Carole Redlich "Shadowlands" Workshop

My friend Margaret was unable to attend a workshop on Sunday with textile artist Carole Redlich which had been organised by the 84 Group so suggested I go in her stead. I had a ball. Carole had created some 3D pieces using fabric, yarns, plastics, stitched acetate, transfers and various other transparent or semi transparent "stuff". The "stuff" was trapped in a laminating pouch which was cut into shapes and then machine-stitched with loops of various weights of fishing line. The loops and shapes were manipulated into pleasing 3D shapes and then joined together on the sewing machine. We also did some free-style weaving of the fishing lines to create some structure to attach the laminated loopy bits to. I thoroughly enjoyed myself even if I was slow and didn't actually produce much on the day.

The images are of trapped invisible sewing thread with white polyester and rayon sewing threads, trapped feathers with large-bubble packaging plastic, the one loop I created during class using small bubble wrap, and the free weaving of the heavy weight fishing line. Not having done any woven basketry before I concentrated on learning the technique for this on the basis that I could stitch on plastic anytime at home alone. It was a great class - thank you Carole (and Margaret of course).

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.

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 :-)

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!

Pam Annesley Workshop

Here are my results from the workshop at the weekend with Pam Annesley hosted by the Designing Women group. Pam is a textile and polymer clay artist here in Perth and I've put her website into my links section.
Pam showed us how to layer paper images (pics from mags, wrapping paper, sweet wrappers etc) onto a base fabric with PVA glue and then use tissue paper and paint to fill-in gaps and/or go over the images. I liked the effect of the painting over tissue paper more so I omitted the images bit :-) There are several coats of PVA glue on the top and the resulting fabric/paper is apparently strong enough to make bags and/or boxes. Some ladies went on to stitch their first sheet into one of the designs Pam provided a pattern for. I decided to create a 2nd sheet instead and will do the stitching at home where I have all my threads handy.


I'm thinking I might turn one of them into a wine bottle carrier and depending on the success (or otherwise) of that will decide the fate of the other one.