September 2020

 Vlinders, Papillon and Butterflies

Our exhibition is  snow open on level 2,  Gallery 76, 76 Queen Street , Concord West. NSW.

We have all been working hard towards our exhibition and it is now open for viewing. COVID set us back a few months, though we have pulled through and the exhibition is now open. 

We still held our meeting via Zoom last Saturday, with five of us attending. Show and tell is always a treat.

Jenny had finished off another pincushion. This one had begun life as a sample for a major piece using a pulled thread stitch. The pin cushion is now with it's new owner.

Jenny had also made a needle case using scraps of linen from the same major piece. Jenny had no plan, and just started stitching. First with a buttonhole stitch edge, then a row of satin stitch and eyelets. The piece talked to her as she worked and finally grew to this needle case featuring Hardanger and pulled work. Threads used were left overs from another project. The needle case is now with its new owner.

A small section of Jo's butterfly which is part of our  Vlinders, Papillon and Butterflies exhibition. The piece is called 'Golden Butterfly' and features Gold metal leaf, machine embroidery’ French knots and appliqué. 

A snippet of Jenny's little butterfly trinket bag. The piece features counted 'Blackwork' stitches worked in blended threads.

A section of one of Robyn's butterflies featuring wire, needle lace and beads.

For the exhibition, Sheila created a number of butterflies using painted fabric samples made in a class.  The design on the fabric was the starting point for each butterfly.  This butterfly has a hand dyed cord couched over the design on the fabric and a painted felt body.  She made ten butterflies for the exhibition.

Lesley's current work in progress is apiece of Tuscan Lace. The  project is featured in  "Inspirations" issue 103. The design is by Maria Elide Melani of Italy and the technique is Deruta Sfilato. 

Jo's current project is playing with Valdani pearl cotton with satin stitch.

Jenny's current project is a piece of Hardanger, also using Valdani pearl cotton in a variegated colour. The design is from Inspirations magazine no 106 and is by Di Kirchner of Australia. 

Sheila took part in the Inchie challenge hosted by Amy Maricle:  https://www.instagram.com/amymaricle/.  She took the resulting pieces and created a small accordion button book.  Then she created a box to hold the work.  The circular pages were painted with fluid acrylics and marked with a variety of markers and paint pens.  The box was made with gelli printed card and is based on a box that Sheila has had in her collection for many years.

For the month of August, Sheila stitched on a heavy paper previously marked with india ink.  When the pages ran out before the end of the month, she converted to tracing paper, marked with white paint.  The completed pages have been assembled into a book with a coptic binding.  Details of individual pages can be found on Sheila's Instagram account:  https://www.instagram.com/thingstitcher/

Even though COVID 19 has been been making it's presence known, we have all been stitching and creating. Our exhibition  'Vlinders, Papillon and Butterflies' is  snow open on level 2,  Gallery 76, 76 Queen Street , Concord West. NSW. Please drop by in reality and have a look. Until next month, happy stitching.

July 2019

Our group met last weekend and is growing still further with the addition of Annette Y. We welcome her to our group and hope she enjoys her time with us. Nine of us enjoyed a day full of creativity, fun and laughter. We missed Susan via an internet meeting, with technology not quite working on the day. Maybe next time.

Show and tell always brings out some amazing work, all of which is showed below.

Sheila's work 'Strata 2' is currently on display in the Bainz Gallery in Wangaratta.  The work was created for the exhibition, 'A Sense of Place' as part of the biennial Stitched Up Festival.  The work measures 50 cm by 50 cm and is stitched solidly with raised chain stitch using her own hand dyed threads and some commercial threads.  Additional found objects have been incorporated into the work.  The Stitched Up Festival is finished but the exhibition continues through to the end of July.

The Two stitched "postcards" above are by Leslie. Both are non assessed homework for Mary's Contemporary Stitch and Design Course. The brief was to use dense, straight stitches.

Continuing on from last months Rice Stitch exercise, Robyn has completed the flap for a shoulder bag. She has made the bag from Pig skin leather in three different colours. 

Jenny had turned her rice stitch exercise from last month into a scissor fob.

Jenny had also finished off a bobbin lace book mark. The pattern is from a book of 'Bedfordshire Lace Making' by Pamela Nottingham. The book mark is made using  a King Tut variegated quilting thread for the border, and  a combination of the King Tut thread and a Mettler Silk finish 100% cotton No 50 for the flowers. 

Jenny was also continuing on with her knitted shawl, working the final border. New things learnt with this project have been 'Bee Stitch', and joining the border to the main body as the shawl is worked.  The pattern is 'Hush little Baby Please Don't Cry'. 

Susan's embroidery started this month is a quote  from an artist whose exhibition Sheila and her saw on their  Bendigo trip back in 2018. 

Sheila and Susan traveled together during July visiting various art galleries.  They saw the Ceramic Award at the Shepparton Art Museum and the royal portraits at the Bendigo Art Gallery.  Then they spent three days taking in all the exhibitions in and around Wangaratta, that were part of the Stitched Up Festival.  The Wangaratta Art Gallery was exhibiting the Contemporary Textile Prize, where textiles are pushed and pulled in all kinds of directions.  Well worth a visit.  All interested textile addicts should attempt to attend the Festival in future.  You will be well rewarded.

https://www.stitchedupfestival.com/

Above is Susan's development of a design, using a small part of an image of a mixed media work in Shepparton as inspiration.

Susan has also been creating a 'Library of Shapes'  from their trip to Wangaratta. Thanks go to Julie Paterson for the idea. The double page image is an example of shapes that she collected from various exhibitions that they saw, and there is an example of the print blocks that Susan carved from her library of shapes

  Sheila was using lines repeated on an index card as part of her ICAD  challenge. 

The line used was one she created from an exercise on line earlier in the day. 

Our challenge for the morning was an exercise on line that Jenny had prepared. We all picked three types of lines from a container, then put pen to paper using the three words as inspiration.

Below are some of the results of this exercise that was produced on the day.

Our little group has grown and the inspiration and work produced is diverse. So please come back next month for another visit to see what we get up to.

June 2019

Eight  members attended our June meeting, including Susan, who traveled down from the Central Tablelands to join us in person. Marina dropped  in during her lunch break from the class she was attending, Suganthi joined us after lunch, and Wendy waved hello from a distance as she performed President's duties.

This month's activity was provided by Susan, a canvas work stitch, a 'rice stitch' variation. Normally, rice stitch is done in two colours, but there are six  stitches within the finished rice stitch, and for this variation  up to six different colours and shades/tones can be used to complete each stitch.  The stitch can be worked on canvas, open-weave linen, or Aida cloth, and needs to be a fairly large stitch to cover the fabric and avoid   the colours  blending into each other. This rice stitch variation is a great way to experiment with colour and pattern - the more colours and tones/shades the better.

  Sheila completed the rice stitch using a variety of her hand dyed threads.  She wants to do more sampling using heavier threads to completely cover the canvas or may change the stitch count.  This stitch is now on Sheila's 'to do' list.  

Robyn's rice stitch

Annette's Rice Stitch

Jenny's Rice Stitch

Susan's Rice stitch

Show and tell happened as we continued to experiment with rice stitch.

Sheila did a class with Carolyn Sullivan at Quilt NSW.  Carolyn supplied all the materials and taught the class her stitching techniques.  Sheila enjoyed the class and has plans for further work using the techniques learned.  More of Carolyn's work can be found at: http://www.carolynsullivan.com.au/

Annette had attended a mini workshop with Annette Meldrum at the last Lace Guild meeting. Above is her sample of Embroidered lace net. Another addictive form of embroidery to add to her list to experiment with.

Susan has found canvas work to be  so much fun, and has started on a bigger piece of canvas, using up yet more yarns as she  explores texture. A mix of stitches have been used which she found in an old book  "Needlepoint: An Illustrated Pocket Guide to over 80 Beautiful Patterns" (published in 1980). The piece should keep her busy for a while.

Jenny had finally finished a crocheted scarf that she began back in November last year. The motif pattern is from her Mum's collection, cut from an Australian Home Journal, dated January 1947. It was meant to be done in No 40 Crochet cotton to form a tray cloth, but Jenny worked it in 4 ply cotton.

Annette has been working on  baby shawl no 2 for 2019. Almost finished, it is being worked in 3ply  Bendigo wool. Knitted on 5mm needles -a square knitted in the round with  increases at the corners. Pattern is Shetland Old Shale. Note for the future do not buy knitting patterns off the internet they are not necessarily correct and you may need to do much thinking and reverse knitting to get the design to work.

Jenny was also knitting a baby shawl in 3ply Bendigo wool, and also found patterns off the internet quite often include mistakes. The pattern is 'Hush little Baby Please Don't Cry'. With this exercise, Jenny had learnt a new knitting trick called a 'Lifeline', where another thread can be knitted in across the row to hold stitches.  If a mistake is made further along, the work can be un-pulled, and the lifeline will hold the stitches, prevent them from 'running', and make them easier to pick up. Two lifelines can be seen in the photo above, and will be easily pulled out when not needed.

Sheila continued her daily activity of paper cutting during the month of May.  She made use of some of her painted and gelli printed papers.  Now that Sheila has briefly dabbled in paper cutting, she knows she has lots more to learn and looks forward to more cutting

Needing a daily project that might involve less time each day, Sheila has been participating in ICAD, Index Card A Day.  For the backgrounds, Sheila is using gelli prints and brayer cleanups.  The collaged papers are of-cuts from the paper cutting.  Sheila is documenting her work at:

https://www.instagram.com/thingstitcher/

I wonder what we will all get up to next month? Come back for another visit to find out.

May 2019

Our May meeting brought six members in attendance plus a visitor from Tasmania who joined us in the morning and for lunch.

Our exercise for the day was organized by Wendy. Using the current exhibition at Guild HQ 'Collective Stitches', we had to choose three of the pieces and write about what we liked or didn't like about a  piece, concentrating on line, colour and stitch.

Discussions followed as to what pieces were chosen and why, with some surprising results being given.

Show and tell is always interesting.

Jenny had added some stitching to her extended square pieces from April last year. The pieces had sat on her sewing table for over twelve months waiting for something to give them a spark. All thread auditions had seemed too dull until Jenny delved into her sewing cupboard and pulled out a bag containing this blue Perle 5 thread. The thread had been earmarked for something else long forgotten. Combined with an orange Perle 8 thread, and a few other shiny, variegated, silk, and stranded threads, the piece has now emerged into life. Watch this space to see what these pieces now turn into.

This insertion sampler is one that Jenny started a few years back. Inspired by the work of Effie Mitrofanis, Jenny is now adding some other stitching to the pannels.

Sheila's daily practice for this month is paper cutting,which is inspired by Rachel Ashe:

http://rachaelashe.com/ 

Using her painted and gelli printed papers, Sheila has created her own paper cuttings.  This exercise has developed new skills and thought processes which have been challenging.  The paper cuttings are being mounted into a handmade book with the most difficult aspect being the application of glue and transferring the cutting to the backing.

Sheila continues to stitch intensively on her work for the Margaret Oppen competition at The Embroiderers' Guild of NSW.  This work will be revealed in September.

Jenny had also finished her cardigan. Using a basic cardigan pattern from  the Paton's 'Classic Knits for Women - Book 1245', and a lace pattern from 'The Harmony Guide To knitting Stitches' , Jenny has created a border pattern to decorate her new cardigan. It is has been  worked in 8ply cotton from Bendigo Woollen Mills . The cardigan was to be ready for Autumn, but will now have to wait for spring weather as winter is knocking on the door.

Although there were only a few of us, and some of us left early for family commitments, an enjoyable day was had by all .