Colour on fabric-pencils and crayons

Our first meeting of the year saw much experimentation with drawing and colouring on fabric with an assortment of water soluble pencils, crayons and blocks. Gillian gave an excellent demonstration of many techniques and effects.

Inktense pencil demo

Our theme for this year is ‘Of the Sea’ which allows for a broad range of interpretation. Gillian brought many ‘sea’ books to inspire as well.

Our experimentation was on A4 size interfaced fine cotton percale and ‘catcher sheets’ for washing machines with ATC, postcard or book pages marked up.

Interfaced cotton

On catcher sheets

We used a variety of colouring tools including Inktense pencils and crayons, water soluble pencils, water soluble crayons and watercolour paints. Rubbing crayons over textured wallpaper worked well. Mediums used to spread the colour included water- greatest spread, textile medium-slightly less spread and aloe vera gel-minimal spread. We tried barriers to the spread such as the inktense liner pencil and the oil based watercolour crayons with some success on our pictures.

On the right-using stamps

After finishing and heat setting some of these may be further enhanced with hand or machine stitch. Robyn’s finished Japanese silks boro bag was much admired. Great use of recycling and I love the cotton crochet doily featured.

Robyn’s Boro bag

Next meeting will be gelli printing, watch out for a recipe and info from Kerrie via email. Those who took pieces of the fantastic textured wallpaper samples Jill shared bring them along, they are excellent for gelli printing. Also for next meeting read the list and think about where we will head for the second half of our meeting/workshops.

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The Christmas Finale

The final meeting for 2018 was a celebration, afternoon tea, planning for 2019 and show and tell. We had a little challenge for those who had the time and energy in the lead up to Christmas. The challenge was a book ( scroll) or members interpretation of of a book in a tin or box. Loosely themed around the 12 days of a Stitcher’s Christmas.

From Gillian

Jo’s was still in progress

Jenny concertina book with pockets, the pockets contained stitched images from the 12 Twelve Days of Christmas.

Carol produced a flag and a concertina book.

Pauline made a scroll

Laurene made a stitched scroll

These two from Kerrie

The was some other show and tell to admire, framed pieces from Jenny and some Boro bags from Carol and Laurene.

Boro Stitching

The focus for the September meeting was Boro stitching with the intention of constructing a bag from the stitched cloth in the October meeting.  Boro is an old Japanese technique of mending and repair that uses scraps of cloth and Sashiko stitching or running stitch to extend the life of the fabric or garment.

This bag is made from small pieces of indigo dyed Japanese fabrics.

Jo led the session, demonstrating the construction of the base cloth. The idea was to create a base of fabric pieces or scraps stitched down onto a base cloth using running stitch ( Sashiko)

Base cloth in production.

A finished base cloth, ready to be made into a bag.

Finished bag

Another bag in production.

Some samples of mended and patched fabric, quite small pieces and probably will not be made into a bag.

Mounting collage on canvas

We had a full house for Kerrie’s great tutorial on mounting paper and fabric collages onto canvas (with thanks also to Sue Dove for allowing Kerrie to share this technique with our group). Some of Sue’s inspirational collages are shown below with the one’s Kerrie created at her workshop.

Hopefully we will see lots of finished items back next month at the August meeting to go onto the gift stall at our upcoming exhibition in September.

Several members attended a fantastic book making session with Lyn Dixon recently, making some very clever books from the miniature to the larger. Some of Rosalie’s books:

Finally we critiqued our ‘Golden scrolls’ which are in progress. They will make a very striking exhibit when finished and hung-well done Jenny on all your hard work and leadership for these-no pictures; they are under wraps until the exhibition!

Print, Stamp, Appliqué, Layer and Stitch

This month’s mini workshop was taken by Carol O’Loughlin and a brief report was provided by Gillian.

 

We stamped using Pigment ink on dyed base fabric – tea dyed in most cases.
We then cut out motifs from fabric or pieces of colour to apply to the cloth.
Transparent gauze and muslin were used to mask some of the space and then we stitched over and around the resulting areas/images.

 

These photos are very much works in progress, the workshop continues next month with time in between for stitching.

 

Leonie, Martina and Janet had some show and tell from the dyeing workshop.

Breakdown Screen Printing

Several members had been away at Fibre Arts Australia and came along to the meeting with some show and tell of their class.

Jo’s class -Text in Art Textiles with Claire Benn

Gillian’s class – Text and Textiles with Jette Clover

Rosalie’s class – Basketry with Mary Hettmansperger.

Meg’s class – Silhouttes with Michelle Eastwood

Kerrie’s class – Cloth and Memory with Beverly Ayling Smith.

Jo very expertly demonstrated the techniques involved in Breakdown Screen Printing.

Another of her pieces

The tables were set up, techniques were explained

And demonstrated

The demonstration piece

Some more show and tell of Jo’s work

The screen at the end, notice how the Text has started to disappear or break down.

And from Pauline, some work inspired by Jude Hill.

Breaking Traditions – an Exhibition of Members Work

The exhibition was to celebrate the ten years that GeeTAG has been meeting, with work from the last five years. It was amazing to see so much work, the variety of styles and the skills of the members. Three rooms filled, display cases and tables loaded and every wall, nook and cranny displaying work.

All involved are to be congratulated. The members for providing so much work to mount an exhibition, the organising team for getting the exhibition organised and the Geelong branch of the Guild for the financial assistance.

What is an exhibition without an opening? Glenys Mann, a well known and respected textile artist and founder of Fibre Arts opened the exhibition and our group was thankful for her support. All who came enjoyed the opportunity to mingle, sip a bubbly and have some pre dinner snacks whilst having a good look at the work. The following photographs will give a taste of the diversity of work, however, it is impossible to show it all.

Our stitched sign that was used for the promotional work and advertising was equally at home with the ‘white gloves’ and the explanation of how our group interprets books. The following photographs show some these.

Some of the other works exhibited.