem with Photoshop, turning the pictures I have been taking on my daily rides into black and white illustrations which are then burned into Thermofax screens. Here are some examples:

Photo of some grasses. Here I used Thiox to discharge the image onto some commercially dyed black fabric. It came out a light lemony colour, and the image isn't as distinct as later screens, as I didn't have the consistency of the thickener right - too thin, again!

Here I screened black textile ink over an earlier screened image of a tree in gold, on hand dyed purple fabric. You an just see glimpses of the gold here and there - click for larger image.

Again, I went over something else that didn't work. I had previously screen an image (which I will show you next), but it came out blurry, as I used Setacolour paints and they are a bit too runny to screen well.

The underlying image was taken from this photo, of the seafood shop at Narooma bridge.

I cropped and edited the photo in Photoshop, then converted it into an illustration in Illustrator, and made a screen. This time I used proper textile screen printing ink and got a much cleaner image.

I was sitting in the car waiting for Karl the other day, when I looked up and saw this image of barbed wire against the bright blue of the sky.

I gave the image the same treatment as above, and got this - I am quite excited at the possibilities of turning my own photos into images that can be used in my textile art - I have been wanting to do this type of thing for ages, and just haven't had the chance until now.

The barbed wire was around the local gardening centre. In one corner of the carpark I spied this pile of discrded pallets

I turned these into a screen too

As well as messing with screens, I made a couple of stamps - a simple leaf, and the negative of the same image.

A new - and obviously temporary sign appeared in town the other day

This was an obvious candidate for a screen, which I printed using thickened dye (having finally figured out the right consistency for the thickener).

And what, you might ask is a Fish Auction? not sure I know, but I think it might be a charity thing, where they hold a fishing competition, then at the end of each day, the catch gets auctioned off to raise money for the marine rescue volunteers - but don't quote me on that - Karl and I are going to hop on our bikes and pedal into town a bit later to check it out.

And finally, for now, I used the very last of the thickened dye at the end of the day to stamp, and draw on fabric, using a syringe - another little activity that has been on my 'must give that a go' list for some time! I batched these rather than steaming - of which I am not a fan - and I must say that the thickener is a devil to get out of the fabric.

Right - still lots more experimenting to go!

Gyotaku

2010-04-16T07:12:00.000+10:00

You can read about the art of gyotaku here - look in the sidebar on the left. One of the things I uncovered in my printing/mark making box of goodies was this fish I got a while back (I remember when it arrived in the mail, AQIS, the Australian quarantine people had a field day, tearing the package apart and stuffing it full of dire warnings about the penalties for importing wildlife illegally!). But when they realised it was only a rubber fish, they let it through.

This one was done with silver Lumiere paint on some hand dye.

I did some more gelatine plate printing - I have decided I don't like the first print as much - where you get a negative of the object - it lays down too much paint - I like the second print.

On my bike ride I saw this stately fellow fishing in the inlet - or, more correctly, hanging around where the trawlers come in, hoping for a free feed. While I was stopped admiring him, I got chatting to a lady who was with a tour group and who was obviously also enthralled by the sight. She told me that she was Aboriginal and that the pelican was her mother's totem - it obviously meant a lot to her to be so close to them.

And finally, adding to my sign collection from around town - it is hard to get the scale of this, but it is on the side of a two storey building. The restuarant has been closed for years - at least as far back as1996, when we first came here. It has been on the market for many years too. It's main advantage is that it is right opposite the beach and in whale watching season has front row seats. I suppose someone will eventually snap it up, if they are seduced by the marketing!

Playday update

2010-04-15T09:53:00.000+10:00

So, I got out my stuff and started playing - first up, the gelatine plate. The instructions said, use a disposable foil pan, but I didn't have one the right size, so I used a glass dish. Only trouble is, getting the damn thing out! I ended up with a crack, but that is okay, as Rayna says they always crack eventually anyway, and it just adds more texture, so if it is okay with Rayna, its okay with me.

I printed with some gum leaves - and, oh look, just like Rayna, I got some stray threads in there - its okay, it just adds to the texture!

The gelatine plate does feel lovely and squiggy under your hands - I put it in the fridge so will haul it out again and play some more today.

Play" was definitely the theme of the day - I haven't had access to my stuff for so long that I forgot what I had. These foam letters were from a kids craft store - cheap as chips, and fun - I think I got them with a

view to craft projects with the grandchildren in the future, but decided to give them a go myself.

I also had a play with some lovely Indian wood blocks I got a while back from the equally lovely Fiona Wright.

I am lucky to have a great space for playing with messy stuff like paints and dyes. As a late amendment to the house plans, we decided to add a laundry tub to the garage, which is quite spacious. I also kept my old, upright clunker of a washing machine for rinsing out dyed fabrics. I have a flash new front loader in my laundry, but I knew I didn't want to be dyeing anywhere inside the house as it is inherently messy and no matter how careful I am, I get splodges and splashes - and anyway, being careful all the time is at odds with the notion of just 'playing'. So, I can splodge away to my heart's content out here.

I wasted a lot of time yesterday looking for my black textile ink, which I knew I had some of - right at the end of the day, I found not one, but two tubs of it, so I can get back to playing today with some of the things I didn't get to yesterday. All I need now is someone to play with!!

Which reminds me - Gay, when I switched email addresses, not all my address book copied over, so I don't have your address, nor can I access your old emails anymore,so pls email me!

And finally, some more photos from around town taken on my bike ride yesterday.

The inner workings of said bridge - it does in fact open, although very infrequently.

Photos of progress

2010-04-14T07:48:00.001+10:00

Finally got around to photographing my piecing progress. I got the whole top together from all those half square triangles - it will have to go into the pile awaiting quilting. I am not sure if I mentioned before, but our downstairs isn't really finished, as they ran out of floor tiles - big drama, red faces, much embarassed foot shuffling - the next shipment is supposed to be arriving this week, so hopefully it will get finished soon - until then, I can't set up my quilting frame. I do have about six tops waiting to be quilted now - am quite looking forward to getting to them.

And yes, the picture is a bit wonky - I am still figuring out the best place to hang a quilt around here to photograph. This was hung from an extendable line we put up on the beach side of the house, where it is always a bit breezy, so getting it to hang perfectly straight was a challenge. I have since had a fold down washing line installed at the side of the house, which is where I hung the next top. My builder will be pleased - he keopt grumbling that having laundry strung out at the back of the house (which is the side that faces to road and the beach) made it look like a gypsy encampment. Yes, well, the laundry had to dry somewhere! The new fold down line is in a discreet, but sunny spot on the north side,where no-one but us can see the unmentionables flapping in the breeze.

When I finished the above top I opened another box and found some pink and green blocks which, I think, were left over from a couple of baby quilts I did for friends a while back. So I pulled them out and added various width strips around the blocks to make them BIG - then cut them into fours and reassembled. It still needs borders. I really must brush up on my Photoshop skills and figure out how to fix these photos. I'll add that to my 'to do' list.

I have also been accumulating a satisfying pile of string blocks,well on their way to becoming a top.

I have had my fill of piecing for now - what I am really keen to do is get out my paints and mark making tools and have a play at printing, stamping otherwise making my mark on some of my hand dyed fabric . That will be today's play activity. In preparation, I set a large tray of gelatine so I could do some gelatine plate printing, which I have been dying to try since getting Rayna's book ages ago, but what with moving and everything being packed away, living in the apartment etc, I just haven't had the chance to do - so, today is playday!!

I have been going for a bike ride every afternoon and really noticing things around town. I took the camera yesterday - here are a few of the things that caught my eye.

Settling in

2010-04-02T16:23:00.000+11:00

Karl went fishing the other day and came back in no time with three salmon. We gave the red flesh to the dogs - who love fish - and turned the white flesh into fishcakes with chilli sauce for us. OK, but I wouldn't go out of my way to have it again.

I have finally been able to just sew, which I have sorely missed over the past five months of being between houses. When I unpacked, I found all sorts of boxes of projects in various stages of unfinished-ness. I could never start something and see it through to the finish, without starting other things in between, so I have something of a collection of 'works in progress'. Rather than do a stocktake of all the UFOs and depress myself with a list, I just took the first box I opened, and went from there. It happened to contain a whole pile of half square triangles in greens and florals. I remember deciding to use them up when Margaret Rolfe's book came out. It must have been sitting there for at least 7 or more years. I distinctly remember that the green squares were cut from a pack of 7 inch charm squares - I did wonder why I had all these three and a half inch half square triangles, as they make up to 2 and 5/8th inch finished squares! Anyway, I sat and sewed them all together and now I have a quilt top which has one border on, and the outer border is cut, just waiting to be attached.

I also have a big pile of very annoying little offcuts from trimming off the pointy bits - I won't be doing any more quilts like this - way too tedious! I have a huge bag of strips, so will do something based on strips next. Although in between, couldn't resist doing up some string blocks. I do love scrap quilts, of all types, and have wanted to do some string quilts for a while. I have had this book on my library shelves for a while, and recently acquired Gwen Marston's book on string quilts. So I have been happily accumulating a pile in between doing other things - very satisfying.

Karl has made off with the camera so I will post some photos tomorrow.

At last!!

2010-03-21T17:43:00.000+11:00

We have moved in to our lovely new home - at last! Here is a photo of sunrise on our first morning.

Last post I showed you the cupboards I had built downstairs - well, here they are, starting to fill up.

These are the cupboards in my sewing room - for now, I have just unpacked and put stuff in to get rid of the packing boxes. I will go through and have a further tidy up at my leisure. The main thing is, we are here, at last! Can't wait to get back to some creating

Hurry up and wait

2010-02-23T07:32:00.001+11:00

The deck is now on - but no guard railing yet, so we didn't venture too close to the edge. The view is spectacular.

A girl can never have enough storage. I had these shelves and cupboards built in downstairs against the back wall - space that otherwise wouldn't be used for anything. All my books will go here, plus any overflow from my sewing space - overflow??

Between out two last visits to the coast, they had a huge rain event that resulted in the shire being declared a natural disaster area - pretty ironic in a place where severe water restrictions are in place! Roads, bridges and lots of other infrastructure was damaged when they got more than all of 2009's rainfall in two or three days. The good news is that our house stayed dry -so the builder obviously got the drainage right! Although others, on low lying ground weren't so lucky. A huge amount of forest debris and litter was washed down the rivers and creeks into the sea, which is closed to swimming because of the health hazards. The normally pristine waters are murky and tea-stained from all the eucalypt debris. The usually clear, clean beaches look quite dirty and scruffy.

It will eventually all settle down and go back too being clean and tidy - I guess its just mother nature at work, reforming and reshaping the landscape. There is still beautiful texture to be found on my beach walks.

The title of my post refers to the frustration of waiting, when the house is so close to being finished! The closer it gets the harder it is to wait. There is a lot of concreting, path laying and driveway forming work to be down outside in the next two weeks - hopefully there won't be anymore 'rain events' for a while!

Texture and shape

2010-02-11T08:08:00.000+11:00

Isn't this a great image? Karl took this a few visits ago when we found this thing, which I have forgotten what it is - sea anenome?? - on the beach. Doesn't it just inspire embroidery ideas? There are lots of treasures on the beach with the most wonderful texture. I love the roundy protuberences on this oyster shell, and look at that subtle colouration.

This abalone shell has even more interesting textures, and love those colours! (click for close ups)

Scrumbling along

2010-02-09T09:04:00.001+11:00

My little bundle of pink and green scrumbles is growing - it is about the only creative thing I can do in the apartment, and it travels well, so I get lots done when we go down to the coast. Speaking of which.......we went on the weekend to deliver our front door and have the builder install it.

Ta da...............

Here it is. Of course it will look better when the handle is on, the surrounds are painted and properly finished, but it is looking good already. I don't really understand the process, but this is an ordinary (albeit large) front door made out of some sort of composite wood - with glass inserts - that has been treated, so now the surface is copper and the greeny bits are real patination. Cool, huh!

The surround will be painted the same purpley colour that features on the other side of the house (see picture in last post). This will then set up a triadic colour scheme, similar to the one I used in this piece. I am looking forward to seeing this finished, as I think it will look pretty impressive!

The next big thing to be done is adding the deck on the beach side. I haven't given a lot of thought to HOW things are built, but apparently, building a curved deck is tricky - you need a template. So, the sub floor had to be fabricated somewhere else, then it will be flatpacked and installed at our place. So, where to construct it? - on the floor of our builders own house which is under construction. He is building a huge house perched on the side of a hill with a spectacular view out to Gulaga (shown crowned in mist), across Wagonga Inlet, and the bridge into Narooma, and around to the coast, out to Montague Island and beyond. Pretty impressive!

Anyway, Joe, the amazing carpenter has knocked up the sub frame and it will all be dismantled, flat packed and shipped a couple of kilometres down the road to be installed at our place - neat, huh?

I do like some of the idiosyncratic things I see around the place - I spied this little set up last time we were down but didn't have the camera with me - so when I say it was still there this time, couldn't resist stopping for a shot. You can click on the image for a close up, but this is a large cactus (with a strange lean) on offer for $30.00 (a steal!), and a smaller, round one. Not sure if the pot on the end post is also for sale, or is part of the garden decorations. What amuses me is a) this was there two weeks ago and still hasn't sold, and b) it is just sitting out there and anyone who really wanted it could just help themselves. Think about it - if no-one even wants to steal it, they are hardly likely to pay $30 for it, are they???

Went for a walk on the surf beach at Narooma and saw this sign on the rocks (click for bigger) - it wasn't there last time.

There was a lot of rain the day we arrived - nearly three and a half inches, which was pretty impressive. So we took the short drive down to Whittakers Creek, just outside Dalmeny to get a photo of it with some water actually in it. I took photos of this place many, many years ago, when we first visited the area. I have always had a hankering to do a textile piece capturing this scene. I even started once or twice, but couldn't capture it in a way that I was happy with. When we move in and I have all my 'stuff', I think I will give it another go. I think I need to abstract it to get it to work - will have to work on my tendency to be too literal and just focus on the essence of the place.

There is lots of inspiration around - wonderful colours and textures everywhere. This shot was taken at the other end of the surf beach from the sign. The orange bits seem to be some sort of minerals in the rocks, while the greeny gold bits look like some sort of plant growth - a fungus perhaps?

Nearly there!

2010-01-29T06:11:00.007+11:00

Well, I haven't posted for a while, mainly because there hasn't been anything vaguely interesting to say. Christmas and New Year came and went in a (hot) blur. Being in the apartment was a bit of a drag - still is, but the end is in sight.

We went down to the coast for an extra long Australia Day weekend to check out the house - and it is looking great. The kitchen was being installed while we were there, and it looks fabulous! Of course it will look even better when the walls and ceiling are painted and the floor tiled, and the glass splashback installed - all of which is happening in the next couple of weeks.

The laundry is also in - except for the under bench washing machine, which is sitting in a crate in the bedroom, waiting for the tiling to be complete.

Now that the scaffolding is down it looks more like a house, but still a bit of cleaning up of the surrounds to be done - I guess that is last, as they still had diggers and little earth mover things scurrying about doing drainage and plumbing things - I had no idea there were so many pipes buried under the average house!

The big water tank has been laid to rest in its spot, so isn't so intrusive. That little baby holds over 20,000 litres of water!

Apart from the painting and tiling,the next big visual development will be the addition of the deck - it will go where the blue horizontal band dissects the lower and upper halves of the building. Can't wait until we can open these bifold doors and step out onto it! This is from the dining area, and on the other side is a sliding door into a sheltered courtyard, where there will be a barbeque and woodfired oven, so no matter what the weather we will have a comfortable place to sit outside.

The other big excitement to come is my front door - we are having it treated so that it will look like copper with a patina - if you are interested, check out this website to get an idea of what can be done.

So, nearly there on the house front - we expect to be moving in within the next six weeks.

I did start to go a bit stir crazy during the recent hot spell, so I (inexplicably) decided to get some wool and do some more scrumbling on my pink and green project. There isn't much wool to be had in the shops in this weather, but I scrounged up a few balls, a crochet hook and some knitting needles and got scrumbling again. I also sent off to the lovely Prudence and got the second edition of her book - I have the original, which is in storage, but decided I needed the visual stimulation of all the lovely pictures in the new version to get me going. It is very frustrating being cooped up here with little opportunity to create, but it won't be much longer and then I can unpack all my lovely stuff and get cracking. Can't wait!

Cabin fever

2009-12-02T07:13:00.011+11:00

We are adjusting to being in a one bedroom apartment in town while waiting for our coast house to be finished. It is a bit cramped, although during the week, we just get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, get up again, etc. Weekends are a bit more of a drag -no garden, no sewing room - no room, period! So last weekend I grabbed the chance of a last minute sign up to a fabric painting class that Helen Godden was giving here in Canberra. Good fun. This piece looks like it could do with a good iron - but in fact, the fabric is perfectly smooth.

The scrunchy effect is achieved with the paint. The paints we used are finely milled acrylics from Genesis Creations . They don't change the hand of the fabric like the thicker acrylic paints, and are easy to use. This piece was sort of tie dyed to give the flower effects. I think this one will be good to do some machine stitching on to bring out the 'flower' centres and highlight the petals.

The next one was fun to do - some judicious manipulation of the wet fabric - I can see this technique has potential for creating cosmos type pieces- er, cosmos as in the universe, not those yellow flowers!

And the usual salt techniques work great.

The final piece was painted onto good old unwashed cheap as chips, calico. This will be good for practicing some machine quilting.

My husband was quite impressed when I showed him what I had done, commenting, how did you do that, you can't paint for nuts?? (!). Well, that just goes to show what a good teacher Helen is - and I must make the disclaimer that the flower in the last piece was traced off a drawing of hers - and all I had to do was colour within the lines - Karl is quite right, I can't draw for nuts!!

So that filled up Sunday.

Saturdays are spent for the most part at my daughter's place where I take my washing as we don't have a washing machine in the apartment. It means I get to spend some time each week with the little fellow who is quite a delight.

Drool and all! (click for closeup). Definite signs of being a redhead- those Irish genes on his mother's side are exerting themselves.

As for the coast house - well, it is coming along. The external cladding is finished and this scaffolding should be coming down any day now.

The 20,000 litre water tank looks like a spaceship has landed. Rather inconveniently, it has been placed (by a large crane, apparently) exactly on the spot where it needs to be dug in - but the builder seems unfazed, assuring us that they'll just roll it out of the way when it comes time to dig the hole. Hope it doesn't roll down the hill and take a number of tourists out before coming to rest on the beach!

This is the view from the street side. Those blue bits will be rendered and painted.

While we were down last we decided to recover our pelican from the gallery. The Christmas/summer holiday season is fast approaching and the town gets very busy - we didn't want to risk them selling our pelican to someone else (again!). So we walked in and said, we have come to collect our pelican, and the guy (not the one who sold it to me), said, okay, let me help you carry it to the car (it is very heavy). And off we went - no ID, no receipt, no request to prove that we are the rightful owners! They obviously do things differently in the country.

He is keeping us company in the apartment for now.

Making progress

2009-10-08T06:56:00.006+11:00

We had an extra long weekend away down at the coast to check on progress of the house and just relax. Unfortunately, it rained most of the time, and was unseasonably cold - bloody freezing in fact. I felt sorry for all the campers - it is school holidays and there were lots of family groups - imagine being stuck inside a tent for days on end with restless children and nothing but rain, rain, rain - and very cold rain at that. Ugh, doesn't bear thinking about. I did get quite a bit of handsewing done on my octagon blocks, so all was not lost.

They have started cladding the house, although if we keep getting rain this month, as forecast, that will slow progress down. Our hopes of being in by Christmas were (gently) dashed by the builder - we might just squeak it, but we'd rather wait and move in with absolutely everything finished so we can just kick back and enjoy, not spend the first month rushing around finishing landscaping etc.

Sometime back I spied this fellow in a local gallery. He is the work of a local(ish) artist from Bermagui, Murray Ambler. I just love him. We always see pelicans on our walks and rides around the inlet. They hang around where the fishermen come in to clean their catch as they know they will get the fish carcasses. Here is the real thing doing an amazing balancing act.

We watched him glide in gracefully and make a perfect landing on this light. They are very big birds - our sculpture is life size and very heavy, given that it is made of recycled junk yard metal. I do rather like him though - we just have to decide where he is going to go exactly - in the meantime, the gallery is babysitting him for us. Although that caused a few problems as the weekend I bought him, the fact that he was sold didn't filter through to some of the other gallery staff and they promptly sold him to someone else. Fortunately, the artist kindly agreed to make another one for me, even though he is apparently 'over' doing pelicans and has moved on to other things.

We did have a couple of days - or parts of a couple of days when it stopped raining and the sun peeked out, although it was still cold. Here is Mt Dromadery - called Gulaga by the local aborigines - guarding Wagonga inlet - a pristine body of crystal clear water where oysters are grown.

This is looking north along the beaches of Kianga and Dalmeny. Can't wait until we are living there fulltime - can you blame me?!!

A picture of innocence

2009-09-29T13:06:00.004+10:00

The grandbaby was baptised on Sunday - here he is being held by godmother, Auntie Clare, with proud parents (and godfather) looking on.

He is wearing the family christening robe knitted by my mother - very fine, lacey wool. Jus as well, as Canberra (and much of the rest of SE Australia) was bloody freezing! Some spring weather.

His mum and aunties wore it before him - he is he first of the next generation.

The continuation of a family tradition.

That's a good thing.

Making more progress

2009-09-21T06:31:00.004+10:00

Another visit to the coast this weekend to check on progress. The roof is on and the windows are in, so it is starting to look more like a real house. We can get a good sense of the proportions now too - its very different looking at something as a drawing then seeing it in 3-D - that type of spatial thinking has never been my strong point. The first shot is from the street side, and the second is from the beach side.

Lengthy discussions with electrician and plumber on power points, switches, siting of the shower heads and the mechanics of wall hung toilets. I was quite exhausted at the end of the day!

Karl couldn't resist setting up his telescope to check out the view - saw lots of humpbacks frolicking off on the horizon - the juveniles are still very far out, still a few weeks before the mums and calves start migrating close in to shore - then you can easily see them, and what a delight they are.

Just after we got home I got a call from daughter number 2 to look after Lincoln for an hour or so while she and Dad went to the gym, so I took the opportunity to take a snap - now three months old, and being baptised next weekend - should look angelic in the family heirloom christening gown.

I managed a little stitching on my octagon quilt blocks - must find out what the name of that pattern is.

Lots of progress

2009-09-10T18:20:00.005+10:00

No posts for ages because we have been computer-less at home and it has been hectic getting the house ready for sale. It went on the market last week and sold straight away - yipee!!

We went down to the coast to check on the new house in mid August - couldn't upload pictures before. Here is the view from our bedroom (click for larger picture).

We couldn't resist setting up a couple of folding chairs and checking out the view from the living area. Since then the roof has gone on and the windows are in. We are going back down next weekend so will have more photos then.

Selling our existing house has been a big relief - we are exhausted with the effort of getting it ready,but well worth it. Now we will be sort of camping out while we are between houses, living in a one bedroom apartment in town during the week and going down to the coast at weekends. I managed to squirrel away a hand work project, which I thought I had inadvertently packed, but it turned up today, so I plan on doing some hand pieceing on a quilt I started earlier this year.

Going, but not gone!

2009-08-03T15:32:00.002+10:00

I had some enthusiastic ladies turn up bright and early on Saturday and they happily relieved me of $1200 worth of stuff - so a $120 donation went off to breast cancer research this morning.
Still a lot left though, so I have put an ad in the local paper for a general garage sale (all the house stuff) plus my craft stuff for next Saturday. Hopefully that will clear out the rest.

It is quite cathartic getting rid of stuff. Several people held up treasures on Saturday and said, how can you bear to let this go? Well, it - whatever it is - has been hanging around a long time and I don't seem to have used it, so doubtless, won't miss it! And it is good to know that surplus 'stuff' is going to a good home where it will be properly appreciated, rather than just stuffed in a cupboard.

My next door neighbour's daughter came by with her pocket money and agonised for ages over which buttons to buy - I had no idea she collected buttons - and she had no idea I had such a treasure trove!

The house is slowly emptying - including the eviction of mother (and father) and child on Saturday to their own home. One more big push on Saturday and the house will be clear for the painter to come through and paint from top to bottom.

We tossed up for sometime about whether to replace the carpets and in the end decided not. We will just get them cleaned. I felt vindicated in that decision when my neighbour told me that the house on the other side of theirs went to market recently having been recarpted by the owners beforehand - the first thing the new owners did was rip it all up and put their own choice of carpet down. What a waste! Same thing with curtains. We got some new ones made for a couple of the rooms that really needed them. The curtain people said they often go back to houses where they have recently put up new curtains before it was sold, and the new owners get rid of them and choose something else. Where do all those new carpets/curtains end up? Landfill?? It is quite depressing really.
On a not depressing note, house prices seem to be really recovering well - a house in our suburb just went for a lot more than I thought it would, and it isn't nearly as nice as ours!

Sale of the Century - Everything must go!

2009-07-26T10:37:00.007+10:00

Okay, the time has come - everything has to go! Click on any picture for a closer look

EVERYTHING you can see in these photos, with the exception of the two bookcases and the tables is for sale. All the artwork on the walls, all the books/magazines on the bookcases, everything.

I have two antique (Depression era) quilts, one fairly worn, the other in better condition, except for the binding which is worn.

An almost complete set of Quilting Arts magazines - starting from issue 5 (I did used to have from Issue 1, but heaven knows where they went!), up to latest issue, all $5 each. First 14 issues of CPS, same price.

Tons of books, very reasonably priced - on embroidery, patchwork, quilting, paper arts, collage, design, etc etc. Some lovely big coffee table books on quilts.

Fat quarters, beads, charms, buttons and doo-dads for crazy patchwork, embellishing. Embellisher packs of wool, silk tops, silk hankies and other felty stuff.

Kits, patterns, doll making supplies (particularly hair).

LOTS of dressmaking fabric in 2.5 - 5m lengths, all $2 a metre.

Tons of gorgeous moire taffeta in lovely colours for silk ribbon embroidery, crazy patchwork, making cushions, etc.

Folk art decorations, framed artwork including cross stitch and embroideries. Lots of frames and mats to frame your own work.
American Girl doll and five outfits). Patchwork teddy and other decorator items made from old quilts.

Christmas ornaments. Bundles of stuff - fine Italian men's suiting, wool, demin, tulle, glitzy stuff, patchwork bundles in themes - Debbie Mumm, kitchen/household themed, sea/fish/boats, blokey stuff, with tools etc.

Okay - you get the idea. All this stuff has to get sold, it is NOT coming to the coast with me.

Sale is on Saturday, 1 August, from 8.00 am to 1.00 pm, at 12 Gleadow Street EVATT.

Moving ahead

2009-07-16T07:21:00.006+10:00

Here is the beginnings of our new house. We have waited a long time for this, and it is quite exciting to see it take shape. Click to enlarge to get a good look at the view.

However before we get to move there, we need to clear out our current house. While I haven't posted for a while it doesn't mean that I have been idle. In fact I feel quite overwhelmed by the amount of work necessary to declutter a large house that we have lived in for the past 14 years - that's the longest we have ever been in one place. When Karl was in the army we moved every two or three years. This weekend I have to tackle the linen cupboard. I am being ruthless. All those mismatched pillow cases and dated doona covers are going. I have splurged at the seemingly endless mid year sale at David Jones and stocked up on stylish new linen in taupes and caramel with real linen/cotton textures and weaves. I figure a brand new stylish beach house deserves brand new stylish furnishings.

We have lots of stuff to get rid of before the painter comes to paint the house from top to bottom - that will take 2 and a half weeks.

I am getting ready for a big sale of craft/quilting stuff the first weekend in August. Again I am being ruthless, culling my craft book collection by over a half. I really need to focus and do my own thing from here on, not keep dipping into this and that.

The darling boy is growing like a week. Stacked on 625g in the first two weeks of life. Here he is with Mum at one week. Must get some more recent photos. The photographer daughter hasn't been back since this was taken. But she is doing cute photos of other babies, check out her blog on the right hand side bar - Clare Metcalf Photography - if you are in Melbourne, she's the one to book for your wedding, babies or whatever.

Right - back to sorting, culling, clearing, tossing stuff. Where did it all come from, I wonder?

At last!

2009-06-10T07:04:00.004+10:00

Lincoln Karl Gates, born 7.30 pm Monday 8 June 2009, 9lbs 6 oz - better late than never.

Welcome to the world, darling boy.

Waiting, waiting................

2009-06-01T07:33:00.004+10:00

No sign of the grandchild yet. He was officially due on Saturday. I was hoping for yesterday, 31 May, as that would have been my mother's 90th birthday. This photo was taken when she was about 3. What a different world it was then. She was born just after the end of the Great War. When she was born we didn't have antibiotics - a simple infection could kill. In her lifetime she saw the introduction of television, space travel, computers.......what a very different world it was then. I wonder how much change my grandchild will see in his lifetime - and how much will be for the good and how much otherwise?

I give up!

2009-05-25T08:10:00.005+10:00

Right, that's it - I give up on the damn ripple rug thingie from last post. I simply cannot get it. The first couple of rows I was one stitch out, and I fudged it at the end, but by about row 10 I was about half a pattern repeat out, and I have no idea how that happened. I am obviously not suited to this kind of thing, so will I persist until I get it right?? No, of course not, I haven't got time - the baby is due on Saturday and I was getting RSI from wrangling with the damn thing.

So, I have resorted to good old granny squares instead. Seeing as how I am going to be a granny, I think that is quite appropriate. Also, they are quick to do, if I make a mistake it is immediately obvious, and they grow in a satisfying little pile with seemingly little effort, unlike the other thing, which I won't mention again.
I unexpectedly spent the weekend at a workshop with the lovely Beth Miller. I signed up through Canberra Quilters at the beginning of the year, on a whim, then forgot about it. I heard that the class was full and there was a waiting list, and as I didn't hear anything, I assumed that I had missed out and was on the wait list. Then I got a phone call at lunchtime on Saturday from the convener asking me where I was! The confirmation and class supply list went astray somewhere in the mail - good old Australia Post. Anyway, the class was being held in a hall not far from where I live, so I hopped in the car and went to see what was going on.

We were doing the landscape class which was great fun. Here is my little piece - it needs the shadow for the big tree plus stitching of course to integrate that grass in the foreground.

Beth is the most amazingly generous teacher. She let everyone handle and photograph her quilts and seeing some of her famous quilts close up was a delight - especially her famous image of the swagman - it is all done in quite heavy wools, and hand quilted - amazing!

She had a couple of pieces of wonderful rust dyed fabrics which she had heavily stitched

She also put me onto a wonderful fabric paint that doesn't change the hand of the fabric - Hi Strike - I am going to give it a go.

We also had a discussion on the the health and safety risks involved in some textile work, in particular, the vexed question of how to neutralise bleached fabric. There are a number of sources which say to use vinegar to neutralise. However there are others - somewhat more authoratative in my view - which say absolutely not.

Even bleach alone is not as benign as many people think. Just because we all have it in our homes doesn't mean it is safe or harmless. If you are going to bleach fabric, especially if you plan on spraying it about, please take the time to research the risks and the best way to mitigate those risks. And don't think one of those white dust mask things from the hardware store will do when it says to use a mask. Those are only intended to stop particles of dust etc from entering, anything that produces fumes needs a far more serious mask with filters appropriate to the chemicals being used.

Okay, here endeth the lesson - just don't take risks with your health for the sake of your art.

Catching up

2009-05-20T07:58:00.010+10:00

It's been a while since I posted, but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy!

At the end of April we spent five days at the coast relaxing after a very busy time at work for me - long days and sometime nights - the worst was working until 2.00 am one night then having to be back in the office next (the same?) morning. Ridiculous - so when all that nonsense ended I had five lovely days relaxing at our soon too be new home town on the south coast. Big seas the day we arrived.
I spent many happy hours sitting in the autumn sun, protected from the wind on the verandah of our now demolished house, looking out at this view.

This house is now gone - and construction has started on our wonderful new home.

We are off down for a few days at the beginning of June, so hope to see some developments - probably just a big hole in the ground, but that's okay!

While sitting on the verandah of the old house I whiled away some time on a crochet ripple blanket. They seem to be all the rage at the moment, and I got the bug from this wonderful website. Do spend some time browsing and checking it out - lovely, bright, colourful stuff!

Anyway, it didn't look too hard, and I now know a double from a treble, thanks to getting a learn to crochet book so I could figure out what to do when I took a scrumbling class from Prudence Mapstone about five years ago.

However, I have to say this thing nearly had me stumped. I counted and counted and cast on and ripped out so many times over five days I nearly went crazy, I simply couldn't get the pattern to work out - which, I hasten to add, was entirely due to my stupidity, absolutely nothing to do with the clarity of the instructions!

In the end I resorted to drawing my own diagram and counting it out to get it into my head how it worked and then had to use these little counter thingies. EVENTUALLY - I managed to get going - I do appear too be one stitch out at the very end of the row, but I am kind of fudging that.

And why am I making a ripple blanket? Well, my first grandchild is due in a couple of weeks, and it is winter here now. I have made him a quilt, but thought a warm wool blankie to bundle him up when he goes from the house into the car or whatever would be good. The only other wooly thing I had on the go was some scrumbling in pink and green, which would have been fine if he was a girl, but apparently he isn't. So the colour scheme was inspired by this mobile, which his mother bought for his room.

At one point while I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out the ripples, I decided to take a break and have a go at the hexagons that are also on Attic 24's website. Alas, this caused me even more griefr - again due to my complete stupidity and lack of understanding of how crochet patterns are written. This is what the pattern says:

So this is the pattern for round 2::
Chain 2, then 1 US dc/UK tr in same
stitch. Chain 1.
Work a bobble stitch into next stitch as described
above,
then chain 1 to space.
Repeat 10 more times until you get back to
the
beginning and have 12 "bobbles" in total. Join round with a slip stitch
into the
2nd stitch of the initial chain 2.
I NOW know that in crochet, the two or three chains that you do at the start of
a row are instead of the treble/double or whatever, but I read "Repeat 10
more times" as meaning repeat everything from the start of the instructions,
not repeat the bobbling bit. Anyway, after more hair tearing I finally
figured that bit out - and I vaguely remember reading about that in my
how to crochet book, which I didn't have with me. But eventually, I
produced this
Ta daaaa!! Clearly I need to get my head around this crochet stuff a bit better. My mother crocheted and it always seemed pretty straightforward to me, but I have been brought low by my hubris and now realise there is more to it than meets the eye. But, I am perservering with my ripples and will aim to get the blankie done before the darling boy makes his arrival.
I have also quilted one more bushfire quilt for a quilting group here in Canberra that did the top and needed someone to do the quilting. I took delivery of my wonderful new quilting set up last week, and this is the first quilt I did on it. More of that next post, I had better get to work. Click on the picture for a closer look at the quilting

another bushfire quilt

2009-04-13T11:16:00.005+10:00

I got this little one quilted - my daughter saw it and sighed, and said it made her wish she was having a girl! Just need to bind it now (have I ever mentioned that I don't like doing bindings?).

Because I have problems with my back and neck I have never been much good at machine quilting where you sit at the machine and move the quilt around - too much strain on my neck and shoulders. So a few years ago I invested in this home quilting set up and it was worth every penny - now at least I can get my quilts finished and with a minimum of stress and strain. I am thinking about upgrading - I would really like a stitch regulator.

I envy the Americans who have such a wonderful range of options to choose from - things are a bit more limited here, unfortunately, I suppose because it costs a lot to ship stuff to the ends of the earth!

The lemon meringue pie was a big hit!

Cot quilt

2009-04-12T13:31:00.005+10:00

I have been busy making a cot quilt for our first grandchild, due at the end of May. Its a boy (apparently!), so went for something not girly, pink or flowery.

I used an overall Baptist fan type design in a multi coloured thread.

Here is the back view

I used a rather cute Paddington Bear fabric that I got from Hancocks on sale and chose some assorted scraps in matching colours for the triangles.

Now I just have to do the binding (I HATE bindings). While I am on a roll, I will load up another baby quilt (this one is definitely pink) that I have had lying around for ages and get it quilted for the Bushfire appeal.

Then I need to go and make a lemon meringue pie - my traditional Easter sunday dessert - I have no idea why, it just is! With roast leg of lamb for the main course. Aaahhh - life is good!

Glow in the dark eggs

2009-04-06T07:09:00.004+10:00

I can't find my camera, which is annoying - I think one of my girls borrowed it and didn't give it back - grrrr - my pet hate - usually it is my hairdryer.

I have been busy patchworking - I got the two bushfire quilts off to Victoria, and completed a queen sized top which my daughter Clare has claimed - I did promise her a quilt for a wedding present, but was a bit busy before the wedding doing the dresses!

I have another two or three tops on the go. I spent a good part of the weekend cleaning out some of my 'stuff'. We will be putting the house on the market later this year, so I have to have a huge declutter before moving. I am going to clear out years of accumulated stuff that I thought I needed at the time.....you know how it is. Also, I think it really is time to decide what I want to do and FOCUS. So I will rid myself of all sorts of things that I thought I would like to do, and maybe exprimented with for a while, but then decided I wasn't really interested, didn't have the patience, the fad passed - you know how it is. So watch this space for details of a mega sale in the second half of the year - if you live locally and can come by of course. If not, well I think I will have to put together a couple of blog giveaways so some of my stuff can go live somewhere else in the world!

Work is very, very busy - anyone who works for the government will know what it is like in the lead up to the Federal budget - not just crazy, downright ludicrous.

Autumn is definitely here - a real nip in the air.

My middle daughter had her baby shower last weekend - I forgot to take pictures. Her favourite gift, and a huge hit with mothers to be at the moment (apparently), is an egg - yes, an egg - check it out here.

Depending on the colour, it tells you whether the room is too hot, or too cold, or just right for baby! Imagine. In my day, you just looked at the baby! But then the babies don't come with an inbuilt night light, so there you are - the wonders of the digital world. Makes me wonder how our babies ever made it successfully to adult hood without all those gizmos and just their mother's good sense to guide them.

Bushfire quilts

2009-03-16T16:40:00.005+11:00

I got the bindings on a couple of quilts for the Victorian bushfire survivors. The purple and green one is a big lap size, couch type quilt, and the other one is queen size. Now just have to check in with the southern cross quilters list about where to send them.

That is one of my very silly miniature schnauzers in the bottom photo.

Weekend away

2009-03-11T07:23:00.013+11:00

We had a wonderfully relaxing long weekend away at the coast. The weather was perfect. Despite that, a small boat capsized as it was crossing the Bar at Narooma. The sailor seemed to walk away okay - at least he was able to walk to the ambulance. The boat was another matter. Here are some of the locals trying to recover it on the beach.

The next day we went for a walk and had a closer look. Hmm - don't think that will be sailing the seven seas again. A graphic reminder of how powerful the sea can be - even in seemingly benign weather.
This little one just seems to have decided to lie down and age gracefully on the shores of Lake Mummaga.

My mind is very much on the sea at the moment. One of the reasons we went down was to check out our place - this is the current house - perfectly horrible - an owner builder job from the early 1980s where everything was done on the cheap. It is being demolished in a few weeks to make way for our 'retirement' home. We did a walk through to see if there was anything at all worth salvaging - three CFL light globes! That's it.

The outlook from the block of land is wonderful - that is our backyard in the foreground. We will be able to go asleep at night to the sound of the sea. There is something magical about that. We arrived late on Thursday night, after I had flown back from a work meeting in Sydney, tired and frazzled. Yet just walking on the sand and hearing the gentle, endless sussuration of the surf lulled me into a very mellow mood.

I love the textures and colours on this old boat shed, down on the flat at Narooma. It used to have a registration number on the side, but it appears to have fallen off into the mud flats somewhere.

For the past three or four years, the locals have been building a wonderful bike path along the foreshore and headlands from Dalmeny through Kianga to the Narooma boardwalk. Here is a picture of me whizzing down the path from Yabarra point. Our house is in the group in the centre of the photo, nestled among the spotted gums. (Click to enlarge)

On a quilting note, I have been finishing some bindings on quilts to donate to the Victorian bushfire families. I HATE doing bindings, which means I have a cupboard full of quilts that are all quilted, but just need bindings to finish (no, I am not joking!). I gather that they particularly want queen sized quilts for couples. I happen to have one, so that is in the process of being bound. I have a couple of smaller ones ready to go too. And a top that I am enlarging to make it QS. Trouble is, I have dismantled my home quilter as part of trying to get this house packed up and ready to sell, so not sure how I am going to get that top quilted and ready to go, but I will worry about that later. I will post pictures of the quilts as soon as they are done.

Pink Project

2009-03-03T07:22:00.006+11:00

A while back I posted images of some scrumbles I made for Prudence Mapstone's pink project.

The auction has opened for bidding - check out the items here.

Couple more wedding photos

2009-03-01T17:57:00.007+11:00

Couldn't resist - the 'official' photos arrived yesterday. A family shot, and a lovely one of the bride and groom setting off together on their new life.

While we were in Melbourne I went to the Ian Potter gallery at Federation Square, to view the Rosalie Gascoigne exhibition. Her work features recycled materials, such as wood, corrugated iron and old pieces of lino.

Many of her pieces reminded me of quilts. This one reminded me of the colour wash style.

It is made from old bits of lino.

This one is very reminiscent of log cabin blocks.

and this series made me think of waggas. A very interesting exhibition, well worth a look. It is on until 15 March 2009.

Wedding

2009-02-23T17:37:00.008+11:00

Luke Campbell and Clare Metcalf - married 21 February 2009

Well, it was worth all the effort, of course. The Wedding was wonderful - very emotional and just lovely. My three girls.

This shot is a bit far away, but the wind blew Clare's dress out just as I snapped it - I like the effect! - click on photos to enlarge

I have lots of other photos from the trip, including the Rosalie Gascoigne exhibition, which was great. But now I am tired and want to sleep in my own bed, so will post more tomorrow.

Fire

2009-02-08T17:01:00.007+11:00

A while ago I had a play with my embellisher and various materials, trying to create an image of a fire. I was reminded of it today while following the harrowing news reports of deaths from so many fires burning throughout the southern states, particularly Victoria. I was six months pregnant with my first child in 1983, and living in Queenscliff in Victoria when the Ash Wednesday bushfires went through the State. I was one of many army wives left alone while our husbands were away somewhere - I remember lying awake at 2 o'clock in the morning, following the news reports as the fires worked their way relentlessly east. They were stopped well before reaching us - not that we knew that would happen. In 2003, the dreadful Canberra fires burned. I was hanging out washing and turned around to see an evil, great billowing cloud of dirty grey suffused with an ominious orange - it was over 400 houses burning on the other side of the city from me. Four people died. We were in shock that this could happen in the heart of the nation's capital. My brother phoned from Queensland that night - he heard on the news that over 400 houses had burned and he thought there must be a mistake - that couldn't possibly be right.

And now Victoria is suffering again - each hour the news reports increase the number dead - I was horrified when I woke up this morning to read that 14 people had died - the 5pm news has just reported the death toll at 49, and warning to expect it to rise as fire crews manage to get into townships that have been cut off.

After the Canberra fires, quilters all over Australia made quilts to donate to everyone who had lost their homes. I am sure that people everywhere will rally around to help those who have lost everything. Homes can be rebuilt, possessions replaced...but nothing can replace those 49 loved ones - Monday morning, and the toll has grown to nearly 100. Wednesday - 181.

Recycling

2009-02-07T16:01:00.006+11:00

(click on any image to enlarge)

Not long after Christmas, we took a whole pile of boxes and wrapping down to the local recycling place. While my husband was unloading, Iwas idly glancing around at all the packaging and general detritus from the festive season, when my eye fell on an old brown suitcase. Now you can't actually recycle suitcases at this place, just the usual paper, cardboard, bottles, cans etc. I opened it up and it was stuffed with old notebooks and papers. On closer inspection, it was the notes from someone's entire university course in economics, from the late 1960s. I was sorely tempted to grab large handfuls and bring home for collage etc. but we are starting to declutter our house in preparation to sell it and move down to the coast. So I walked away, but at the last minute, knew I just had to bring home one notebook

Last time we went down to the coast, we stopped, as usual in Braidwood and there was a book sale on at the local church hall. I just had to duck in and see what was there. I couldn't resist this Enid Gilchrist classic on making your own maternity wear. All the patterns are shown in diagrams with hundreds of markings and numbers - obviously in those days, people thought nothing of drafting up their own slopers. I guess in those days they still taught dressmaking at school! It isn't dated, but the price is four shillings, so it predates the introduction of decimal currency on 14 February 1966 - probably about 1963 or 64, I'd guess. On the back is an advert for the latest Bernina - the 730 - its most outstanding features are proudly announced as 'portable' and 'electric'. So are the latest models, but we don't seem to need to advertise those features anymore - now it is more likely to be 'connects to the internet and downloads bazillions of patterns'.

Those were the days.

Bridesmaid dresses

2009-02-01T09:44:00.014+11:00

My youngest daughter is getting married in three weeks at St Patrick's cathedral in Melbourne, pictured above. She lives in Melbourne and has organised the whole wedding, down to every tiny detail, all by herself. All I have to do is turn up. Well, that was the plan, anyway. She bought her dress on special - fell in love with it and it fitted, and it was on sale, so way to go. The bridesmaids were a bit trickier. Finding a dress which suits very different figure shapes, and in the colour way the bride has her heart set on is no easy feat.

She saw this dress and decided it was just the thing, only she wanted the dress in navy and the sash in cream. No, I don't know why the model is draped painfully backwards over a big brown box, nor what the hell she is made up like a vampire for - maybe trying out for a role in that Twilight movie?

Anyway, the deal at the dress shop is that they have one example of each style, you try it on, and try and guess which is the actual size that would fit you, then you order it in your colour-way, wait three months, pick it up, having parted with a large amount of money, then, no doubt, pay out a whole lot more to have the thing altered, because of course, it isn't going to be a perfect fit.
Well, I decided that was not going to work, so I would make them (okay, it seemed like a good idea at the time). As it happens, I am a perfectly competent dress maker and can knock out a boned, strapless bodice with the best of them. However, the tricky bit is a) adapting the pattern to fit the different figure types, and b) fitting it perfectly to each girl.

The dress shown was perfect for one of the girls - tall, athletic, long body, fine waist - it looks great on her. One of the others is a similar shape (well, they are sisters, after all) but will be six months pregnant by the date of the wedding - there goes the fine waist, and the third is unrelated and a competely different shape, and let's just say the chosen design would not be flattering.

I got a basic pattern for a fitted bodice with a gathered skirt and proceeded to turn it into an empire line bodice with a fitted band around the middle for bridesmaid number 1 and a basic empire line with skirt falling from under the bust for the other two - with generous baby bump allowance where needed.

The bride had provided samples of the fabrics she wanted - nothing too complicated, and readily available at our local fabric store, Lincraft (don't get me going on the way that store has slid into poor service, crappy merchandise and shabby presentation - since Home Yardage closed there isn't much to choose from in Canberra - and as I live on the north side, a trip to Spotlight involves a packed lunch and a compass, and chances are they won't have what I want, assuming I can manage to shift the huge piles of rolls of fabric haphazardly piled on top of each other, with no rhyme and reason about what is where) close brackets, end of rant about poor choice of fabric stores in the National Capital.

I managed to get what I needed by a combination of ordering online and ringing around other Lincraft stores in the Sydney area and they mailed it to me. Navy (I think they call it Ink, or Midnight, or something) satin backed something for the underskirt and bodice, with the same colour georgette for the shirred outer bodice and overskirt. Cream georgette for the sashes.

I will skim over the weeks of measuring, making, fitting remaking and hair tearing to the point where the dresses are done and now all they need is hemming. I do have to add here that I got through those weeks with my sanity intact despite having a stress fracture in my back and being sleep deprived as I couldn't lie down and had to sleep sitting up for about six weeks, entirely due to my wonderful neighbour who is a qualified dressmaking and pattern making teacher who is quite brilliant and who regularly came down to cast her eye over the various versions and show me how to fix the problems and get a perfect fit. Thank you Maree, you are a saint.

Now all I have to do is the hems. I don't know about you, but crawling around on the floor to level a hem (well, two actually for each dress, as I have to do the underskirt, then the georgette), is not my idea of fun, and downright impossible with a bung back.

So, my brilliant idea - well, my husband's actually - use a laser light to get the level! He got me one of those little hand held laser pointers from somewhere or other, to use with my domestic home quilter - I tape it to the stylus and it is great for following pantograph patterns. Of course that was before they banned them because idiots started pointing them at aircraft trying to blind the pilot - (the lasers, I mean, not the stylus on home quilting machines) I am not sure my little one is powerful enough to do that, and have no intention of trying to find out - it is strictly for textile applications only.

Just a couple of hooks and eyes and some carrier loops to hold the sashes in place at the sides and back and I am done. Having observed the stress and trauma of the whole thing, one of my other daughters declared that she didn't think she would bother getting married - I said that was fine - just elope to Fiji and send me a postcard.

Bonnie's 8 pointed star antique quilt

2009-01-26T17:58:00.016+11:00

Like thousands of others, I follow Bonnie's blog over at Quiltville - that woman is amazing - so much energy!!

Her recent post Antiquing through Virginia bought a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye! She went to visit Mt Vernon quilters in Virginia, one of several chapters of Quilters Unlimited. Yay....I used to be President of Mt Vernon quilters - can you believe it??!! It was 15 years ago now, while my family and I were living in the US for three years. We lived in Northern Virginia - my girls went to Washington Mill Elementary school, named after the mill which serviced George Washington's estate - which is called..................you guessed it, Mt Vernon.

Oh what happy, happy times we all had there. I absolutely fell in love with the two antique quilts Bonnie purchased. I have already made myself a basket quilt on point, so was drawn to the second one. Despite being up to my eyeballs in bridesmaid dresses, I just had to drop everything and start making that block.

It wasn't hard to figure out that it is based on an eight pointed star grid - the octagon in the centre is a dead give away! Some 8 pointed star blocks are trickier, and on first glance almost look like nine patches, but you soon find out your mistake if you try and draft it that way.

I ran to my fabric stash, pulled out a pile and quickly made two blocks. Because of the inset seams, these are an ideal candidate for hand piecing. Most of my quilts are machine made, but I do like to have a hand piecing project on the go. It is portable, and pick up and put downable and rather soothing. If you are going to go the trouble of hand pieceing, it may as well be something tricky with inset seams or strange shapes that have to be cut from templates - can't see the point of hand piecing a nine patch which you zap out with a rotary cutter!

I don't know how long it will take me to get enough blocks to make a quilt- it doesn't matter. There isn't a deadline and I am making this for me, so I can go at my own pace. I do know that I will want to hand quilt this one - probably with Baptist fans, which I love.

It feels good to get back to doing something soothing - and recreating antique quilts is a wonderful link to the past. I hope my grand children and others cherish my quilts when I am gone - and even if they end up anonymously in an antique shop - or, heaven forbid, an thrift store, as long as they go to a good home, where the new owner fondles the worn softness lovingly and wonders about the long gone woman who held the needle that made every stitch - well, I think I will rest peacefully.

Blog anniversary - Not!

2009-01-26T11:35:00.006+11:00

People normally celebrate the anniversary of the day they started their blog - I thought I'd do something different and resurrect mine after a year of no posts. Why no posts? I won't bore you with tedious excuses - suffice to say I am back after an unplanned but necessary break. Thank you to those kind souls who contacted me off line to see if I was alright - how thoughtful bloggers are!

This is going to be a very big year for me - one daughter getting married in a few weeks - I am up to my neck in chiffon and satin making three bridesmaid dresses -never again! Then in May, another daughter will make us grandparents for the first time - a pretty big milestone. And, while all that is going on, our house at the coast will get underway in April. By the end of the year, we will be living down there half the time and commuting to Canberra mid-week as part of our transition to retirement plan (not to mention, try and recoup the large amount of superannuation that has gone up in smoke in the financial meltdown plan). Oh well, we are so fortunate compared to many who have already retired and don't have the chance to recoup. I think there can be nothing scarier than carefully planning your retirement to ensure that you will be financially secure then suddenly finding that you are anything but.

I have done minimal creative stuff in my one year blogging absence - part of the reason I didn't blog, I think, as I didn't really have anything textiley to show/say and didn't want the blog to turn into a whine about all the things in my life that were driving me crazy.

But I have faithfully followed the many blogs that I read regularly and realise that they all talk about the 'stuff' going on the background of the artist's lives - none of us create in a vacuum and what we produce - and even if -is often influenced by the personal/health/family stuff, so maybe I will be less concerned in future to feel I have to have some new creation to show, or else it isn't worth blogging.

So here is my something for now - if you haven't already heard about Prudence Mapstone's Pink Project - check it out. I made these scrumbles for the project - looking forward to seeing what the clever Prudence makes out of them all. Pink isn't my colour, so I won't be bidding for anything, but it is nice to know they will end up somewhere in the world as part of a bag/jacket, whatever. And all the money going to a great cause.

By for now - and I promise to blog again soon!

More on lines

2008-01-25T12:44:00.000+11:00

After my last post, and mentioning Dianne Firth, I have been thinking about other quilters who predominantly use lines in their work. Here are a few examples of ones I know about.

Margery Goodall

Nellie Durand her lake series is a good example of lines (strips of fabric) magically blended together by the addition of quilting lines. If you have ever doubted the transformative effect of quilting, look at her before and after pictures of her lake pieces.

Judy Turner - Judy is a Canberra based quilter - unfortunately she doesn't have a website, and I could find very few images of her work on the web. She is mainly known for her use of colour - she was one of the very early practitioners of 'colourwash' style quilts. But my favourites are the pieces she makes from couched woollen yarn. I could only find these on the web. But my absolute favourites are her landscapes/seascapes. I couldn't find any images of those on the net, but I do have one from a postcard I purchased of her work at an exhibition some time ago.

And Lisa Call's work.

I am sure there are lots more - send me some links of your favourites!

Elements and Principles of Design Course

2008-01-23T15:02:00.000+11:00

Oh dear, so much for my resolution to blog more regularly. Never mind, I will go for quality not quantity. I have been excitedly looking forward to starting my on line design course, and it began this past weekend - Liz took pity on us all gagging to get going and posted the class notes early.

The first unit looks at lines and shapes (elements) and balance (principle). If you had asked me last week what is more interesting, lines or shapes, I would have immediately said shapes – well of course!! But having taken some time to create different lines, to look for lines in the landscape – both natural and man-made - and thinking about lines – what we use them for, what meaning do they convey etc. I have decided that lines are pretty interesting all on their own.

Liz kicked off by repeating an observation she had heard that line is the least used element by art quilters. I am still thinking about that. Although I immediately thought of an exception – Dianne Firth, Canberra-based quilter who is a master of using line in landscape abstractions.

We started off doing the sort of different line studies that I am sure you are familiar with if you have any books on design – these were done quickly, using Photoshop and my graphics tablet – feel more comfortable with that than a pen or pencil, besides which I didn’t have a chisel pointed marker, which we were supposed to use.

Then I followed Liz’s advice to pay attention to the world around me and took my digital camera on my lunchtime walks and found an amazing array of ‘lines’. That made me start to think about lines. I started thinking of so many different types of lines and uses of line imagery in our speech that I did a mind map: click to enlarge. I was surprised to find how many types of lines there are in our world – literal and figurative.

There are real lines – telephone lines, pipelines, railway lines, production lines, power lines, even fishing lines and clothes lines - that serve a useful purpose and make our lives easier. Then there are the ‘imaginary’ lines that help us make sense of the world. Lines are fundamental to the way we perceive our world – think of the horizon line.

Seeing it skewed immediately produces a visceral reaction (literally making us feel sea sick). Our instinctive reaction to the second picture is to tilt our head to try and view the horizon line as a horizontal. We divide our world with lines – the lines of latitude and longitude; the line around the centre of the earth that divides north from south (although technically, these lines are in fact shapes, as they join up to form a circle), the north south line in the Pacific that determines where one day ends and another begins. We superimpose contour lines to try and make sense of our weather and the very ground beneath our feet.

Our days are ruled by lines – deadlines, timelines, guidelines.

We use them to delineate space – to point out where we may go and keep us on track

or where we cannot go

We use them to show the way and to create order they can help keep us safe

In the built environment they are often straight and strong and provide structure and strength

Things lined up look orderly. 'Stepping out of line' denotes rebellion, dissent, lack of co-operation – although visually, one element slightly out of line with the others looks much more interesting.

My absolute favourite discovery is ‘desire lines’. These are lines created in a landscape by people (or animals) walking a particular way. In the old days, these well worn track eventually developed into formal roads and routes – hence the higgledy piggeldy routes of laneways and roads in medieval towns. In the modern world, in the built environment, a desire line emerges when the landscape designer makes pathways take a certain route, but the people using the space decide otherwise. I like the notion of people ‘voting with their feet’ and silently rebelling against a structure being forced onto them that doesn’t suit their needs. There is probably a whole series of quilts in there – formal structures overlaid with slightly haphazard, organic lines that refuse to submit to the underlying structures. I’ll have to go away and make some notes and drawings in my notebook.

Yes, I have a notebook – at last. This course makes me keep one, and a good thing too.

And let's not forget nature - she creates a whole set of her own lines -usually much more organic than the regimented ones that man uses to try and impose order. I will have to find more examples of natural lines to add to my image collection - these just reflect what are in my immediate surroundings at home and work.

We also looked at the design principle of Balance this week. Personally I have always found formal symmetrical balance to be incredibly dull and boring – might be okay in classic
Greek buildings, but in quilts and textiles, I find it a big yawn. That is probably why I love scrap quilts – a barely contained riot of colour and shapes. The idea of making a whole quilt using the same block over and over and over and over again……………..hardly bears thinking about.

So asymmetry is definitely my preferred way to work. And I paid attention to radial balance,

which I probably haven’t taken a lot of notice of before. We had to do our exercises on 4” x 6” cards – I found that radial balance didn’t look right in the rectangular format – it seems to look

better in a square format.

Normally I would shy away from making a quilt or anything much in a square format, I suppose because I particularly like landscapes and they just don’t work in squares. But I can see now that if I HAD to work in a square format, then doing a piece with radial balance would work really well.

So, that is week 1. We are on to colour next week – yippee!!

colour and design play with photoshop

2008-01-02T12:19:00.001+11:00

I am continuing - slowly - to work my way through my Photoshop course. I am looking forward to doing Liz Berg's online design class, which starts on 21 Jan, and in preparation was going through some of the abstract design exercises in recent editions of Quilting Arts magazine. Combined with this was the spooky experience of second guessing Sharon Bs colour scheme for her Take it further challenge, and it all came together in a session playing in Photoshop.

I decided to use the colour scheme chosen by Sharon for the TIF challenge and playing with it using simple shapes in PS. You can replicate the colours from Sharon's sample exactly by typing in the number at the top left hand side of each colour into the # box in the colour picker window of PS (to open the colour picker, just click on the foreground colour square towards the bottom of the main toolbar). Then create a document with a shape for each colour and save it as your reference. When you want to do some design work, or just play around seeing the effect of using different proportions of the colours in a design, open a new document and have your original which has a sample of each colour open alongside. Use the eye dropper tool to touch the colour you want from the original and that will set the foreground colour in your colour picker to that colour. Then just play with whichever tool you want to create shapes and fill them with the desired colour/s.

Here I just used the rectangular and ellipse marquee tools to create shapes in the different colours, on a textured background. No great design principles at play here!

Next I had a go at creating unity through proximity.

In this one I wanted to create a sense of movement, with the triangular shapes falling across the page. I also played with transparency with the pale yellow overlays. You can do this by varying the opacity.

The very first image I made using the rectangular marquee tool, then hit it with a filter to distort the shapes and make them more organic - I also used a gradient filter for the background. BTW all of this can be done even if you only have Photoshop elements (I tried it on version 2, which is pretty old!). I don't know why, but I feel more comfortable doing these sort of design exercises on the computer, rather than with real fabric bits. I guess I don't feel that I am 'wasting' fabricd - and I can always hit the 'undo' button. I also don't flatter myself that any of these are great examples of design! But as I said in my New Year's Eve post, I am resolved to follow Rayna Gillman's advice to accept the crap quota - so the more I do, the better I will get.

DISCLAIMER: Warning - playing in Photoshop can be a serious timewaster - don't blame me if you don't get the laundry done and dinner is late!

Sharon Bs 2008 challenge

2008-01-01T09:41:00.000+11:00

I am sure many of you (however many that is) follow Sharon B's blog and participated in TAST. I signed up for TAST this time last year but only lasted two weeks - I just couldn't keep up (refer to previous post about not having enough time - and whining about it!). Anyway, I decided not to actually sign up for the new one, as I didn't want to be a repeat offender (although I had every intention of checking it out regularly). So imagine my surprise when I checked out her blog (thanks to my friend Gay, who reminded me it started today) to find that this month's double barrelled challenge is to explore the idea of admiration of another - who do you admire, and why? and/or a colour challenge.
Check out my last post - aren't I amazing! While not actually having signed up for the challenge I managed to complete and post a piece on that very theme, using that very colour scheme, and all before Sharon even announced it - now, for my next trick......................!!!

Looking forward - looking back

2007-12-31T18:31:00.000+11:00

First, looking back. Today is the last day of the year and this day is always tinged with sadness for me, as it is the anniversary of my mother's death - seven years ago now. I have been feeling restless and annoyed that I am not producing anything, while at the same time whining endlessly about not having time to do anything. So today I resolved to make a small piece in the style of Lesley Riley's fragments to honour my mother.
I wanted to use some of the rust dyeing I have done recently -so used a piece of silk organza and some wide silk ribbon that I quickly rusted up. I transferred a favourite photo of her aged about 3, with teddy, using solvent, onto some smooth shiny fabric to get a clear print. Then I had to decide what fabrics to put with it. One of the limitations of rust dyeing is that it is orange - no two ways about it. I had previously paired some rust dyes with blue, the complement of orange, but didn't want to use blue in this piece, so was scratching my head, when my eye fell upon an article by Lesley Riley in a recent CPS on rust dyeing. She had done a piece in rust dyes, purple and aqua and I suddenly realised I should have been thinking of a triadic colour scheme - which would give me much more scope.
So, I rummaged in the scrap bag and quickly found some pieces. I had a beautiful piece of lace that I was determined to use, but alas no matter what I did it just didn't seem to work. In the end I discarded it in favour of the scallop trim which seemed to fit better. Along the bottom are five little flowers cut out of copper tissue with one of those little stamper cutter thingies you get in scrapbooking stores. On to the rust dyed ribbon I transferred her family motto '"to the valiant heart, nothing is impossible". In retrospect, I should have used a slightly larger font, but it does invite the viewer to move in close to read it. All in all, I am happy with this piece, and glad I just told myself to 'do it' and stop procrastinating.

As for looking forward - I plan to take more of the 'just get on with it' approach in the coming year. I am signed up for Liz Berg's class and she has a good line in just do it, work quickly, produce the work. I also have realised I have to accept Rayna Gillman's sage advise to accept the crap quota. Apart from a tendency to over analyse, I also tend not to want to start something until I am sure I am going to get it exactly right. This is a terrible trap, because of course half the time I don't start, and when I do, and the end result is not perfect, I get very despondent. Rayna's advice is accept that there will always be a crap quota - do the work - lots of it - sift through the crap and find the gems - the more you do, the more gems you'll get.

So - that's what I will try and do more of in 2008 - and if you hear me starting to whine about not having enough time, feel free to give me a very sound telling off.

Happy New Year

Book review

2007-12-27T12:21:00.000+11:00

I just love books, they are always a main feature of my birthday/Christmas gifts. One I received this year is Alysn Midgelow-Marsden's new book on working with metals. I settled down with a cuppa to enjoy it and was immediately alarmed to read the dedication "I would like to acknowledgement the many people....." - oh dear, I thought, that doesn't augur well for proof-reading.

With advances in technology, self-published books are becoming more popular, and are particularly noticeable in the textile art world (well, that's the one I inhabit, so that is what I have noticed - for all I know they are all the rage with the antique toy train collector set too). There is nothing wrong with self-published books per se, but it is important that basic standards aren't disregarded in the process. In my view, that is what has happened with this book.

Basic proof-reading would have picked up straightforward typographical errors, including the one noted above. The author needs reporting to the apostrophe protection society - apart from two very doubtful instances on the cover there is a real clanger at the top of page 8, and assorted other superfluous examples. Like Joan, I found the conceit of using lines from Shakespeare's sonnets (real, or imagined) highly irritating - it adds nothing.

Most of all the book would have benefited from the attention of a good editor. Some of the sentences are so long, and syntax so tortured I had to re-read them several times to understand what was being said. A good editor would also have known to use 'complement' instead of 'compliment', and someone with an eye for design and layout would have provided the much needed white space that Joan points out is missing. The book lacks a tight, logical structure. If you are new to using metals in textile work, this will be a confusing introduction. Copper curls are mentioned on page nine - in bold letters - I have no idea why, but aren't illustrated until page 34.

Not all the pictures are captioned, so you aren't always sure what you are looking at. I particularly noticed the lack of a suppliers list at the back - something commonly found in most books of this type. The only supplier mentioned is an English based company called Art Van Go, which I have heard of. But this is little use to Australian/NZ or North American readers, who, I am sure, would have appreciated a supplier in their neck of the woods. Then I realised that the book, which written by AMM is 'in conjunction with' the owner of Art Van Go.

On the positive side, I enjoyed being introduced to the work of other artists in the medium who I had not encountered before, and a couple of the resolved pieces appealed, partcularly the one called 'on sea's rich gems'. On balance, however, I didn't feel that I got anymore from this book than I already had from Maggie Grey's "Paper, Metal, Stitch" which suffers from none of the aforementioned shortcomings.

Christmas treats - and turkey dyed fabric

2007-12-26T13:51:00.001+11:00

The smell of freshly baked cinnamon buns heralds Christmas morning at our house - it just wouldn't be Christmas without them! Except my girls have never been partial to cinnamon, so I make one batch with a rich chocolate filling - they disappear so fast, you wouldn't believe it!

Later in the day we have more traditional fare - which for us, means turkey. Except I can't be bothered with a whole turkey, so just cook a whole breast on the bone. This year I stumbled across advice from Stephanie Alexander, a renowned Australian chef and author, on how to cook the perfect turkey. You wet some cheesecloth and soak it in a herbed butter mixture, then wrap the turkey. Bake for 30 mins per kg and rest for half an hour before removing the cloth. Here is what it looks like straight out of the oven. Thos wrinkles are the cloth.

When you peel it off, you have a beautifully cooked turkey - no basting!! I did keep adding a cup of water to the pan (the turkey was sitting on a rack), to stop the juices burning, and I ended up with a beautiful thick rich turkey flavoured jelly, after I had drained off the fat. That went into the gravy. So, very successful, and it kept the oven clean as there was no spattering like you get when you baste.

I washed the cloth to see it if would keep the gorgeous mahogany coloured marks, and it did, but the cloth disintegrated. Shame - I thought I might have discovered turkey dyeing to complement my rust dyeing!

Merry Christmas - and first anniversay

2007-12-24T07:31:00.000+11:00

It is one year today since I started my blog - on Christmas Eve - why wasn't I stuffing a turkey or making mince pies?? I can't do either of those things today as I have to go work, unfortunately, so it will be a mad rush this evening to get things done. Never mind. Thank you to everyone who has visited and left comments - I don't have one of those counter thingies, so have no idea how many of you are out there, although I suspect, like me, there are lurkers who visit regularly but don't leave messages. It has been fun becoming part of blogland - I will try and post more consistently next year, although I have averaged one a week, but need to do better, I know. I'll start thinking about new year's resolutions later in the week - for now, if you celebrate Christmas, have a peaceful one with family and friends. I have my three girls home this year, which is lovely (albeit noisy!).

Isn't this postcard fun? I got it at the Melbourne Museum on my recent visit - one of those freebies. I like the 'delightfully poised and all set for fun' caption -she looks like she is determined to go out and party. Here is a link to the blog of the talented creator, Tamsin Ainslie.

Back from Melbourne

2007-12-15T17:33:00.000+11:00

Here is Clare, the proud graduand with her Dad (the rusty fish maker). I have to say the ceremony was horrendous - they graduated the whole university and TAFE in one mega-ceremony at the Telstra dome - 30,000 people were there, it was ghastly - completely lacked the intimacy and appeal of other graduation ceremonies I have attended. But never mind, she was one happy little girl and as soon as she got her award we got the hell out of there as we had already been there three hours at that stage and the end wasn't anywhere in sight.

The next day we visited St Patrick's cathedral in Melbourne - a great gothic building in the centre of the city - Clare and her fiancee Luke are getting married there in just over a year. Very impressive.

Then the next day we spent the whole day at the Melbourne Museum - I hadn't been before, and was very impressed. Lots of really interesting exhibits. As soon as we walked in the door we saw this - a giant, non-rusty fish! Apparently these were part of the opening (or maybe closing) ceremony for the Commonwealth games held in Melbourne last year.

We also saw this interesting collection of various types of barbed wire

I had no idea it came in so many varieties - wouldn't these make a great inspiration for interpreting in stitches? If you have been following TAST on Sharron B's blog, you could try applying some of your new found skills to these!

Couldn't resist a photo of this - some wag at the Museum decided to get the pet dinasour into a festive mood!

Happy birthday to me - look what I got!

2007-12-12T08:23:00.001+11:00

Just had to show you what I got for my birthday from my husband - rusty fish!!

There can't be too many women in the world who would be thrilled if their husband gave them something made from recycled rusty tin cans - I guess that's why textile artists are special!!

And check out the ingenious birthday tag - he has been making spatulas for christmas presents, and this is a bit of left over nicely polished wood that he - not sure of the right verb here - embossed? Anyway, took individual letters in cast metal and whacked them hard with a whacking tool. Clever, huh??

I haven't got time to put the fish out on fabric to rust before we have to leave for the airport - will do it when we get back on Saturday.

Off to Melbourne tomorrow

2007-12-11T19:10:00.000+11:00

Tomorrow is my birthday, and, even better, the day our youngest daughter graduates from RMIT. She has been studying photography - check out her website here - not bad for a 20 year old who upped and moved away from home at 18 - a thoroughly indepedent Miss -- and if you live in Melbourne and want someone with personality plus to photograph your kids, pets or wedding - give her a call.
My favourite part of my birthday is my telephone call from my dear friend Gay, - we became firm friends fifteen years ago (OMG - can it be that long?) when my family was living in Virginia for three years while my husband was with the Aust embassy. Gay and her husband have now retired to North Carolina. And speaking of Gay, here are a couple of gorgeous postcards she made for me

At the beginning of the year we made a pact that we would make a journal quilt each month, then make a postcard size interpretation of it to exchange with each other. Oh dear - I only managed one (January), and Gay managed two (Jan and Feb). What happened? I do think one of my big problems is simply DOING stuff. I spend too much time thinking about it first, and then run out of time to DO.
For my birthday present, I have signed up to do Liz Berg's online course on the Elements and Principles of design. I love Liz's work, and she had a series of great articles on design in QA a while back.
I also love Melody Johnson work at Fibermania . Check out her great tutorial on making stacked, fused quilts. This looks like more fun that should be legal. I plan on giving this a go over the Christmas/New Year break.
And finally, I am not having much luck with my Pay it forward challenge. It is gratifying to find that other people do actually read my blog - thank you, but worrying that they don't want to put their name down to participate. Trouble is, I feel an obligation now to PIF - I have in my hands a lovely gift from Gunnel, and the deal was that I pass it on - if no-one signs up, how can I? If you are worried about over committing, think of this - the deal is that if you sign up, I have up to 365 days to send you something - and it follows that you then have up to 365 days from receipt to PIF - that gives a window of opportunity of up to 2 years!! Surely you can find time to do something - and you don't even have to make something specially - it can be something you already made! So come on guys, help me out here and let me salve my conscience by signing up so I now longer feel I am in debt. If that doesn't work, I guess I will just have to send Gunnel something back, so I don't feel guilty anymore!
And speaking of Gunnel - check out the cool stamps that came on her envelope! Those Swedes have got it right - hot chocolate with cream and ...more chocolate - with cream - what a civilised country!

Now it's my turn to....

2007-12-09T07:43:00.001+11:00

Pay it forward. Here is the deal:

"I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don't know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog."

I responded to the same call on the lovely Gunnel's blog, and look what the postman brought me:

So, if you want too keep it going be one of the first three to leave a comment and I promise I will send you something special I have made - I have no idea what yet, but I sure do know it won't get there in time for this Christmas! .....but it will definitely get there before next!!! Now I suppose I will get to find out if anyone other than Doreen actually reads my blog !!

It's beginning to look a lot like.....

2007-12-08T15:12:00.000+11:00

Christmas! In my family, from when I was a little girl, the Christmas tree gets put up on the weekend before my birthday - so, here it is. Step 1: Assemble tree, adding lights as you go, so you can get them right into the centre of the tree, not just looped around the outside.

Then add strings of beads and a wide, wire edged ribbon

then the candles in their little holders

Here is a close up of thoseWe never actually light these, of course! although we did know some crazy Canadians once who used to light theirs - and on a real pine tree - just for a few minutes each Christmas eve, then turn off all the lights in the house to appreciate it. Given that Christmas is right in the middle of our bushfire season, I don't think any Ozzies should try that at home!

Next come the decorations - a host of heavenly angels to keep watch over us

Then come the precious handmade ornaments from dear friends and my mother

And finally, a star to light the way.

And here it is all finished

More rust dyeing

2007-11-28T18:13:00.000+11:00

Oh dear, haven't blogged for a while. I delivered the baby quilt I showed in my last blog, and have a new one up on my design wall - nearly have it finished - I started ages ago and just needed to make a couple more blocks to have enough, then cut the setting triangles. It is a sort of old fashioned looking basket block pattern that just appealed. I do like setting blocks on point and alternating with a solid block - the diagonal set has more life and movement, and it means you only have to piece half as many blocks! Will try and get this top finished this weekend. Then it can come down and make way for this one which is waiting in the wings. I bought some indigo fabric ages ago, with a view to making a classic blue and white quilt. I cut out all the pieces, but never got very far - and now I can even remember what pattern I was going to do. But I have lots of small squares, so started making half square triangles and putting them together into pinwheel blocks. These are only five inches finished - what was I thinking? Oh well, it will get finished eventually. Maybe I will group four together to create a 10 inch block, and sash with indigo between??

I have been doing some more rusting - the weather is hotting up here, so very suitable. Here is my set up at the end of the garden.

My husband has really got into the spirit of this and has been bringing me home all sorts of bits and pieces that he collects on his walks.

He got creative and cut me some fish shapes out of some flat metal. Here they are sitting on some previously rusted and hand dyed fabric.

And here is what it looks like after sitting for a day or two. My husband thinks the fish looks a little deranged, although quite how one assesses the mental state of a fish I really don't know. Maybe it isn't the fish that's deranged!?

The next piece was covered with steel wool, then wrapped around a piece of PVC pipe and tied with copper wire. You can just see the black at the top that comes from the interaction between the copper and iron. I'd actually like more black and less orange.

This one was also wrapped around some pipe and tied with steel wire - not sure what caused the blobs. I like this one better because it isn't so orange - I might overdye this one, or add some more surface design with paints or inks, or screen printing or something.

this last one was interesting too - wrapped around a star picket - which you can see in the first photo, laying between the pvc pipe and a piece of dowel - and tied with copper wire - I got rows of blobby bits where the fabric touched the picket and it stayed white where it didn't- another good candidate for overdyeing.

Home again

2007-11-04T11:49:00.000+11:00

Actually, we have been home for a week now. Had a lovely time down at the coast - saw a lot of migrating humpback whales. Oct/Nov is the prime time to see them as they head down the east coast of Australia from their breeding grounds in Hervey Bay, in Qld, to the cold, and food rich waters of Antarctica to feed over the summer. They come in close during the southern migration, so the mothers can help the calfves learn the route (apparently). Anyway, it makes seeing them up close easy. Some spectacular displays of tail slapping and complete breaching, where they hurl themselves completely out of the water and land with a huge splash - forty tonnes of whale makes a big splash!

Got some handwork done, but not a huge amount. I did, however, get a quilt finished - this has been waiting for its binding since June (this year!), which given my track record for bindings, is pretty damn quick (see previous post). Here it is

This is for a baby boy born to a friend of mine. His big sister has a similarly colourful quilt, so thought I'd better keep up the tradition for number 2. I used the bricks and stepping stones pattern from here. Good reference for scrap quilt patterns (I only make scrap quilts - can't imagine making a whole quilt with only two or three fabrics - I'd die of boredom - quite apart from which I doubt I have enough of any one fabric to use it over and over in the one quilt).

Had lots of lovely rain last night. Very windy today, which is why the photo is a bit wonky - pegged the quilt to the trust Hills hoist, and tried to get snaps in between gusts. Wouldn't do for a quilt show entry, but okay for the blog! Speaking of quilt shows, good to see some Aussies winning in Houston.

Off on holidays

2007-10-12T17:36:00.000+10:00

We are off in the morning for two weeks down at the coast - can't wait! I always agonise over what to take down when we go - one time I took my sewing machine and completely pieced a quilt top; last time I took my embellisher and played. This time I am going to do some handwork - I recently made a little crazy patchwork piece for a colleague who is getting married tomorrow - silly me forgot to photograph it before giving it away. But I realised how much I enjoy working with fancy fabrics and doing the embroidery and beading and general tizzying up that goes on with CQ. So I have pieced up a few foundations to take with me to embellish.

This is what it will end up being turned into.

I transfer the writing using a photocopy/laser copy and solvent, then machine piece the foundation. I have packed a selection of threads, silk ribbons, beads and braids, so will see how much I get done.

Doreen has tagged me - apparently I have to tell you seven honest things about myself - hmm.

1. I need deadlines to get things done - give me all day/week/month, and that is how long it will take!

2. I am terrible at that whole spatial thing where you can visualise which way around things are supposed to go, etc. I am guaranteed to get it wrong every time!

3. My fabric stash is embarassingly large - I lived in the US for three years and couldn't resist stocking up on quilting fabric - thank goodness the government paid to ship it all back!

4. I like to try new things, but have decided I really have to focus and do something really well, instead of flitting around doing this and that - it really is time to decide what I want to be when I grow up!

5. I LOVE my Bernina 1230

6. I HATE doing bindings on quilts

7. Refer to number 6 - now I will only tell you this last one if you promise not to tell anyone else - if the quilt police find out I am a gonner - okay - I have several quilts stashed in my linen cupboard which have been there for a long time, and all they need doing is the binding. I have one quilt that has been quilted for - gulp - 13 years, still waiting for its binding.

Okay, now I am off down the coast so when the quilt police turn up they will find the house locked and empty.

Day 3 - Mission accomplished!

2007-10-01T16:52:00.000+10:00

Well - I got everything done I set out to do. I was up early and washed out all the fabric I dyed. By nine o'clock it was twirling in the breeze. The second photo shows a rust dyed piece on the right, and on the left is one of yesterday's rust pieces that I overdyed. This is the frying pan one

I like the effect that the overdying has - it sort of puts the rust bits into context, rather than just having them floating about on a white background. It has also brought out some details I hadn't noticed before. On the one below, there are a couple of shapes that look like fish -- the washers created 'eyes'- at least that's what I think!

This next piece I didn't show yesterday, before over dyeing -but I really like the criss cross lines in the rust bit. I got that by rolling the fabric around a piece of PVC pipe and then wrapping tightly with thin wire.

Here is a close up of it. BTW, I notice that on my blog, if you click on the photos you don't get a close up - even though that is what happens on everyone else's I visit. Does anyone know what I have to do to make it happen? Are there some special settings/options I am supposed to choose??

This piece I decided not to overdye. I really like how it turned out. I think it has potential to be a whole cloth piece, with some further surface design added.

Here is another piece using the bars from the barrel that my husband cut up. He drilled some holes in one piece (in the centre) and cut one piece with a zig zag edge, like a saw, to add interest (clever fellow!).

Here is a close up of those two pieces.

The only thing that didn't work was the screen I prepared yesterday. I am not sure what was wrong - I think the alginate wasn't thick enough, but anyway, no matter how many times I squeegeed the image wouldn't break down and start transferring - and it took me ages and ages at the sink to scrub the damn thing clean. Maybe I let it get too dry?? Anyway, I can have a go at that another day.

And finally - did I actually MAKE something with all of this? Yes, I did! A little quilt - about 10 x 14 inches. I fiddled around for a while not sure where to begin, then picked up a pencil and sketched a very simple design - the three rectangles and the circle, with a sort of wavy line going through. Then I gathered up the fabrics I had produced this weekend and tried to figure out what to use.

I kept wanting to use the bubble wrap discharge from the earlier post, but as soon as I picked up a piece I had discharged with some rug grip, I saw skyscrapers, and then I knew the circle would be the moon. Once it went from being an abstract to a little city scape, I decided I didn't need the wavy bit. I fused the pieces onto a dyed background with black Misty Fuse and did some simple machine stitching - free form around the circle and with the walking foot round the rectangles. Finished off with some fused binding and ta daa!!

I had a very productive weekend - I have lots of lovely rusted pieces underway and am quickly developing ideas for what to do with them. I do like the discharged pieces though, and still want to do something with the bubble wrap fabrics - maybe some postcards? Stay tuned!

Day 2

2007-09-30T18:28:00.000+10:00

Well I got everything done today I planned to - dyed up 2-3 metres of fabric; rust dyed another metre or so; prepared a screen to do some improvisational screen printing (it is still drying); and did a few monoprints using thickened dye, plus pressed all the lovely stuff I made yesterday using my wonderful new Singer magic press thingie - beats ironing!!

Here is a rust dyed piece using the square plate I mentioned yesterday. The little circles are from washers. This next piece turned out well - the big circles are from the paint tin lid and the broad rectangle bit sticking out (like a frying pan with handle) is from a piece of iron that used to be wrapped around a big barrel. I had forgotten that we had one in the garden that rotted away, and my husband had kept the metal bands. He flattened them out as much as possible, and cut them into manageable lengths. I have a piece fermenting away with several lengths of this stuff on it - can't wait until tomorrow to see how it looks!

One problem with this rusting stuff is that it all turns out orange - and I am not a very orange person. Also, I am not enamoured of the stark white of the background. So, I have already dumped these pieces into a soda soak and they have had a wash of fairly dilute procion dye added in slate blue/grey, to tone down the background and complement the rust colour. Will see how they look tomorrow too!

Did some more bleaching - good old bubble wrap monoprint was first.Then I had a go at freehand spirals combined with some made from a rubber stamp. I doubt that exposing my rubber stamps to bleach products is a very good idea. However, I rinsed them off immediately, didn't leave them sitting around in the stuff. Oh well, if it shortens their life, at least it will have been in a good cause!

And finally, a monoprint using the cleaning gel, that didn't quite work - it was too runny, so I got big areas exposed - although, I do think it will make a good canvas on which to stitch, and I can always stamp/stencil/screen on top as well.

There are lots of other pieces, but these are a good sample of what I did. My husband has really got into the spirit of the rust dyeing. He keeps emerging from 'the shed' with new ideas and things to try - some rusty chain emerged a while ago, and he also hammered a lot of little nails (which rust really easily, apparently) into a length of wood, in a nice curvy pattern. I have got those on a piece of fabric - so hopefully, I will end up with a line of little rusted circles - we shall see!

So, tomorrow's jobs are: print off using my dried screen; wash out all the fabric I dyed, dry and press; check on how the rusting is going on the various pieces, AND - make something!!

Discharging and rust dyeing

2007-09-29T18:26:00.000+10:00

Two things I have been wanting to try for a while - it is a long weekend here so decided to set aside some serious play time. Decided to start with the simple version of discharging, using gel bleach. All the American sites that mention it suggest using Sunlight dishwashing gel, which seems to be unavailable here. So I went hunting in the supermarket and found these two products - could be more out there for all I know, but this is what I got from two of the big grocery store chains. I used both, and they work fine. White King really packs a punch - has a higher concentration of bleach than even domestos! It works really quickly - probably a bit harder on the fabric. The cheaper no name one takes a little longer to discharge, but is probably not so rough on the fibres.

Here is my first piece - I filled up a curved ended syringe (had a devil of a job finding those, but eventually tracked them down at a dental suppliers). I draw squiggles and then circles, just meandering along, getting a feel for it. When it is still wet, and before neutralizing and rinsing, it was very orange indeed. It has now toned down to more ochre type shades. Quite elegant, I think! All the websites say to neutralize with Anti clor or bleach stop - but neither of these seem to be available in Australia. I did a bit of research and apparently one of them is just a brand name for sodium metabisulphite - which Batik Oetoro sell - so I will order some next week. In the meantime, I made do with hydrogen peroxide from the chemist, which also works, apparently, but will work out fairly expensive to use all the time.

Then I had a go using Thiox (which I thickened with alginate). Here is the result, after pasting it onto a rubber stamp - well, actually, a color box molding mat. The pattern is rather ghost like - I like the effect. Interestingly, the black is from the same bolt of fabric - the bleach based products produce ochres, whereas the thiox (and also the Jacquard discharge paste, which I also tried) produce this silvery image, which has touches of mauve here and there.

And I also had a go at rust dyeing. I recently got the Rust Tex CD which I got from Dale, I didn't have anything rusty lying about, so I asked at work, and someone who keeps a horse on a property around here said he could get me some bits. Not all of them worked - but two pieces in particular did - a rusted lid off what I think is an old paint tin, and a flat piece, that might have been part of a barbeque plate at one time. Right now they are wrapped around some more fabric, simmering away in a bath of vinegar and salt, all wrapped up in black plastic.

But here is one piece that I got done - I only started it 24 hours ago, and have rearranged it on the metal several times during the day to get good coverage. So, I have had a good start to my long weekend.

Tomorrow I am going to do some monoprinting using the gel. I also want to prepare a screen to do some improvisational screen printing - another thing on my list. Oh, and I want to dye up some more fabrics. Then Monday, I am determined to actually make something from my newly generated stash - even if it is just a postcard, or a journal quilt - I won't go to bed until I have something. I have decided I have to be more focussed on just producing work, and not simply messing about. Oh dear - not enough hours in the day - especially when work interferes! Although, I regularly read Lisa Call's blog, and that woman is totally amazing. She has a full time job, and children at home (mine are big), and she still manages to put in 30 hours or more a week in her studio - does she ever sleep, I wonder???

Back from QuiltIndulgence Festival

2007-09-18T10:16:00.000+10:00

I had a lovely four days in Mittagong at the QuiltIndulgence festival. Took two x two day classes. First was with Fiona Wright - we did nuno felting. All pieces were made on a background of black cotton voile. This one had layers of dyed merino in slate blues and gold/oranges laid out, and topped in places with pieces of silk in the same colours. There is also a piece of good old chiffon scarf (synthetic) like the old ladies used to wear over their hair rollers! It worked fine, even though it wasn't natural fibre.

The next piece hasn't photographed true to colour. It looks all pink and green, when in fact, it is bronzey/olivey.

Here is a scan, which shows the colour better. I think this will make a great surface for stitching - I am thinking, hand stitching in big running stitches, with thick silk thread.

Next couple were vaguely sinspired by Spring here - our spring festival, Floriade has just started, so I was thinking, fresh, spring greens, fields of tulips etc. They were also an experiment with including different types of silk - up until then I had only put silk organza on top - mainly because that is the only type I had! But these two include silk jap and silk chiffon - I really like the way the silk chiffon softly blends in - whereas the organza has a crisper, crunchy feel and look.

This next piece really shows that characteristic of the organza. The lighter sections on the surface are pieces of hand dyed mulberry bark.

I think this is one of my favourites - can't decide whether to use it horizontally, suggesting ripples in the sand, or vertically, suggesting tree bark? What do you think? The middle layer on this one is a mixture of alpaca (which doesn't felt) and merino, with a bit of glitzy stuff carded through. The top is a piece of cream silk chiffon. The yellowy textured bits are under the top (unlike the mulberry bark, above, which sits on the surface) - they are strands of silk throwsters waste). I like the effect it has created. This is another one I can envisage doing some hand stitching on - and maybe a few small shells? Only, of course, if I go with the seashore theme - they would look pretty incongruous grafted onto tree bark!

And finally - the colours in this one aren't true - it is really more olivey and Australian bush type colours. I used a layer of olive coloured merino, then topped it with some hand dyed silk hankies with some strands of textured wool laid on top. The base was an olive coloured silk scarf in a very open weave - you can see the fringe hanging down at the bottom edge.

The other two days I did some machining on water soluble stuff. One thing I confirmed doing this class is that sitting for hours, free machining is NOT my thing. a) it is totally boring, and b) it isn't good for my neck and back, which are a bit fragile and don't need any unecessary stress. I played around maching circles onto some polyester organza, then burning it between the stitching to make the holes. One of these is a scan, and one is a photo - I went with a vaguely circular motif - some stamping with fabric paint onto some hand dyed cotton, then some circular stitch directly onto the fabric - backed with batting - I used the flower foot as well - caused great interest in the class - have a feeling Dale is going to get a bunch of orders as a result! I did three circular shapes onto the soluble in purple rayon, then stitched them on with copper metallic. That was about it before my boredom thresh hold was reached. The rest I machined bubble shapes onto poly organza, burnt them out with my wood burning tool (had to sneak out of the class to do that) then stitched them onto the surface. Couldn't decide at first whether it was a cosmos or an underwater scene - class consensus - underwater - so there you are!

A bit more play

2007-09-09T15:54:00.001+10:00

I painted up some lutradur (the heavyweight one), then cut it into strips, using my woodburning tool. While I was in a pyromaniac mood, I pulled out some sheers, laces and other synthetic stuff and sliced them up using the tool. Then I pondered what to do with these bits, and found some good background fabric in my stash. Then I remembered that I had some black Misty Fuse, which hadn't been opened, so bonded that to the background fabric, laid out the bits and pieces, fused it down, then put the whole thing on a piece of felt for stability and machined it. I had thought about adding some foiling at the end, but decided that some of the fabrics were already glitzy enough. Instead, I embellished some yarn on the surface to see how the embellisher felt about lutradur and other stuff - didn't seem to mind.

More lutradur and lace

2007-09-09T07:42:00.001+10:00

This one I actually followed the instructions! Stitched down the cheesecloth and lace motif in white cotton thread. Painted with various types of paint, then (oh alright, this bit wasn't in the instructions), zapped with the heat gun. It still resisted a lot because of the paint, but I did get some distressing and curling around the edges, and a little hole above and to the left of the flower. I have another idea I will try today of doing some stitching as a resist, zapping, then painting - aiming for holes!

The reason I am thinking about holes is that I am off for four days of workshops next weekend, to the Quiltingindulgence Festival at Mittagong. I am doing a two day class with Sue Dennis called 'Wholly holes", and a two day workshop with Fiona Wright on nuno felting - can't wait! Can't post a link to Sue Dennis website, it has been down for a couple of days. I think we are going to do lots of machine stitching on water solubles, which will be fun, but I think I'll take some other stuff to stitch onto as well, like lutradur and tyvek and other things that I can 'dissolove' with the heat gun. I am afraid I am not a very obedient student - I tend to wander off and do what I feel like, rather than what the teacher says - might have to wait till I get back to the motel at night to do the heat gun zapping - don't want to be disruptive!

Lutradur and lace

2007-09-06T07:03:00.000+10:00

Like countless others, I couldn't resist having a go at the Lutradur and Lace techniques in the first issue of Fibre and Stitch - here is my result. I used metallic effects copper paint on the lutradur and then sprayed with the patination fluid. them I daubed some lumiere and some other stuff here andthere. I haven't actually done any stitching yet - the gesso that I put down first, so the metcallic paint had something to stick to, sort of glued the bits to the lutradur. I finally tried zapping it with a heat gun to add to the distressed, patinated look. However, the gesso and layers of paint obviously insulated the lutradur, and nothing much happened. I might have a go on the weekend at a distressed/stitched piece. For now it is off to work, and another tedious all day meeting - tedious, tiring and ultimately pointless, no doubt. Can't wait to retire!

Better effort

2007-08-28T18:37:00.001+10:00

I realised after my last posting that my good efforts with the drawing tablet were completely undone by saving it at the wrong resolution, so it still looked blurry and wobbly. Here is another go.

Drawing tablet

2007-08-27T18:47:00.000+10:00

Well, I went and got a Wacom drawing tablet, as advised by my Photoshop tutor. It certainly makes drawing smooth lines much easier. Here is my first ES using it - and while it could be considerably better than it is, it is already better than just using the mouse - so, onwards and upwards!

Positive/Negative games

2007-08-26T07:53:00.000+10:00

While playing in Photoshop, I found out how to overlay shapes so that where they overlap, that part is removed. So here is another exercise in positive/negative shapes - which is what the expanded squares is all about. And here is the latest one of those

Today's expanded square(s)

2007-08-25T16:00:00.000+10:00

I worked through doing another one of these in Photoshop, to write up the directions for Elizabeth -but then discovered that Photoshop elements doesn't have the pen tool, which is essential for doing this. So, sorry PSE users - but if you have the full program, and want to know how to do this, email me and I'll send you the directions. One thing I have realised is that I need to get one of those Wacom pen tablet thingies in order to be able to draw with a steady hand - the mouse just doesn't do it smoothly enough. I also think I like the freeform, organic shapes more than the sharp, angular ones - and asymmetry is more my thing than symmetry. To me 'same' is just another way of saying 'boring

Expanded squares

2007-08-23T16:08:00.000+10:00

I was intrigued by Jane Dunnewold's article on expanded squares a couple of issues back in QA magazine. Decided I needed to have a go. I copied one from the magazine just to get warmed up - that whole spatial thing isn't really me - I am a real klutz at it. However, once I got going I was okay - lots more ideas to try - I thinks Jane's recommendation to do one a day for a month to really get the hang of it is probably good advice - although I am not promising to do it! So far I have figured out that you can set the square on point, and go from there - on this one I divided the square in half and went in two different directions - if you see what I mean.

The next one I kept the square square on, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to flip the bits to the outside - I think I got it at one point, and ended up with something that looked like a swastika, so tried just flipping the bits up and down and my square expanded into a rectangle!

For the next one I decided to be a bit more unconventional - I quite like it! All of these were done with a piece of black paper, a pair of scissors and a glue stick. I then decided I would like to be able to do this electronically, using Photoshop, which I have recently started learning.

So I fiddled around and got stuck on some of the trickier bits - but fortunately, some lovely people on the Photoshop Yahoo group came to my rescue and before I knew if, I had it down pat. So here are a couple I did in Photoshop. The first is very much in the style that Jane Dunnewold does - I used that as a sample so I didn't have to worry about design AND the technicalities in Photoshop at the same time.

Then when I had it figured out, I made this one. Let me tell you - it beats chasing strange shaped bits of black paper around the floor, and accidentally flipping them over so you paste them on the wrong way around! I don't see myself doing paper ones every day for a month, but I could probably knock one out everytime I fire up Photoshop to do my homework assignments.

Dyeing results

2007-08-22T08:19:00.001+10:00

When my friends went home on Monday, I cleaned up and used up the leftover mixed dyes. They had used some greens I wouldn't normally use - quite limey, and some orange, which isn't something I tend to go for much either. Anyway, waste not, want not, so I used up what was there. Here it is drying on my Hill Hoist yesterday morning.

When they dried I also realised that my friends had gone for light/mdm values, again something I tend to avoid, so I ended up with a batch of fabrics I never would have got if I had been left to my own devices - and that has to be a good thing!

One of my friends brought me a little posy of violets from her garden. Aren't they lovely? I have a patch growing outside my laundry door. And there are small patches of white and pink ones in the front yard. I have a soft spot for violets - they were my mother's favourite flower - her middle name was Violet. They always seem so fragile to me, yet they grow in the depth of winter, and the leaves are such a luscious dark, velvety green. I had thought Violet was one of those old fashioned names confined to spinsters in Agatha Christie novels - but happily, not so. A colleague of ours recently had a little girl, and her name is Violet! How lovely. So here is a salute to all the Violets out there.

Playday

2007-08-20T18:50:00.000+10:00

A long time without a blog - work has been horrible, I have been sick - you really don't want to know.....I certainly don't.

On to happier thoughts - I have a week's leave, so to start off on the right note, had a couple of friends over for a playday. Neither had ever dyed fabric before, so I got them started on that - it is a bit cold here for dyeing, so they have taken their little treasures home in plastic bags to wash out tomorrow. But here are some I prepared earlier!

I always swore I wouldn't get into dyeing - way too messy - but finally decided I couldn't resist the idea of creating my own colour combinations instead of relying on someone else's - I must admit, it is rather addictive.

After lunch we moved on to some other surface design techniques - stamping, mono printing, rubbing plates, with Shiva sticks and finally, some foiling. Great fun was had by all.

Screen printing workshop

2007-06-26T21:40:00.001+10:00

Here are the results of my workshop on the weekend. These examples were screened onto silk - the cotton samples I did on day one were incincerated by the teacher (see previous post). These ones managed to get out alive. We were working on unexposed screens, so had to create a pattern using masking tape or whatever - but I didn't like the effect, as I ended up with big open areas of white where the tape had been. So by day 2 got smart and decided to first do a full screen of some colour, then do something else on top of that once it had dried (with the aid of a hair dryer), so I didn't end up with any white. The first one I did a full screen of green, then painted blobs of a reddy rusty brown onto the screen and allowed it to dry. I placed the screen down on the green base then pulled across some undyed print paste - Manutex. That helped to wet the dried paint and transfer it to the green. By the end of the screen, the reddy blobs were starting to run a bit. I quite like the effect - certainly better than stark white bits sticking out.
The next one I did a combination of green and the reddy brown on the first screen, sort of half and half, then used what was left of the dried blobs from the first one to transfer - that is why they are fainter. I like the sort of halo effect on some of them.

The final one of this group was just a screen of reddy brown with a bit of green - it is actually more rust coloured than it looks in the photo. These are all a bit bigger than A4 size. I will probably do some stitching/embellishing of some sort and use them as a base for a journal quilt, or maybe a book cover.

I made a second set of three using purple and blue. On this one I then used a stencil under the screen to transfer a wreath quilting pattern, but the stencil was too thick andI really had to lay a lot of thickened dye onto get it to print. As a result, when I steamed it and washed it out, there is a bit of blurring. But that is okay - it was all a learning exercise.

The next one I intended to stencil the whole quilt design stencil, not just the feather wreath part, but again, it was too thick, so I got a reasonable impression from the top, but it gradually got more fractured as I moved down the screen.

On the final one, I just left the base fabric as it was after the first screen of half reddy purple and half blue. I have turned this one on its side as it made me think of a landscape. A Martian landscape maybe - although that would be with the sky part red, I suppose.

I have realised that landscapes are what speak to me more than anything else. I am not sure where my artistic endeavours - crude though they may be at this stage - are going to lead me, but I sure as hell know that landscape will feature strongly.

Okay, that's enough for now. I have had a fourteen hour day at work and tomorrow is going to be awful, so maybe I had better get some sleep - its just that the few pathetic creative activities I can manage to find time for at the moment is all that stands between me and complete insanity - roll on retirement!

weekend workshop

2007-06-24T18:57:00.000+10:00

I spent the weekend at a screen printing workshop, using fibre reactive dyes on fabric. A lovely group of students - the teacher was a dead loss, but never mind. I still managed to learn what I needed. The highlight (or do I mean lowlight) of the two days was the teacher incinerating some of the students' work when she let the steamer run dry. Personally I wasn't too fussed as I didn't like the piece I had made on Saturday, so its immolation didn't leave me desolate - just as well, I suppose.
We spent a lot of time standing around while she went off and did things - goodness knows why she couldn't have done them prior to class - its called preparation.
Rather than risk my second day's work to the fate of the first's, I brought it home to steam myself - figure even if I stuff it up, I can't possibly do worse than she did. Managed to get the first length done and it looks good - will post photos tomorrow - am absolutely exhausted from being on my feet for two days.
Have to go now and see to dinner. There is a lot of noise going on in the dining room - my two daughters, aged 24 and 22 are having a very animated debate about the merits of the government's recently announced intervention in Indigenous communities in NT. I just want to lie down and have a nap.