InTension Exhibition

This is the invite for the WAFTA InTension Exhibition which I'm planning to visit today.

Natural Dyed Silk

This is the same piece of silk as in the previous post. The first colour was from cloves. This golden yellow is from Tumeric. It was boiled for an hour. The white spot is light reflecting from the tiles - it is difficult to photograph because it is so transparent and the bathroom tiles gave the best image. The close up photo is the truest in colour. I haven't quite decided whether to do more to this piece or not. I'm going to keep it hanging around to see if I have any further ideas. I think it could be interesting to add some black somehow. Maybe India Ink? Circles?

Natural Dyed Silk

This piece of silk is for the WAFTA exhibit. All members received a piece of silk which we are to dye using any Shibori technique. I have stitched 3 sets of 3 rows of running stitch which I have gathered up. I boiled 4 tablespoons of dried cloves for an hour and then strained off the liquor. Then I boiled the fabric for 1.5 hours in that liquor. I love the smell of cloves - good job as you could smell it all through the house and down the street! Now that it is dry I am going to bind over some of the already stitched parts and boil it with some Tumeric.

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.

WAFTA "Naturally" Exhibition

The WAFTA "Naturally" exhibition is wonderful, with a huge variety of work presented as either a 3.6m hanging banner or as a sculptural work. The exhibition is at the Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery, 46 Henry St, Fremantle, Western Australia. It is on from 8-16th August 2009 and open 10am to 5pm every day.

I’ve got 2 pieces in it which I only finished by the skin of my teeth (2.30am!) because I also did the invite, the catalogue and the floor sheet (with lots of input from Kate, Louise and Alison). The exhibition is well worth the trip to Freo - that's a cut lunch and a water bag from here! The opening was last Friday night and I had no idea that so many people went to exhibition openings. The catalogue is a gold coin donation but other than that entry is free.

You can download the invitation and floor sheet for the exhibition, and read more about it here

http://www.wafta.com.au/exhibition.html

All of these photos were taken by Louise Snook, President of WAFTA. The "Hanging Committee" are... L to R Front: Louise Snook, Mandy Harwood, Rosie Whitehead and Tanya Peters. L to R Back: Wendy Lugg, Liz Arnold, Anne Williams, Kate Weedon-Jones and Trudi Pollard. The middle photo is of Mandy and Mark hanging works using cherry picker. The last photo is a sneak preview of the exhibition.

The thank you section of the catalogue reads: Thanks go to the exhibition organising sub-committee: Liz Arnold, Alison Barrett, Mandy Harwood, Kate Weedon-Jones, Lia Overman, Tanya Peters, Helena Pollard, Trudi Pollard, Louise Snook (Chairperson), and Anne Williams. Thanks also to the WAFTA general committee for all their support, especially Heather Morton and Lisa Repsevicius. Additional thanks go to Brian Thompson of Snap Printing.

Recycling Old Uniform Shirts

I've decided to create another piece for the WAFTA Exhibition. Scream Savers changed their uniform ages ago so I have 10 old uniform shirts which I've been hoarding that I plan to chop up for the fabric. I figure with 10 shirts I should get close to 3.5m x 50cm of fabric just from the single later bits. I'm going to stitch or bind each piece to give a resist and then I'm going to have a go at the rust and tannic dye bath. One of my friends has invited me to play at her house in 12 days time so I've got quite a few evenings to do some interesting binding. Once they're dyed, washed, dried and ironed then I'll assemble the pieces into one large piece of fabric. I also have quite a large piece of muslin gauze which I might pop into the same baths so I can be sure I have enough pieces of fabric to produce the required 3.5m.

Artist Trading Card Preparation

Designing Women are going to swap Artist Trading Cards (ATC's) in July. So I need to make some. So far I have ironed some heavy interfacing to the back of some of the rust-dyed silk I created at the WAFTA "inspiration" workshop a couple of weekends ago. I have 19 that have interesting marks from the stitched shibori resist and 22 less interesting ones. I'm not sure how many we're going to need for our swap but I thought it would be good to have a few on hand so I made up as many bases as I could from the fabric and scraps of interfacing that I had lying around. The final size is to be 2.5 by 3.5 inches so I've cut these 3 x 4 so I can cut them to size once I've decorated them. I've stitched around the edges just to make sure the interfacing stays in place while paint/stitch or whatever. I'm planning to use the stamp I made with circles on it for some of them. I may add some gold or glitz to the ones with the less interesting background. I'm planning to emphasize some of the marks with stitch on the ones with a more intersting background. I have decided to put my website and blog address on the back but I haven't decided how I'm going to do it yet. I may print on t-shirt transfer paper. I may actually get a rubber stamp made up with my logo on it as well. Or I may just opt for the good old-fashioned pen and ink method :-)

WAFTA Exhibition "inspiration" workshop

On Sunday I went to a workshop held by WAFTA which was an informal "have a go" day to get as many members inspired as possible to enter the Member's exhibition to be held in August. We are to make a piece 3.5m long (with hanging sleeve it will be 3.6m) by 0.5m wide in muted colours. The work will hang from rafters in the centre of the Moores Gallery in Fremantle which means the work will be visible from both sides so we need to bear this in mind for the finished piece. There were 3 dye boiling vats, set up on the stove by Bernadette Aitken, of eucalyptus leaves, puffball (a fungi), and loquat leaves (Bernadette has a CALM permit to collect plant matter). There were rust, tannic, and caustic dye baths set up outside by Trudi Pollard. Trudi also had some of these dyes thickened with Guar Gum so they could be painted, stamped, stencilled or squirted onto the fabric in a more controlled manner. Kate Weedon Jones had a demonstration table of stencilling, stamping, screen printing, flour paste resist, discharge, and a few other techniques for putting images onto fabric after dyeing so that we could create additional interest on our fabric.

I took along some kimono linings (obtained from Sanshi ages ago) which proved to be silk since they took up the various dyes so I was pretty happy about that. I didn't have a go at the stencilling/stamping as I've been doing a bit of that at home, but found Kate's samples and work books to be really interesting and inspiring.

There was plenty of discussion throughout the day about techniques (including Shibori), and discussion about the exhibition with some people bringing along some show & tell of what they were making.

All in all it was a very enjoyable day - now I just have to start stitching! I also need to make some Artists Trading Cards (ATC's) for another group that I belong to and I'm thinking some of this silk might be good for that purpose too.

Snails, WAFTA and Advertising

As it rained a little overnight I went out snail hunting again after breakfast today. I bagged another 24 snails - which brings the total to 110 so far. The tomato seedlings chances are improving daily :-) I'm happy about the rain now our garden has all that mulch to soak it up.

Today I will be working on the newsletter for WAFTA, due to go out in early September.

Workshop with Seiji Konishi

Mr Seiji Konishi from Japan ran a one day workshop at the Atwell Art Centre Gallery (Western Australia) organised by WAFTA. Mr Konishi is a master weaver and sculptural basket maker teaching at the Kawashima Textile School in Kyoto, Japan. Mr Konishi supplied raffia and explained some construction techniques for coiling. It was a relaxing day with most students soon picking up the basics and then exploring what they could do with this simple natural material. Student works ranged from traditional-looking mini baskets to sculptural "playthings" which just invited the viewer to touch and rearrange them. I think most of us were thinking at some time during the day about what we could do with this technique using fabric and thread. Here are some photos of the student achievements made by the end of the day - mine is the one on a water bottle. It only goes half way up because that was as far as I got by the end of the day and I had to learn how to finish off!

Crochet embellishment 3

I crocheted a few pink flowers last night so that I could see the effect of them grouped together on the t-shirt. I've made all different ones - just making them up as I went along. I like the look of these against the uniform and regular half treble crochet I used to make the basic t-shirt. I much prefer this self-coloured textural look to the embroidery experiments I did previously. So, lots more crochet flowers coming up.

Most of today has been spent making up orders and replenishing stock. I'm off to a retreat this weekend and taking my goodies to sell there. I'm taking my Seven Sisters quilt so that I can continue quilting it, Karen's Konstellation in case I finish the Seven Sisters as I don't think I 've got that much more of the centre panel to go, and the pink thread so I can crochet some more flowers. These make a nice break from hand quilting so I don't get too achy from doing one thing all the time. Knowing me I'll probably pack quite a few other things to do too even though I should have learned by now that I always take too much.

I took on newsletter duties for the WA Fibre & Textiles Association recently so I am currently compiling my first issue. As is usually the case with these things this first issue seems to be taking me forever. I looked at my schedule yesterday and frightened myself with all that I have to do over the next month. I am determined to keep blogging - although I will miss a few days while on retreat.