Feb Textile Wanderings

Wow – February is almost gone and along with it Summer. Not that its raining at all where I live – the driest state in the driest continent.  As the Feb Take it Further Challenge is over for this month here is what else I’ve been up to.

A bit of dyeing! Silk tops here in very bright colours. Lots of fun. Now I’ve purchased some cocoons and rods for my shop I’ll be dyeing those too soon.

 Painted, heat gunned Lutradur with a bit of Angelina under. Had lots of fun  mark making with the soldering iron too. Painting and stamping gold onto the sheets was fun and I love the colour.

For the last few days I’ve been in Melbourne exploring the sites and textile delights of that city. The Quilt Convention was on so dropped in for that. Only had a quick look as my daughter was going ape as we had got into Melbourne at 12am that morning (thanks tiger!). I’ve decided that trips involving the other half and small children should only be taken on rare occasions. I don’t know how others find travelling with disinterested partners and energetic young ones but things looked up when we dropped into the Children’s garden at the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Took lots of pictures here for texture and inspiration. I can also recommend Scienceworks as an excellent place to take the kids- lots to see, do, play and touch.

Back home now and recovering! Especially after said daughter got the tummy bugs the night we flew home. That’s life 🙂

TIF – Feb Finale

This is it! After much deliberation I stitched a few of the “records” to emphasise the piece like so:

And then cannibalized two cheap frames to sandwich the piece between two pieces of glass. The frame is deep enough so that it can sit upright without aid. Its hard to see in the images put you can catch the see-through element better in real life. The angelina fibre really sparkles too. I think this image catches the see through quality a bit better…

Wondering if it would be better in a black frame but I’ll leave it for now. Could always paint the frame at a later date!

TIF – Feb Update 1

After last week’s false start I wasn’t sure what to do. Then Linda F suggested fabric. Do I want to cut out and applique black circles? No, but perhaps cutting circular forms into a fabric is the way to go. So after playing with Lutradur the other day, I decided to give it a go on the black version of it. Here is the piece before cutting with a soldering iron. The tip of my iron is sharp but has developed a curve! 

I was quite pleased with the end result (below).

I cut out the excess to reveal the circular shapes as well as drew lines on the records for the “motion”. When I had tried some angelina fibre behind my play pieces of lutradur, it had looked quite good so I thought I’ll try that to represent the colourful labels part. Here is the angelina:

I thought a mixture of colours would be interesting. Next I laid the “records” piece on top.

Eeek! Despite the lutradur being labelled “black” its actually a pale grey so off to paint it that wonderful inky black of vinyl records.

Getting there! However the following still needs attention. Without the light shinning on the piece, there is too much lutradur still in the way to see the angelina underneath. So I’m either going to have to make the ‘lines’ wider or re-think the background.  Stitching..as an embroiderer at heart I always feel this need to include stitch in whatever the project so I’m not sure how to incorporate stitching here. The other thing is when the piece is held up to the light it looks better, in that you can see more of the cutwork. In some ways I would like to mount it so you could see through the piece but I’m not sure how to do that. Hmm… not sure where next week will take me on this one!

TIF February

What am I old enough to remember? Trying to carefully put the stylus needle on the third song on a vinyl record. (The only way to “fast forward” to your favourite song). A very tricky procedure because if you dropped the needle you would stuff up the entire record!

So thoughts turned to those table tops people were making at one stage with broken records. I did a bit of a sketch…

The part with all the wavy lines is the idea. I’m thinking of using the lines to pick up on the motion of the record as it used to wizz around at 33rpm or 45rpm if you have forgot to change the setting for albums! The centres are to be brightly coloured reminiscent of the record labels. Thinking black thread for the “vinyl” part but not sure if that would end up too dead in colour.

Onto a bit of a trial on fabric…

YUK!! Puckered too much, lines not really picking up on the energy that I want to represent. Needs re-thinking! I’m torn between creating something sequin-like for the “records” or doing it all with stitch. More play needed. I still like the original concept – I just need to find the right medium in which to create the piece. Hmmm… stay tuned!