July '08

Another meeting of our group last Saturday with only a few in attendance & only a small amount of show & tell.

Libby had the best news in that one of her pieces, " Waterfall", had been purchased by the Embroiderer's Guild of N.S.W for their collection. It is a piece featuring calico manipulation. Her work in the letter "E", (pictured below) is for a banner for the North Shore Craft Group.

Susan had crocheted this scarf using hand spun, hand dyed, yarn. The yarn is a blend of alpaca & merino fiber which has made it very warm.

This cushion pannel is also work of Susan's. The design was an adaptation from a book on Swedish designs.

Speaking of books, Robyn presented me with this most stunning book, "The Grand Tour - Shrines of Power". The cover alone has enough inspiration for a lifetime, so imagine the stunning pics inside that will inspire more lace. Thankyou Robyn.

The lace Exhibition mentioned in the May post was recieved very well, & the newspaper article can be read here.

Stitching for the day included Robyn continuing to work on her Reticella piece from last month, Libby woking on a new garden & myself coninuing on a piece for our group project. Other work of mine can be seen here.

June 08

Our June meeting for our group produced only 4 members for the day, but even so, show & tell proved interesting.

Robyn had been working on some creative Reticella.

Cathy had been to Fibre Forum at Orange in the Central West of NSW, playing with a new product "Aquatics Bond", also known as "Aqua Magic", which is a sticky backed water soluble fabric. A sandwhich of AB, threads, & small pieces of fabric and another WSF was then FM embroidered, had stitched & embellished to procuce these pieces.

Libby is in the process of creating a series of works to illustrate man's relationship with plants. So here are some snippits of the first piece.

I have been slowly working on my major piece & will show pics when it is totally finished, sometime in the future.

May

Another month has gone by and so has another meeting of our little group last weekend with more show & tell.

As you will recall from our last meeting, some of our members were away at Fibre Forum at Orange in the Central West of NSW doing week long workshops, so the first of our pics this month is of Sheila's bookmaking workshop with Marianne Little. This first one opens out to a wonderful fan shape.

Then there was this little cutie.

After "Show & Tell", Sheila sat working on this stunning piece of goldwork.

I had finished playing with samples for a major piece & turned them into bookmarks. One used hand dyed fabric, the other two used hand dyed thread. (Pics soon). I had also hand dyed a piece of linen & some perle 12 thread ( on the white reel) in readiness for stitching. The other three balls of thread are commercially bought ones that I may also incorporate into the design somewhere. Why was everyone not surprised at my colour scheme?

I had also been getting ready for an exhibition with some fellow lace makers at the Fairfield City Museum & Gallery. Robyn had finished her play from last month with the Inktense Water Soluble Pencils,

and during the day began stitching on her second beaded rock.

April

Last Saturday was the April meeting of our group, so below is an update of what we have all been doing.

Donna had been dying fabric. There was a suitcase full of beautiful pieces of all colours using techniques such as tying, stitching, marbles, scrunching, folding & pegs. Here are just a few of her pieces.

There were also some pieces featuring potato stamps & paint. This is one of a series of 3 panels which will be quilted & ebellished further.

Robyn had been playing with a Reticella design that will eventually turn into a needlecase/holder of some kind. Note the hand dyed thread being used to give a different look to the traditional.There was also an experiment using her new Derwent Inktense water soluble pencils.

I had been making postcards using my digitizing program. There were also my filet lace trials which I had been wanting to do for a very long time. I spent the afternoon experimenting with my own hand dyed even weave linen & threads. I am sampling for a major piece which will be part of our group project later in the year.

Libby had been busy with exhibitions. There was the combined exhibition of the Mt Colah & St Ives groups of the Embroider's Guild of NSW, "Threads Of Imagination", which was held at the Hornsby Art Gallery. Currently, her work is at The Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery, Qeensland, in an exhibition titled "After India". This exhibition was inspired by an Indian Artisan that a group visited on a recent craft trip to India. Libby will also be the featured artist at the Wiseman's Ferry Artist's Gallery sometime in the future. We will keep you all updated on that one.

Other members of our group were away on textile workshops & conferences, so I am sure there will be great show & tell for our meeting in May.

March Meeting

I am a bit late in updating this but life has been a little hectic. So hectic in fact that I personally could not participate in this meeting of our little group. So a big thank you to Cathy who took all the pics.

The theme for the day was space dyeing. Here we can see Libby, Robyn & Sheila admiring their own handiwork as it dried.

Next we have Libby's selection of beautifully coloured threads. Libby had a clear idea as to what she wanted , prepared the threads well beforehand and kept them all seperate this time to avoid contamination with each other. We'll all just have to watch this space to see what wonderful creation they will turn into.

Next we have still more work of Libby's. This is her version of Neptune's Necklace which has been created by hand stuffing a hollow thread, tying off in intervals, then being hand painted with the dyes. It will be interesting to see what this gets added to.

These are Robyn's own hand knitted diagonal cream squares using Totem wool. They were concertina folded , creating a 2.5cm fold strip, stitched through the middle of the pleated strip to create a little resist, dip dyed along the folded edges in one shade of brown, allowing the dye to seep in and up the concertina folds.

Here are the knitted pieces laying flat, giving an interesting effect that only Robyn knows what is going to happen to.

More thread that Robyn had played with.

The next 3 pics are Sheila's selection of "threads". There are ribbons, ric-rac, lace, fancy knitting yarns, fabric & all kinds of interesting bits. A sample of how Sheila may use these can be seen here.

All in all the girls had a wonderful day. I am only sorry that I missed it.