I'm a square person

Work's progressing on my set of accessories .... I've gone a bit square for this one!

And I still can't seem to break away from my favourite colours. 

The fiddly work has been done, just need to put it all together now. 

I'd planned to do some whilst watching the AFL Grand Final .... but when the finals on, its hard to concentrate on anything else.

Out and about in Brisbane

During my weekend break in Brisbane, despite being bogged down with a winter cold, I did manage to get out and about quite a bit and have a good look around at all the things I wanted to see.  One of which was the Ron Mueck exhibition at the Brisbane Modern Art Gallery.
Ron creates amazing life like sculptures from fibreglass and resin, and places each hair into the sculptures one by one ... its hard to believe they're not real.

This man perched on a chair is enormous - you can see the size of the "real" person behind him.  Every wrinkle in his skin is lifelike, every hair looks real ...

if you look at the photo below you will see that Ron has even recreated the goosebumps on his flesh.  It was mind blowing.  If you get the chance to go and see any of his work, I would recommend it to anyone.

Hubby and I spent Sunday morning at the Eagle Street markets in town, and it was great to meet this lovely young man from Panama, selling his wears created from Mola's.  I used the Kunin Indians of Panama as my artists for the module on reverse applique, so it was wonderful to see the real thing and meet this fella.  He made all his goods himself, and was gracious enough to let me take his photo, although hubby declared later that the chap would have been happier if I'd bought something !

At Surfers Paradise was another talented artist, making sand sculptures on the beach.  He'd spent 3 hours getting his elephant to this stage.  Unfortunately we didn't stay around long enough to see the finished piece but I'm sure it would've been awesome.

We also went up the Q1 Tower, the 20th tallest building in the world.  77 floors and it only takes the elevator 43 seconds to get up there ... I think my stomach was still on the ground floor.  Its a brilliant view of Surfers ... this view is south, with Cooloongatta in the far distance on the left hand side and the border of NSW over the ranges in the distance.

Of course my first day in Brisbane was spent at the Textile Fair, getting idea's, buying supplies and just feeling warm and fuzzy amongst all the things that please me.  The dress below is knitted and looked amazing.  Unfortunately I didn't get the names of the artists who created these works, but credit to them all for doing a great job.

This was one of the "Art U Wear" pieces in vivid lime green felt,

and this was created like a blackwork piece.  There are some very talented people out there.

And then there were the funky and quirky tea cosies

 All in all, a good break away, and lots of things to see and do, now my minds whirling with ideas.  Since being home I've not done a great deal, thanks to the cold, but I've been slowly getting into the swing of it and spent Saturday doing another batch of felts.  Now I've cranked the fire up and will spend the rest of the afternoon designing my accessories with the plan of getting Module 9 in the post by next week.

Harvey Show

Do you ever have those times when you start something and then wonder why you made life difficult for yourself? I have !!  I decided to hand stitch the scroll using a brick stitch, similar to the design etched on the Viking shield that had inspired me, but! .... 9 1/2 hours later .....I wondered what had possessed me. I hate unpicking so continued, and finally finished it.  I'm happy with it, just not the amount of time it took to stitch.  I've still got to outline it with a gold thread yet, but in the meantime I've been playing around with Anglo Saxon alphabets and the next step is to applique some onto the background plaid.

I used the embellisher machine to push the frayed scrim into the plaid and then gently ran it all over the scroll to hold it firmly in place.

After all those hours sitting and stitching I need to stretch my legs, back and neck so I've had the weekend off to do other things.  Hubby and I decided to go to the Harvey Show on Saturday and had a wonderful day.  The weather was perfect ... warm (not hot!) sunny Autumn day, just lovely.

There was wood chopping and sawing, farming machinery, vintage cars, side show alley with the kids rides and food stalls.

Best of all was the exhibition pavilion with the flowers, cakes, vegetables, photography and embroidery.  The bottom left hand photo is of part of an amazing textile quilt that had a farm/country scene with loads of animals on it, it was truly amazing and a work of art ... just love the cheeky emu peeping out from the side.

And what would a country show be without the equestrian events ... unfortunately we missed the Clydesdales as they'd been on in the morning, but we got to see the small buggy display and the toddlers with the miniatures ... always makes me smile and think of "Thelwell".

All in all, a relaxing and enjoyable day ... if only all weekends could be like this.  Now its back to the ironing ....

2010 - I'm back!

I've been trying to blog for a month now ... where does the time go.  Christmas and New Year came and went in a blurr, as did January.  Packed up boxes of craft supplies and hubby drove across Australia to set up a new home in Victoria whilst he worked on a contract over there.  No sooner had we set up home than the job crashed ... and homeward bound were we.  I always said I'd never drive the Nullabor again, but some things you can't get out of.  So off to Victoria I flew, packed up the house and craft supplies and spent 3 days, 15 hrs a day, driving back across the country.  I now vow that I'm staying put and concentrating on getting C&G finished.  That's this years resolution.

I've been working with transparent fabrics, and this is a shadow applique .... shapes cut from a preprinted fabric and adhered to a base, then sandwiched between wadding and a layer of nylon net, and machine stitched around the shapes.

Another sample for this module was a lace fabric created from free machining on water soluble fabric. This design was based on fossils, all placed randomly next to each other.

More machine quilting .... this was trapunto, with some stippling.  I'm quite pleased with this one.

The last sample of applique and quilting ... as it was Christmas time, I HAD to create this!!

Transparent fabrics

The creative juices finally kicked in last week ... how long they'll last is another question.
I'm still working on Module 8 with transparent fabrics. This piece was created using black organza, home dyed vibrant green muslin and crystal organza. I adhered some circles of crystal organza and muslin between the layers of black organza, and then adhered some circles on the top layer of black organza.
From there I machine stitched swirls and circles on, or around. the adhered fabrics, in black thread, and continued the circle design by stitching groups of circles in the negative spaces of the black organza.

I finished it off with some hand stitching in running stitch using green DMC floss, running around the outlines of the circular stitching.

The photos don't show the vibrancy of the colours or fabrics, which is a shame, but it shines and sparkles lovely.

My family thinks its like something out of the sea, but it reminds me of the stars, so I've called it the "Cosmos".

Module 3 - City and Guilds

Colour and applique were the subjects for Module 3, and my primary source was Viking/Anglo Saxon artwork.
I'd touched on colour theory in art classes I'd taken a few years back, and I love history and was fascinated with the Vikings/AS, especially when I found out all about the Sutton Hoo discovery in England, so these two were great ... the applique, not so!

Although I love patchwork and quilting, especially Baltimore quilts, loving it and being good at it are two different things. I'd done some applique in the past but it just wasn't on the top of my favourite things to do list. Oh well, as Meatloaf says "two out of three ain't bad"... so I plodded on. Below are some of my designs based on brooches and shields that I found in various books.

These developed into my samples: (1) applique using various materials including paper, metal, rubber, fabric, felt, beads, ribbon;

(2) reverse applique using polar fleece fabric; and

(3) reverse applique using 4 layers of cotton fabric. I found it hard to stitch the circles in a circular shape, as the fabric was fraying ... this will take some practice!

This piece was my second experimental piece based on the line design from Module 1. Created by appliquing foils, buttons, fabric, seracin and threads to a base fabric.