Plethora in May

There was an abundance of beautiful work on show from our productive members at our May meeting.

First up was Pauline with an explanation and great examples of Faux leather. This fitted in beautifully with our theme of recycling for our May postcards with the possible re-use of all those brown paper bags.

Our other topic for discussion was felting. This arose from the tendency for people to gift me their accidently felted woollens for recycling. There were some lovely examples of needle felting and wet felting.

A dressed Scallywag:

Now onto the finished and in-progress pieces on display.

Firstly the April postcards where the theme was ‘Dancing the night away’ and ‘bling, bling, bling’.

We had some icons appearing for March:

We had book pages and covers from Jill:

We even had a finished May postcard using recycled materials:

Many of our members were inspired after the Velma Bolyard workshop and went home to spin paper and make more shifu:

Wow, you are a talented bunch.

Next meeting is June with our 15 minutes of fame spot with Robyn and a theme of ‘Out of Africa’- sure to bring out the wild side!

 

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Felting balls and other things

Our recent September meeting was named ‘Felted and shaken’ and we started with the eating of kinder surprise chocolates so as to use the small plastic containers for the shaking and felting of our wool tops into felt balls. As is the way with our group all manner of items were displayed, shaken and felted as an offshoot. It is wonderful how you get together with a group of like-minded people and the inspiration and ideas just flow! We were rolling, shaking jars with beads, shaking pavlova containers, and displaying some beautiful felted and nuno felted items.

In process

Felted balls

We also had a go at starting nuno felting which was a long process not quite finished in the session, so if anyone has any photos of their finished product please email through and I will add to the blog post.

Nuno felting

We looked at some examples of nuno and other felting some members had finished previously:

Felting prepared earlier!

Other show and tell included a bollard in progress for our exhibition in October utilising all the hand stitches we have covered this year:

Bollard in progress

And some work Jill completed for the class with Kerrie and Jenny:

3D structures

Update!!!

For those at the meeting this is the finished sample of marble effect felting on cotton muslin:

Felting on muslin

And many of our GeeTAG members will know Shirley who’s exhibition is on in Queenscliff until September 30. Here is a picture I snapped today with her latest piece based on her brother shearing at the family farm:

Next meeting in October is needlefelting.

 

 

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Meandering March

Many meandering books made their appearance at the March meeting, and each one was beautifully different.

 

 

Gillian brought along a couple more variations of the meandering book including a triangular shaped one:

Our 2014 projects for GeeTAG will culminate in a book of samples. Today we looked at making silk and felt pages for our books.

We firstly meandered on to a demo of silk paper making with a quick show and explanation of the different types of silk fibres and products.

 

Next Bronwyn showed some wonderful samples of her felting followed by a quick demo of the felting process.

 

We were intrigued with the method for felting the beads into the page and nice beret modelling Beryl!

 

This cool suction tool was for wetting down the fibres:

Kerrie was a magnificent model also and demo-ed needle felting as another possible technique for making pages:

 

Jill brought some wonderful show and tell:

Hope you all have fun trying out some of these techniques and stitching on your pages.

Next month Pauleen and Pauline will be leading us in encrusting calico, look for the email with materials needed.

 

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September Beauties

Our September meeting was all about weaving using fabric strips and ably directed by Kerry.

 

Not only did we have fun weaving but many of our arty friends have been busy with all sorts of fun and beautiful textile goodies.

Some crazy patchwork finished or not:

Some felting:

Textile mosaics:

Even some plastic bag jewellery:

And Pauline took the weaving a step further after I shared this link with the group:

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Talented GeeTAGgers!

Firstly a recent creative workshop with Alice Clague which was enjoyed greatly by many members of the guild including a few of our GeeTAG group. The results were amazingly individual given the commonalities of the project.

Above and below, all the girls engrossed in the construction:

And some of the beautiful results:

Sorry, that last one is a little blurry.

Several of our group went off for a whole week of creating to the TAFTA Geelong Forum.

Shirley came back with some gorgeous felted pieces:

Gillian extended her design skills and thoroughly enjoyed her masterclass:

And Pauline has been beavering away on her sampler:

More to come from this amazingly diversely talented group after next weekend’s exhibition.

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Going from Strength to Strength

Our members certainly built up their muscles this week as we rolled and rolled and rolled and ….. during our nuno felting experience. The results were varied and we problem solved along the way. Some scarves shrank a little more than expected, some a little less and some did not felt at all!!!

Chris laid fibre all over her fabric resulting in a lovely piece of fabric for future use:

Jenny had a lovely piece of hand dyed tissue silk:

Jill created a lovely, geometric, regular design:

A close up of Jill’s detail:

Evelyn went with a ‘carnivale’ theme:

Gillian preferred mauve and turquoise colours:

Pauleen’s scarf was long and beautifully coloured:

Marion started out with her ‘silk’ piece from Vietnam which refused to felt at all until she put wool on both sides of the fabric:

She then went home and made a beautiful, completely new scarf (I need a photo of this Marion please).

and Pauline’s was a gorgeous combination of vines and berries:

It was a wonderful learning experiment!!!

Many members brought along some fantastic items to show as well (See the next post)

Pauleen has emailed the topic for next month’s meeting:

Next month 9th October we will have a “catch up day”. Bring along your textile book with the samples from Beryl Taylor’s book and any other work you would like to share with us. We will have a dedicated “show and tell”. Evelyn has asked Jo to show her how we used xpandaprint and some of our new members might like to join in.

I have also put together a little ‘Textile Tour’ of Melbourne for November visiting a variety of fun shops. We will be training to Melbourne and travelling around by tram and foot with our little shopping carts in tow. If you would like to join us contact Jo.

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