Sunday update

Sunday's nearly over and it's back to work tomorrow which means very little (if any) art till next weekend.

So what did I manage to acheive?....

Well I have rediscovered the dining room, and the kitchen and B worked his magic on the lounge. Looks so good - why doesn't it stay that way...



The handbag I mentioned is for my Mum and is very nearly finished - everything except the hand-stitching to close the lining up, and a few stitches in the base to join outside to the inside (which is really fiddly and a pain in the bum but worth it cause it sits better when it's done).

Here's a bad pic of the whole bag. The fabric is actually black with flowers embroidered over it - a suede feel.

Here's a closer pic - the fabric looks grey but trust me it is black

and here's a sneak peak at the inside (not too close as it's yet to be finished)

No time for journal quilts but I do plan to work on some ideas over the coming week.

Australasian Quilt Convention Ramblings

Today I took myself to the Australasian Quilt Convention and I must say I walked away with mixed feelings.

I decided hit the exhibitions first and there are some fabulous artsists out there but there are also some very tough critics too. I refer to the "viewers" who very outspoken (almost obscenely so) of their thoughts about other people's work. Not everybody was like this, but I was surprise at just how 'bitchy' people were - the first time I'd really come across this!

The other thing that irked (annoyed) me was people's blatant disregard for a very simple request - NO PHOTOGRAPHS!!. As you enter the exhibition there was a very clear sign asking that people not take photographs to protect the intellectual property of the artists. Now I understand that people want a keepsake, and to tell the truth I had my camera tucked in my handbag, but that's where it stayed. But I was obviously in the minority as there were just so many cameras and flashes going off. To make matters worse, the place was crawling with "Angels" armed with white goves and knowledge of the exhbition and still NOBODY did anything about it!! - oh except 2 ladies who rather loudly commented "don't you just love how people take notice of the NO PHOTOGRAPHS SIGN!!!!!" but the camera army didn't flinch. Even my efforts to step into every photo possible didn't deter them.

So despite this I did enjoy the exhbition. The Australian New Zealand Artquilters Journal quilts were great. They were so versatile in technique, topic, materials and styles.

My favourites was the collaborative exhibition from tACTile - a goup of Canberra based textile artists - whose theme this year was "eye level". The artists of tACTile are Jenny Bowker, Dianne Firth, Helen Gray, Beth Miller and Beth and Trevor Reid (who work in partnership). Here is a bit about last years exhibition Five2.

Of course I didn't leave without hitting the trade hall and to do that I had to battle the crowds!! My only purchases were from The Thread Studio, but I was determined not to spend too much because I'm sure I have purchases from other shows that is still unused. My goal is to start using this stuff up. If I like it, I can always buy more, but to throw things out because they've gone off before I got around to it is definitely NOT on my agenda!.

I'm home now (obviously der!) nd have done the weekend blog crawl and now need to get productive. To do (with what is left of the weekend):

• Catch-up with the Journal Quilt class. Lesson 4 (the last) of the journal quilt class is up and I haven't started on lesson 2. That's the beauty of on-line learning, I can do it when I'm ready.
• Make a handbag for a very special someone (she knows who she is!!). I started this morning at B's Grandma's while I was waiting for the shops and the convention to open (I took B to work at 7 and had breakfast with him - that took me to 8 so I still had some time to kill)
• Re-discover the dining table. This time it's not sewing stuff that's consumed it, just the junk mail, discarded mail, and other odds-and-sods that have been transferred from the kitchen bench when we clean it up.

I'm back!!!

Thanks Sarah for the (gentle) kick-in-the-pants to get back to the blog!!

The weekend away was fantastic! - Copious amounts of alcohol, lots of laughs and giggle-fits (especially when at 4 in the morning J fell over a chair in the dark) a touch of shopping, a brief stop for a movie (Music and Lyrics) and very little sleep!!! Between us all (61 in total) I think we did a fair effort to boost the local economy.

I must say that of the males in Echuca (and many of them were from Melbourne too!) were quite impressed at the thought of a bus-load of women. Usually the convseration went a bit like this....

male: "so what brings you to Echuca this weekend"
Me & girlfirend: "we're on a girls weekend away with 61 women"
male: .... .........
Me & girlfirend:
male: "where's the rest?...."

Sometimes we'd let them in on the fact that our ages ranged from 20 - 86 and the majority were in the upper age bracket, but only sometimes....

Oh and Mum - just so you know, I was really good and didn't drink, went to bed early, got lots of sleep and didn't spend too much money!!

Weekend Away!

I going away with the girls for the weekend. Actually there's about 60 of use aged between 18 and 80(something). We have a double-decker coach and have booked out an entire motel for the weekend. I am going with a girl-friend from work, and many of the others going are her relatives and their friends. I went last year and had a ball so this year should be fun too!!

We are going to Echuca for the Jazz Festival and have a Riverboat cruise planned for Saturday.

See you when I get back.

"Keeping it together..."

I have had a few questions about the Journal quilt (see Sunday's post) so I'll do my best to explain.

I am doing a class at Quilt University called Journal Quilts. The purpose is to learn strategies to start/make journal quilts. Journal Quilts are small quilts without any rules (usually 8.5" x 11").

This weeks lesson was about using mind-mapping to develop an idea from a word. I mind-mapped emotion and came up with:

Distressed = emotion
Distressed = fabric/textiles

This lead me to lots of ideas and sketches and this is the one that came to fruition (actually it's the first sketch that I did and ended up going back to it).

There are a few thoughts behind it:

The fabrics are mostly flannel (aka flannelette) - soft and warm and cuddly - with some cotton for texture. The red fabrics are blacks and navys that have been bleached/discharged (for a project some time ago - see footprints) and made great frayed eges. The red fabrics signify the rawness of emotions.

The techniqes...
Weaving - holding us together/we are made up of various threads woven together/falling apart,
unweaving...
Torn/frayed edges - the way we feel sometimes - a bit frayed...
Plaits - re-weaving/joining together again/working together/support...
Knots - knotted up with emotion/a way to patch-up and tie up loose ends...
Background stitching - calm horizontal lines/peacefulness/the calm after the storm/underneath it all
there is calm
Faces - sleeping, calm and restful/peaceful and placid
Beads - these are made of kunin felt, beads and wire melted back - lots to explain here - wire holds
together/also wired and highly strung /beads, jewels, preciousness/melted felt - well that's
defnitely distress!!

The border/binding, I was particularly pleased with. I folded some of the reds over the edges and tore them back. Then I layed the backing on and folded the edges over, overlaying/overlapping the red. That way bits of red (raw emotion) show through underneath. There is no red at the top, and the weaving is tight, showing that all is well and even. The red shows up and things get rough, and then the calm/peacefullness sets in.

It all sounds very deep, and in some ways it is, but mostly it's just exploring an idea and was fun to make and watch it grow. One thing that I was determined to do with a piece so focussed on a negative emotion was to show a psitive ending/outcome!! For me the point of exploring such an emotion is to find/show something positive

As for what I'm going to do with it, I was thinking a journal cover/page, and as somebody over at Flickr suggested the title ("Keeping it together...") does lend itself to being a theme or journal title, and I do have a lot of other sketches that I cae up with so perhaps..... I really don't know yet, and I really haven't left any room for binding but we can always work something out!

Look what I did!!!

OK, I set myself some goals and whilst I didn't acheive everything (and no I did not get up at 5.30 - that was a rediculous idea!), I did manage this....

The detached chain stitch sample - random and circular


Another stitch sample (which wasn't on my list) - Eyelet stitch, regular and square


And....

My first journal quilt... "Keeping it together..."

Made with hand-dyed fabrics in cotton and flannel


Detail of beads and faces


Detail of stitching. I was so please with how this turned out that I almost stopped at that (some people have trouble knowing when to stop, I howeverhave a tendency of stopping too soon) but didn't.


Back to work for a week and then a weekend away with the girls.....

On my way to work...

I took these pictures on my way to the train station yesterday. I just thought they were interesting. When I downloaded the first one I noticed that there is a dog in the bottom right (painted) that I hadn't realised was there when I took the photo. Talk about looking without seeing!



In this one I like the way that the mens faces are done, although I have not idea what that blue thing is!...


I'm off now to work (play) on my first journal quilt. I noticed this morning that the next QU (Quilt Universtity) lesson is up already. I was assuming that we'd be working US time, but perhaps I'm wrong. Anyway, I'm not goig to look at it until I've worked a bit with the first lesson - I don't want to get distracted and side-tracked!

Dandelions and TAST

tiny rainbows
Originally uploaded by withrow.

I woke up this morning with an image of a Dandelion Seed head running through my mind.

I don't know why... and I don't know where I've seen this image before....

It's definitely a photo I've seen somewhere as it's a close-up of the seed spikes. I've searched the web and haven't yet found it but here is one that I liked anyway.

Perhaps I've thought of this image as it fits with the latest TAST challenge stitch - Eyelet stitch. It certainly would work and something I must try over the weekend. There's surely some TTT (transfer to textiles) potential in some of those pics.

It's the weekend!! (almost...) Time to set some goals

I find that if I blog my goals (intentions) that I feel obliged to stick to it - or as much as I can anyway. So.... in order to get some textile play (can't call it work cause I enjoy it ) here's my plan for the weekend.

• Get UP when I take B to the train at 5.30am. I usually sit in bed with the computer and surf/read blogs until suddenly it's 11.30am and the day's gone!
• Work on a Journal quilt - I'm doing an online class at Quilt University and want to start the first lesson before the second comes out on Sunday (Saturday in the US)
• Finish the latest hand-stitched piece I've been working - Detatched chain, irregular, circular. Might even get it almost finished on the train tonight
• Quilt the fused patches that I started a couple of weekends ago;
• Undo the quilting that I started on the Japanese Kimono Quilt (the blanket I was using for batting was too thick and have bought some batting to start again)

I may not get all of this done but at least I have something to aim for...

Where we live

B and I went walking on the weekend - we decided we should start exploring the place where we live. This weekend we walked the Jarosite Waling track (near Torquay - Great Ocean Road, Victoria) Our walk took us from Ironbark Basin (named because the area is full of iron-bark trees) along the ridge to the top of a point from where we could see Southside Beach and Bells Beach and back to Point Addis.

Ironbark trees are Eucalypts with deeply furrowed bark as in the picture below.






This a picture that B took after our walk. He is on he beach at Point Addis looking back up towards where we've just walked (along the ridge at the top of the photo).

I love the texture of the rocks along the front. I can see textiles - couched treads, machine stitched down...

And lastly this is a picture hat I took - again I loved the texture and figured it'd be a good picture for the photo-bank - good for inspiration.

It is the remains of a Grasstree (Xanthorrhoea johnsonii) - all those little curls make up the trunk/stump. Here are some Grasstrees as they usually stand... (the one on the right has been burnt in a burshfire and the shows the bright green regrowth). I've wanted to stitch grasstrees but so far my attempts haven't been too successfull.

Ahhahhh!!! Moments

You know tose times when something suddenly dawns on you and you wonder why you didn't know/do that before...

Well I just had one of those moments whilst reading Mrs Mel' blog Fibermania. In her post today she showed a pic of some dyeing and explained that she layers her fabric 3 times to sop-up all the dye. DUH!! When I tried a dye similar to her method ad dye running everywhere. If I'd just layered my fabric I'd have wasted less dye an coloured 3 times as much fabric. Lesson learnt!!

A Day in the City

Yesterday I met up with Maureen of Tangled Threads and had a wonderful day. We spent the day wandering Melbourne and chatting non-stop as though we'd known each other for ages - it was great!! Oh and she brought me some fabulous threads that she'd hand-dyed threads and another beauty - what a gem!



Thanks Maureen for a wonderful day.

Afterwards I dropped by my favourite bookshop and picked up this beauty. It is an amazing book with lots of scrumptious pictures. What I really liked is it has lots of samples of textures and ways to interpret with stitch (both hand and machine). Very inspirational!