November Catch up

In 2013, our in between months have been a bring and stitch, but also a great opportunity to share and discuss our current projects. Some members were stitching on their ‘coloured’ cloths from the October techniques meeting, others were continuing ongoing projects.

 

Don’t forget our December meeting will be lunch, RSVP to Pauleen to book your seat for this popular round up to 2013.

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September show & tell

Members were stitching all manner of arty pieces this month at our ‘catch up’ session.

Some lovely felting from last month:

Shirley’s quilt for the ‘Alice in Threadland’ challenge at our upcoming exhibition:

At our exhibition we have a great gift shop. Here are some items our group have been making to sell for the Guild:

Some of our members attended a fun day with the Trolly Dolly’s:

And finally some fantastic etched metal books made by some of our members at a workshop with Jen Crossley

Our October meeting will be “Colouring Cloth”, watch out for the emails.

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Gaily Felting

Great results from the meeting this week with everybody having a go at felting vessels. It is extraordinary how many different forms were made from the one activity. 

 

Excellent tutoring girls!

Shirley brought along her quilt from Ballarat Fibre Arts:

 

And Pauleen has been making some creatively coloured fabric (while on her winter visit north). These include rubbings and overprinting. Lovely colours Pauleen.

 

It was a very busy meeting this month as we also played host to the travelling suitcase ‘Amina’ from ATASDA.

Great opportunity to see such a wide variety of textile works close up.

September’s meeting will be our bring, stitch and sew month. Don’t forget to bring those ATC’s for our display at our biannual exhibition and any extra items for the gift shop.

 

 

 

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April and May plays

This post is looking back to our April & May workshops. We began and continued embellishing ATC cards based on the theme for our biannual exhibition: Alice in Threadland. Details for the exhibition can be found on the Embroiderers Guild website. (Photos to come).

 

At the May meeting one of our members, Shirley, showed her wonderful memorial book on her Great Uncle based on her research into his life and experiences in WW1. More info is in these articles here and here.

 

She also attended a workshop on the “Confetti Landscape” process.

Before netting:

 

 

After netting and stitching:

Thanks for sharing your inspiring work Shirley

 

 

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Kaleidoscope of colour

Many of our members have just spent the last two days enveloped in a riotous kaleidoscope of colour and stitch with Effie Mitrofanis. Our workshop was based on Effie’s latest book Threadwork which was inspired by a trip to India, hence the vibrant colours used.

Here is a feast for the eyes:

Stunning work girls. Thank you Kerrie for the delicious home cooked morning tea!!

Thank you Effie for being so generous in sharing your expertise. Thank you also to Gillian for organising such a great workshop for us all.

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Show and Tell

At our April and May meetings there was quite a bit of Show and Tell from the members. It is great to get inspiration from other members in this way and also to get positive feedback on our pieces.

In April Jacqui had done some wonderful cloth dyeing based on the February swing tag technique with dyes and salt. Here is her description of her technique:

The cards and the light parts of the calico I gessoed, the dark parts of the fabric are ungessoed. After the gesso was dry I flooded the card/fabric with blue quink ink, then sprinkled on rock salt, when I was happy with the look of the piece I dried
them with a hair dryer to stop the process. Bits of inky rock salt tend to be blown around so make sure you do this
where damp blue rock salt won’t mark anything you don’t want blued.
The card with the yellow lines on were made by drawing with crayon onto the dried gesso before adding the ink.

Gillian did a fantastic piece combining some earlier techniques:

Yesterday Gillian and I showed the results of the weekend workshop at the Melbourne branch of the Embroiderer’s Guild of Victoria. The Guild had invited Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn over for their 50th Anniversary celebrations and they held two two day workshops in Malvern. Jan and Jean were inspiring, funny and generous.  I will do a post on my blog and I’m sure Gillian will also so pop over to have a look in more detail.

Jill showed us her fantastic bag made of ties from the Op Shop:

Shirley showed us her amazing family quilt dedicated to memories of wartime:

And some close ups; Shirley also used regimental ties in her quilt.

Jill brought her Book in progress, an ongoing project for us all to showcase the techniques investigated in 2009:

Front Cover:

And the Back cover:

Inspired by our wacky wild women last month, Pauleen has made another which was perfectly matched to her purple jumper:

Our Geelong branch of the Guild have a couple of exhibitions this month in conjunction with the Embroiderer’s Guild of Victoria 50th Anniversary celebrations. At the end of May selected items from our Christmas exhibition at the Johnston Collection will be on display at the National Wool Museum here in Geelong (the Johnston Collection is  holding some great talks on embroidery for the Guild celebrations also). Also beginning this month, our members have  contributed to an exhibition of Oriental Embroidery at the Geelong Art Gallery. This is sure to be a visual feast, not to be missed.

Finally, here is a link to the Reflections Scarf Festival 2010. This is a fantastic festival for all ages. It caters for  local, Melbourne, state wide and interstate entries, including  students and younger children. The workshops are great and also continue throughout the mid year school holidays, with many catering to students and children as well as adults. A membership to the Museum is good value, giving free entry throughout the year.

Happy arting and I’ll be back next month with a rundown of June’s workshop on silk paper.

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August Interpolation

Just a fancy name for sandwiching, which is what a select group did during this month’s meeting.

Following the instructions in Beryl Taylor‘s fantastic book we embedded and layered using copious amounts of vliesofix.

Carmel and Gillian did some lovely rich coloured pieces, Jenny and I experimented with various combinations, Jacqui gave her sewing machine a workout and Claudia made little “cm’s” for everyone (we are metric in Oz so we can’t call them inchies).

Claudia’s embedding experiments:

Pauleen was away but has caught up quickly since arriving home. Here is one of her pieces and her technique.

This is my sandwiching experiment. I know it is very like some of my other work.  I ironed my wonder under on before I put the fabric snippets and threads on.I didn’t like the chiffon over the top, so I burnt a lot of it away. I have done some foiling which I haven’t done much of before and then stuck jewels (from the scrapbooking shop)  onto the fabric instead of the shisha mirrors which I didn’t have. I think sequins would be good too. I then stitched over the top.

I’m still awaiting photos of some of the lovely pieces as they are completed, mine still needs some hand stitching and beading.

Many of our group have flitted off to places near and far, generally somewhere warmer than wintering here in the south of Australia! We hope to catch up with them all at the September meeting when we will be using pellon (Note: I think that means pelmet vilene) and etching velvet. Email me if you have lost the materials listing. Don’t forget to check out my blog for my wonderful trip to Perth for a workshop with the ‘in’famous textile artist, Maggie Grey from the UK.

Hope to see you in September.

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