Sold! Fib #358

Louise bought Fib #358 on the opening night of the Designing Women exhibition "Dimensions". At that point I hadn't embroidered a signature on it so last Tuesday while Louise, Margaret and Julie were visiting I did that. I also promised to give Louise a copy of the Artist Statement for it. This is an incredibly difficult work to photograph because the greater part of the work is white silk on white cotton stitched with a grey-white thread. Texture brings the work to life when it moves gently in an area with plenty of natural light. In real life the white bars stand out quite a bit - but this texture does not photograph well. I'm looking forward to seeing Fib #358 installed in it's new home.

Birthday Goodies (Again)

I received these last week in the mail from my friend Joan who had ordered them for my birthday but they didn't arrive in time - so I got to open 2 parcels instead of one :-) Lots of texture to add to the felting goodies she gave me when we visited at the weekend. While we were there at the weekend Joan and Mal took us to the local Chinese for tea (where Andrea is working part time) to celebrate my birthday. Andrea was our waitress for some of the evening - which felt really strange because it only seems like yesterday that she was born and we became Godparents!

Birthday goodies

Russ took the day off work so we had the whole day together. We had lunch out in the hills and visited the Mundaring Art Gallery. In the evening we went to see "The Ugly One" play at the new theatre complex in Perth. A very enjoyable day and relaxing day. My sister sent me vouchers so that I can choose some perfume online and I plan to do that this afternoon. My friend Joan has been slowly decluttering (v-e-r-y, v-e-r-y, s-l-o-w-l-y) and last time I visited I suggested I could help by giving some of her hand dyed wool a new home as I had enjoyed making some arty felt pieces recently. So this is the great bundle I received at the weekend when we visited. Lots of wool with some hand spun yarn, some silk tops, and some commercial embroidery threads. Joan used to keep her own sheep so some of this could have been "home grown". Although I'm looking forward to creating with this little lot I'm going to just look at it all for a while until inspiration hits.

Floral Skirt Finished

It took several days to free machine embroider all the flowers. The edges have been left raw so that when I wash it the edges will fray slightly to give it a softer look. I stitched round the edges of each flower twice so the fraying won't go beyond that. I'm pleased with the result - not too "folksy" at all (grin). I'm thinking of making a similar skirt but in a riot of colours next time. I embroidered the t-shirt a while ago with beige lazy daisies so it goes quite well with the skirt.

Floral skirt

I spent a few days cutting out flowers and circles from muslin and gauze to stick all over this plain 3/4 circle skirt. The skirt is very lightweight cotton so drapes beautifully but of course is also a little bit transparent with the light behind it. That's why I'm putting flowers all over it :-)
My young friend Andrea helped me cut some of them out when we stayed at their place over the weekend. It took another few evenings to iron them all on. I plan to machine embroider over all the flowers with another shade of browny-beige. I'm hoping at the end it will look sophisticated beige rather than boring beige :-) I just hope it doesn't look too "folksy".

Felting Workshop

These felted pieces were created during a WAFTA 2-day workshop with tutor Lee Anne Davis. We made pre-felts, layered prefelts with various fabrics, and stitched into the result with various yarns. The idea was to experiment with as many fabrics and yarns as we could. Then the whole assembly was fully felted. None of these are finished as the idea was to further embellish the fully felted pieces with more stitching. Most of the class were working with beautifully fine soft Merino fleece - I had coarser hand dyed Corriedale (I think) which had been given to me by my friend Joan years ago when she moved house. It worked just as well for the techniques but wouldn't be quite as nice to wear next to the skin as the Merino. I measured the blue and orange sample prior to felting so I could record the amount of shrinkage. Prior to felting the design measured 5-3/8 inches, after felting it measured 4-7/8 inches. All of my fabrics were synthetic and solid colours - patterned silk chiffon or georgette pieces work brilliantly with this technique and complement the softness of the Merino. Thank you Lee Anne for sharing your knowledge so generously and graciously. It was a wonderful workshop - I had a great time despite the heat. Have a look at the WAFTA website here http://www.wafta.com.au/events.html to see some images of Lee Anne's work.

ATC's

Yesterday at Designing Women we swapped ATC's. The burgundy and tan set is my set of 20 before swapping. I made a stamp using a block of wood to which I glued some foam shapes. The fabric is silk that was rust-dyed at a friends house last month. Then I hand embroidered each one using 2 strands of cotton with the aim of making each one unique. I put my signature, website and blog address on the back by printing onto T-shirt transfer paper. The edges are finished by trapping a thin embroidery wool under a satin stitch.

The multi coloured set is what I received from the swap. Not everyone finished all 20 cards on time so those who swapped this weekend have only 12 so far. The rest will be swapped as they are finished.

I enjoyed making these. So much so that I made another set! Not sure who I'm going to swap with though...

Old Embroidery

Last Saturday I went to an open studio organised by WAFTA. We visited the Embroiderers Guild here in Perth to look at their textile collection and hear a talk by Valerie Cavill about conservation of textiles. It was a very informative session with lots to see. These photos are of Carrickmacross Lace, Irish Crochet Lace, Maltese Lace and Faggoting (Rouleau joined with needlelace).