Coloured by Nature

The past few months has seen the group experiment with ways of getting colour and texture onto fabric from plants in the form of natural / eco dyeing  and botanical contact printing, rusting, pounding of leaves and flowers and rubbings from trees and the landscape.

Botanical contact print

Pounding, taken from the Japanese technique of  Tataki zome / Hapa zome

Rubbing

Gathering up the necessary materials for eco dyeing

Unwrapping the bundles

Getting into rusting using the dip technique

Finished items, works in progress and experimental pieces – Some of the fabulous work from group members.

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Twining and Stitching

Our October meeting was a continuation of the twining and stitching demonstration by Kerrie last month. There were many pieces in progress as well as some people to teach twining who had missed the September meeting.

Jenny worked on twining some recycled fabric:

Twining

Carol’s twining was becoming a seashell, recycling a border cut from fabric in nautical colours.

Seashell in progress

Twining using tissue paper:

Twining with tissue paper

Some finished tiny vessels in tissue paper and fabric:

Rosalie trying a different technique of coiling:

And my works in progress. A hanging nest and a freeform basket based on tidal pools which will be further embellished:

Carol recently had a wonderful week at the TAFTA Geelong Forum and had brought her beautiful concertina book:

Natural dyeing and printing

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Xmas joviality

Yesterday was our last GeeTAG get together for 2017 and we partied with delicious food, had fun making tricky origami books and secret boxes and continued stitching for our 10 year celebratory exhibition next year.

Here is a taster of some works in progress that will be on show at “Breaking Traditions”, The Shearer’s Arms Gallery, Geelong, March 16-18, 2018.

The 2018 program has been sent out. Don’t forget to email your March exhibition entry forms through to Jenny by 5th February 2018, do not leave it to the February meeting as it is after the cut off date.

We will be starting 2018 at our first meeting on 10th February with Mixed media and the Golden Scrolls for our Embroiderer’s Guild 50th Anniversary exhibition in September.

Contact Leonie or sign up Monday for the Summer School, get in early before it is opened up to other branches of the Guild or you may miss out.

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas.

 

 

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Bookmaking in August

Thank you to Kerrie for a fantastic display and tutorial of her handmade books at the August meeting.

Following our ‘Messy Day’ on the 5th Saturday in July Kerrie constructed a concertina spine book and led us through the process step by step.

Pauline went home and made a book:

Gillian shared some of her books:

I also went straight home to make a book out of my papers and finished it on the weekend. My pages were a little loose so I made the holding tabs a little larger than the spine folds to keep them snug. The linen paper I used for the cover was perfect, I just folded it to size so it has a double up along the bottom and one end which has made it stronger:

And here are some teasers of books in process for our GeeTAG exhibition in March 2018 to celebrate 50 years of EGV Geelong Branch and ? years of GeeTAG (we are working out that one).

 

 

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Springy September

Our theme for the September postcard is “Spring is Sprung” and there were several postcards finished and on display:

Our mini tutorials this month were applique, reverse applique and free machine embroidery. There were many beautiful and inspiring pieces on display including Pauline’s Tiffany inspired piece:

Lots of FME:

FME by Jill

FME by Jenny

Some postcards being worked on from previous months:

And some other rather wonderful stitchery on eco-printed and dyed fabric from Kerrie’s worksop:

Creative stitching by Carol

Planning has begun for our Geelong EGV 50th year celebrations in 2018 and it has been suggested that GeeTAG have their own exhibition early in the year. We are open to suggestions for a focus/theme for this exhibition which will also become our program for 2017 so put your creative thinking caps on, feedback greatly welcomed.

Also keep in mind our 5th Saturday off-site messy gathering on October 29th. The theme will be printing and we hope to have a few stations set up to try different ways of printing.

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Bundling & Dyeing

Yesterday’s meeting was our last for the year and we sat and bundled our leaves and petals.

It was wonderful to have 3 new interested people come to visit, who hopefully were inspired to go and do some natural dyeing and also come back next year.

Shirley and Pauleen had fabrics to show from our dyeing day at Anglesea last month:

Pauleen's basket of beauty

Shirley's rainbow of colours

As it was our last meeting before the long summer break we had a lucky dip where those who wanted to participate brought a colour coordinated bundle of goodies based on the ’12 days of Christmas’. Hopefully everyone will make some exciting things from the surprise bundle they received in return.

This is the bundle I received:

12 days of Christmas surprise bundle

Our next meeting will be February 11th 2012. You will receive an email around the end of January with a proposed schedule for 2012 and details for the first meeting.

Wishing everyone a happy, stitchery xmas.

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