Water Soluble Vilene

Soluble vilene would have to be one of my most use textile products. The one I use is called Mac-Rinse from Embroidery Source. (I have no affiliation - I just like the product and wanted to share my secret)

Embroidery Source has a factory outlet in Fairfield (205 Fulham RdFairfield, Victoria, 3078 Australia) where they sell "Commercial Quality Embroidery Products At Warehouse Prices ". I discovered this place when I was studying textiles and what a find!! They have machine embroidery threads in every colour (more than you'll find in Spotlight or Lincraft or most other sewing shops) and on bigger rolls. As they say, they are commercial quality and therefore most of what they sell are the bigger spools, but these are still workable on your regular sewing machine.

But I digress. I started out using Solvy which is a plasticy film that dissolves in warm water. I used this to do the sunflowers and wheat stalks in these two pieces.

Solvy is fairly flimsy however and when used as I did (stretched in an embroidery hoop) it had a tendancy to stretch and tear.



Water soluble vilene on the other hand it like working with fabric. It's much stronger and doesn't stretch or tear (unless you're trying to tear it). It handles heavy machine stitching and because it is fabric-like and white, you can draw your design directly onto it and the lines disappear when you dissolve it (as long as your lines are too dark).

I stitched this leaf using water soluble vilene. I use 2 layers because I don't have a backing fabric and I think that it's more stable for heavy stitching.

You can see how the vilene looks soft, just like fabric.

And now with the vilene washed out.

I didn't wash the vilene out completely because the residual acts as a fabric stiffener. I just wash it enough so that there aren't any white 'gluey' patches left.

The back...

Grinning like a Cheshire Cat!!!

I had a comment from India Flint about this post where I gushed over her new book Eco Colour!! How cool is that - Hi India!!

Jeana and I were talking at the forum about how it's hard to think of the authors of all of those fabulous books that we pour over (see my library over there on the left) as "real people" and how amazing it would be to be in a class tought by someone who's work we'd admired in books. So imagine my suprise when I got home to see a comment from India.

Simarly I had another conversation (again at the forum) with another of the ladies who I'm exhibiting with at the moment who attended a class by June Dunnewold. She was telling me that one of our tutors from TAFE where we studied textiles, Tony Dyer also attended that class. Tony has works in the National Gallery of Victoria and the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

It seems that we never stop learning no matter how accomplished we might be.

I think it's also interesting that several artists whose work and books I admire also blog. Here are a couple...


India Flint (aka Tumbleweed) blogs at Not all those who wander are lost and Winterworks as well as being a team member for Tinctoria Australis and Window on White

Maggie Grey, author of whole list of books, blogs at Magstitch

Jane Dunnewold author of Complex Cloth and blogs at HeArtCloth Journal


Dale Rollerson, owner of the Thread Studio, teacher and author blogs at Downunderdale and Surface Tension Book


That's all that I can think of at the moment and I am sure that there are more that I haven't discovered yet. Have fun browsing these and let me know of others that I should add to my list.

Phew!......

The garage sale is done! just a trip to the op-shop required tomorrow to get rid of the last of it.

The Geelong Fibre Forum was fantastic and inspirational and I soooo want to go next year!!

The football is over (shhhh!! Geelong lost)

....and it's almost time to start a new week.

So about the forum....

I met up with Jeana and her daughter from Unbecoming Lily at the forum and had a great couple of hours chatting and admiring and drinking everything in. I also introduced Jeana to my 3 favourite places to shop for textile stuff:

1. Artisan Books - is it bad that the guy who owns the bookshop knows me by name?...
2. The Thread Studio - a Perth based mail order (web-order) business that "specialises in unusual and interesting embroidery threads and textile art requirements" run by Dale who blogs at Downunderdale ; and
3. Beautiful Silks - a supplier of fabulous silk fabrics of all types who encouraged us to "feel and touch" (probably knowing that we would be unable to resist if we did - she was sooo right!)

We had coffee by the Great wall of hats - a display of hats from the Blue Hat Project

We walked through the Big Knit - a giant knitting installation by Caroline Love.

I checked out the exhibition "After India" and saw the Mongolian Yurt and the inflatable sculptures by Evelyn Roth about the grounds.

And I browsed the works made by the lucky people who attended the forum for the week.

An overview of the room where samples of each groups work was on display.

Felting by Kitty Chung O'Kane's class - I've taken a class with Kitty and it was a lot of fun

Tthe Wire Jewellery class (I can't find the name of the teacher for this class)

Encrusted surfaces with Pauline Verrinder

(there are more pictures on my Flickr pages)

I know that I missed a few things but I enjoyed what I saw and again vow that I will find a way to be there next year (promises, promises...).

Why Textiles Arts? - Part 2: Highschool

Part 2 of my exploration into the how I became into textiles... (the epic continues)

At highschool my two favourite subjects were Art and Home Economics. Of course I also chose some sensible subjects to give me options for University as I didn't really see how I could persue a career in art without being a 'struggling artist' and that didn't really appeal.

I loved Home Economics and whizzed through the sewing projects with ease – I had no problems with the sewing machines as they were Elna's just like Mum's. It was a similar story when we did knitting. My Nan had taught each of us to knit and we would sit beside her as shew flew through one jumper after the next and try to knit like she could. In Home Ec I ended up doing two projects because I finished the first one too quickly and had nothing to do in class (I was so keen I was knitting at home too).

I've always been interested in art and art materials. I used to dream of owning an arts supply shop so that I can be surrounded by all those wonderful paints and pencils and colour. A friend of the family gave me a box of watercolour pencils when I was in primary school and I remember treasuring them - sharpening them with a knife so that the colour lasted as long as possible.

Whilst I enjoyed art at school I do recall struggling with it as I had a teacher who was more interested in abstract art than realism as I was. Here is a sculpture that I did with wire and wax. It's modelled on my little brother – not so little anymore at 6 foot something – whilst he was laying on the floor watching television after school one day.

I recall two highschool assignments that now seem significant to my love of textiles. One was an art assignment where we chose and artist and had to critique their work. I chose Annemieke Mein. I don't know how I discovered her work but I do know that I've loved it ever since. I remember pouring over the book The Art of Annemieke Mein in awe and thinking how wonderful it would be to be able to create images such as those with a sewing machine - and now I create my own images with sewing machine. I now find it interesting that I was allowed to choose Annemieke as my artist considering that until recently, the Gippsland Art Gallery in Sale "The Sale Art Gallery has previously refused to show Ms Mein's work, claiming it was craft not art" (see here)

The other assignment that keeps coming back to me was for chemistry where we studied a chemical reaction and I chose Indigo dyeing - Indigoferra Tinctora. I don't remember anything of this assignment and had completely forgotten about it until last week when I was reading India Flint's book Ecocolour and the section on Indigo. I think it's interesting that now I'm interested in dyeing and back in highschool I chose to do an assignment on that subject. Dyeing hadn't really featured in my life since then, but the linnk is interesting nonetheless.

Next weekend, Part 3: Uni and beyond...

And because this post is a bit light on with pictures, here are a few more pictures showing Mum developing our art interests as kids.... Fingerpainting....

And finally, this is me hanging upside down at aged 4. It seems I was a little monkey when I was a kid. (absolutely no textile or art refernce here at all).

Geelong Fibre Forum Open Day

Saturday is the Open Day for the Geelong Fibre Forum and I'm going to be there. For those of you who don't know/haven't been, the Geelong Fibre Forum is a week-long workshop organised by TAFTA (The Australian Forum for Textile Arts) and is held at the Geelong Grammar every year. I drool over the class list every year but have not yet managed to get the week of work to attend. I do however make a habit of going to the open day.

The open day is the Saturday after the workshops are finished. It's the one chance that the public (ME!) get to go and see the work produced by all of the artists over the previous week, spend money at the traders hall (books, wools, silks, papers, beads, kimonos, paints, dyes, handbags, and lots of more scrummy stuff!!) and the Heathen's bazaar (goods made by the tutors and attendees of the forum).

The only problem is time. The open day lasts for 3 hours only. 3 hours, to look, spend, look, spend, drool, spend, admire and catch-up with other's you know who've come to do the same!