More inchies and mayhem

Been so busy last week I couldn’t get around to posting. Firstly on Tuesday I did a design exercise with the Reddy Art Quilters which I’m part of.  The photos of great compositional cut-up exercise will appear in due course on the Reddy Art Quilters Blog . In the meantime there are some great pictures of our other activities there.

Wednesday was workshop day and a lovely group of ladies joined me to learn all about paintstiks and how to use them in various ways. We started with the easiest technique of rubbings and then moved onto blending and mixing etc. A great time was had by all. I’m looking forward to the next one, a mixed media play day with lutradur, tyvek, angelina and paperclay, more details at the Workshop site. All workshops are held in Brisbane, Australia.

Thursday was the ATADSA market day and I did a little demo of painting with a roller. Another busy day as the ladies took the opportunity to see a selection of stuff from my business Essential Textile Art. Next big day out is the Textile Art Festival in Brisbane at the Convention centre, Southbank  May 29 – 31. Its going to be a huge weekend as there is an exhibition of quilts at the West End, Handspinners and Weavers have their open day on Sunday May 31 and other things going on.

Saturday was ANZAC Day here in Australia (see the ABC’s website  for a great intoduction to what ANZAC day is all about). In the afternoon I went to 2QAQ and had a play with making inchies. Unfortunately I can’t find the camera cable to upload what I did so I’ll post all the images later.

This week its heads down and tail up to get some artwork finished and out the door. My textiles club at my daughter’s school starts tomorrow too so that another new venue for me. I’m hoping my little group are going to love the project I’ve got lined up for them.

From ugly to inchie

Given the challenge of transforming an ugly piece of fabric I did the usual gesso and paint number on it. I forgot to take a picture first but here is the painted version…

Painted Fabric

Then I remembered that I was going to give a demo of beaded button hole edging and whipped stitch edging so I needed something to edge. Also at this moment the memory of 2QAQ’s interest in inchies this month popped into my head. So I backed the fabric with felt to give it a bit more substance and chopped up some inchies from it to use for my demo…

Wholly Inchies

And thus “Wholly Inchies” were born!

In the meantime I popped down to the Ipswich Art Gallery with my daughter as they have a children’s gallery as its school holidays here at the moment. We had a lot of fun making some wheeled objects from the collection of stuff on offer. I couldn’t resist picking up a few bits for myself so…

Where are we going? series!

The “Where are we going?” series was born as I’m sure a few people will be saying that as they play with making inchies at the next 2QAQ meeting! The gold bead represent that golden nugget we’re always pursuing – be it success, fame, money, whatever.

In the meantime Barbara M has finished her first page in my swapbook. Here is her piece…

Barbara's page in my "Texture" book

So I’m working away on my next page for my book. Going to add a little texture to my painted fabric and see what comes about!

Swap Books, Cartouche and a little bubble!

Had fun this week getting a few things out the door. My entry into ATASDA’s Cartouche exhibition went Friday so it better make it to Sydney by Thursday. Here’s the finished result:

The finished entry

Took heaps of photos as I may not see it again. Its all sparkly with metallic paint and silk fabric so it wasn’t that easy to get a shot of it. After that moved onto my swap book project with Barbara M from Adelaide. The progress so far is:

Barbara's CoverMy Page in her book

I was trying hard to keep to her colours. Had to put a wash over my page to tone it down. Its going to be a process of slowing getting myself there. Barbara is trying out a different product on each of the pages she is doing to have a play with different mediums and materials.

My Page in Barbara's book

Another group I belong to is doing a swapbook too. My cover for this is made out of stuff I had piled on my sewing table – all the offcuts from various things. Thus I have decided to call my book “fragments” and each person will be encouraged to use fragments from past projects to create their page and then write a little note on the back to say what the materials were from. Here’s the cover:

Fragments

As usual its sparkly! Also reflects the colours I’m into at present – coppers, greens, black. I think this swapbook group is going to be very interesting!

Lastly I was well pleased with a little experiment I did for an upcoming piece on an old shipwreck. Got stuck into the puff paste and a bit of lutradur to produce…

Rust and ruin!

Painted the background fabric for the art “quilt” and will now go forth and paste it. Love the texture of the rusting metal of the ship so that’s the base and over that will go a bit of machine embroidery. Think I am pushing the group’s definition of art “quilt” as I’m not that quilty really but I do have 3 layers and yes, some stitching will hold those 3 layers together!

Have a great week and a lovely Easter everyone. Looks like its going to rain heaps for us here in Brisbane. A traditional Easter downpour!

Paperclay fun

Popped back to Adelaide on the weekend so I’m now chasing my tail to catch up with everything. Been playing with a bit of paperclay. I love this stuff – air dries and you can stitch through it. Here’s a small sample of some of the bling I’ve been creating…

Paperclay Bling

It paints up really, is very light and easy to manage. Here’s a few of the unpainted shapes. I think I created about three dozen!!

Unpainted Bling

Its all to go on a little piece I’m creating for ATASDA but I’m coming down to the wire on the dead line as I’ve only got till April 9 to get it in. The full piece is currently like this…

A little textile..

Its a work in progress which must progress a bit faster. I was checking out the placement of all the little pieces for this shot.  Also its handy having a copy of where everything is meant to go. OK, back to stitching. Have a great week everyone!

Challenge Piece

I was given a champagne bottle wire closure along with the gold foil and set the challenge to do something with it so I can up with…

"Wines I have Known"

Its based on  whole drinking experience! The figures in the middle come from my favourite wine label. I stitched a couple in bold because at the start things are in sharp relief while later things become a bit more shaky as in the second of the two figures. Then things start to get a little off centre – hence the champagne items slightly off and then by the end of it all, we’re usually a bit ragged and burnt out around the edges…. and off course – out of focus!  The background was transfer printed so it was all a bit of fun!

A few weeks back I went to 2QAQ, a Queensland based art quilting group and we did a little live art project. We all brought black and white items and red hearts. Then each table of members were invited to come up and do a little creation in a bout 5 minutes.  Here is what my table did:

Black and White with a lot of heART

It was a great afternoon with much creative action!

And lastly the cute award goes to my friend Sue’s new dog Bailey…

Another new Textile Art Assistant...

Flat out after a hard day helping Sue with all her creative activity…and lots of digging large holes!!!

Transfer Painting

Had a bit of fun transfer painting the other day. I had painted all these pieces of paper back when I couldn’t find all the equipment for some dyeing that I wanted to do. So I changed to transfer (disperse dyes) painting instead. Here’s a few:

Painted paper

I used ordinary A4 paper that I had lying around. I tried a few things like the old butterfly splat (fold paper in half), wetting the paper with a spray bottle then applying paint, applying paint then spraying water and just painting it on with a paint brush.

After a few days I got back to it to try the ironing part as I got distracted bya few other activities in the mean time. First of all I had to get ut of “ironing” headspace as I put the iron on synthetic instead of linen!! Without a hot iron not much transferring takes place .

Transferred to fabric!

What a difference some of the colours were. The only thing I would say is beware the yellow – it transfers very brightly! I love the way browns come out blue or blacks come out green.

I had a piece of pale green sation from my friend Donna so gave that a bit of a makeover and ended up with a piece that looks very sea inspired.

Sea Foam

 I love the way you can just keep on printing with the sheets to get lots of lovely overlays and playfulness in the patterning. Did a few papers with flicking paint onto the sheet and using a resist of thread and paper – very interesting space! Now I’m off to burn the edges of one of my pieces…have to make sure I have the bucket of water ready just in case!

What doesn’t work!

Or rather when good ideas go splat! Often when looking around at people’s blogs you would thnk that the world was always rosy when creating artwork BUT I have to say its not. So just to show that some days things just don’t go where you would like them too, here are a few recent ideas that fell over!

Stalled Idea 1: Inkjet printing and felting
I printed out an image I had created on silk chiffon and then had a go at a bit of nuno felting to see if I could incorporate it into a larger piece. Thus:

Nuno Felted Print

The actual felting part went fine but I chose the wrong colour (red bit) for part of it. I had wanted to create a long tail to the piece that would be curved around a wire form but the colour was wrong and the felt didn’t want to curl! May be able to do something with this if I cut off the tail. I was also a little heavy handed on the amount of wool – could have used at least 1/3 less.

Stalled Idea 2: Bookcover or not
I needlefelted a piece to create a fabric I was going to use for a cover to a diary. The needlefelting went well, hand felt first to place then machined over to really make sure it was felted. I machine embroidered some organza to it – still going on track. Then I added a machine lace border to the edges…starting to stray, edge ended up a bit tighter than I wanted. Moved to making the background fabric which I was going to stitch it too, that went well. Put the two pieces together and… they didn’t FIT. ARRRAGH!!! Then thought the needlefelted cover was really a bit soft for book cover and Mrs Doubt really moved in and canned the whole idea. So I am left with…

Needlefelted piece

Its pretty but its going nowhere at the moment. I think I’ll just shiva stik the background fabric and use that for the cover.

Stalled Idea 3: What was I thinking here?
I think the problem with this one is that I wasn’t thinking!!! Just sort of plodding along and doing without really considering direction which means I have this….

Mixed Mystery

Paint, thread, plastic dollies etc all thrown together. To make matters worse as I was stitching the thread on the machine went nuts and ended up in big clumps behind the dollies (maybe it didn’t like the plastic). So its another piece that one way will be either chopped or chucked.

All this could make you end up seeing red…

"RED" postcard

But then you get up the next morning, toss the less than desired textile to the side, smile and start again!

April TIF Revisited

Way back in April 2008 (before life went crazy and I shifted 2000kms), there was this little TIF (Take it Further) challenge where I came up with this…

The Beginning...

It was all about change and positive/negative Then as time went on I decided to embellish it a bit and so “Change” became…

Change Embellished

Its a bit hard to see but I stitched into the black (negative spaces)areas with gold thread and beads. Here’s a little detail…

Its come out quite rich in colour and detail.

To Project or not to Project?

Hmmm… recently I saw a great little project in a Quilting Arts mag and thought  “hey that would be fun” so off and I went and had a play. BUT…was I committing some sin here? All of a sudden I was getting comments like “I don’t do projects out of books?” Why not ? thought I – sometime it can be fun to enjoy someone else’s published ideas. Is there a point at which one has to swear off all projects but their own? I think of published projects as a bit of a holiday – some fun and I don’t have to do the thinking for once. Hmm..perhaps I’ll just have to hide my guilty secret in future… that every now and then its fun to have a go at someone else’s published ideas! Here’s a little picture of what I was up to…

A little stitch graffiti

But I can’t show you too much…its a project!

Textile Art Assistant

Hi, my name is Mollie. I like pink sarongs and red paintstiks. I fossick around the studio while my owner is playing with her stash or just typing on the computer. My other favourite thing is to check out the bins to see of there is anything I feel like recycling for my own purposes – like having a good chew!

Mollie

Also I’m a fan of the great outdoors – so much to inspire one’s work, especially the digging of very small holes.