Castlemaine Embroiderer’s Guild Exhibition March 16th – 20th

The Castlemaine Guild is holding its biennial exhibition this weekend, with the opening on Saturday at 11 am.  This year the exhibition is called Alchemy of Stitch and promises to be as good as usual, with a stall selling gorgeous handmade and embroidered gifts and other useful things.  Do come along if you are in the area, enjoy the beautiful stitching that will be on show, some of which will be for sale, buy some lovely things at the stall and have a cup of tea with your friends!

My entries this year are only the folio and pieces worked for the Intermediate Canvas Certificate, and this.  It’s a bit different, but I really like it!  The pieced and embroidered (hand and machine) work measures about 12 inches square, and is my entry for the Alchemy of Stitch Challenge.  I do not expect to win anything, but it was fun to do.

The Exhibition is being held at the Mt Alexander Golf Course Clubrooms, Wimble Street, Castlemaine.  Saturday – Tuesday 10 am – 5 pm and Wednesday 10 am – 4 pm.

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Phone case….

A week or so ago I made this piece of felt…….endless rolling of wool fibres, hard work, but I was pleased with the resulting piece for which I had a specific plan..

Having recently swapped a very ancient mobile phone for a rather splendid iPhone, I thought it needed a nifty case to protect it when in my copious bucket shaped handbag.  It does have an metal cover already and I’m not sure this will be perfect, but I shall give this one a good trial.  I spent several nights in front of the box just stitching…..no pattern, just filling the spaces with whatever thread or stitch that appealed.

I have a sneaking feeling that getting the phone out when it rings will be a nuisance, and I might well end up with one of those flip open cases that protects both side of the phone..Time will tell, but it was fun to do…..

 

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ATASDA Exhibition

Jasmine and her contents were displayed today at our Guild meeting, but she is once more on her way to her next showing in the South of this state.  Our members were impressed by the wide range of techniques used, the amount of work involved, the very vibrant colours in the textiles, and the skills with which each piece was worked.  Many of them were pieces designed to hang, but unfortunately we did not have the means to hang them all – none the less we were all able to enjoy this traveling exhibition spread out on tables.  The pieces of work were accompanied by a large folder which explained how they were made, together with an artist’s statement for each piece.  I would certainly recommend this show to anyone who might want to have it visit their group – so if you do, then contact ATASDA.

Here are some photos of some of the works…….

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Meet Jasmine….

She arrived at my Post Office with all the other mail, and was addressed to me.   What do you think this could be?

This is Jasmine, one of the two travelling suitcases from the ATASDA 2010 Exhibition called the Maharajah’s Garden.  She is looking a bit battered by a life on the road, some of her make-up is missing, her lovely orange strap has been broken in transit, but the contents look just fine.  The Castlemaine Embroiderer’s Guild is showing these wonderful textiles on Wednesday, for our members and some guests at our Biggest Morning Tea in aid of the Anti-Cancer Council.  Locals, if interested would be welcome at the Mount Alexander Golf Course from 10-11.30 am.

I have not unpacked it, but did have a sneak peek…..each of the 48 textile works is carefully nestled it its own calico bag for safety, but they look lusciously rich and colourful – I shall take heaps of photos when we have it displayed, but here are a couple of tempters….

I can’t wait to see it on display.

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Autumn activities

I seem to have been absent for quite some time…..nothing wrong,  just very busy elsewhere.  Mostly I have been working in my garden in preparation for the visit of a group from a local garden club.  It’s been a bit like Hercules cleaning the Augean stables,  and will teach me to neglect the garden for more gentle activities like stitching.  The amount of growth, both positive ( established plants and trees) and negative (weeds) due to the wet summer we have experienced meant many areas were like a jungle and needed radical cutting back.  This is the 8th trailer of rubbish, this one waiting to go to the tip tomorrow, and there are likely to be a few more before I have finished. I’m very glad the end is in sight!

In my spare time, when sick of the labouring in the garden, I have been stacking this 5 cubic metre pile of redgum firewood in my woodshed.  Times like these I wish the children, now long gone, were here and could be bribed to do it instead of me!

I have not been totally ignoring my needles, and am currently working on this piece of old pure woollen blanket.  Yes, it looks a bit weird now but will be turned into a very functional light blocking curtain for a spare room.  I plan to cover the whole with naive embroidery, and then dye it with natural (eucalyptus) dyes,  so it will end up a light red brown colour. I am hoping that the embroidery will dye a slightly different shade and will show up as tone on tone.  So far we have a rabbit, a couple of other things and Squid, my daughter’s dog.  The curtain will hang straight with no gathers, like a blind and hopefully will allow certain visitors the luxury of sleeping longer after daylight.  As it was very difficult to mark a stitching line on the wool, I drew the design onto water soluble film, tacked it down and stitched through the lot.  The residual film and outlines  will dissolve when the piece is washed and dyed.

As if I need any new craft activity to explore, I now have something else to try when I have a bit of time.  A week ago when I was in Melbourne, I collected several looms from a private school that no longer needed them.  They had been in storage for years, and were going to be destroyed if new homes could not be found for them…….such a waste thought I …..so agreed to collect them and to keep one for myself.

I have no experience and know nothing of weaving so this will be a challenge – when I have time to learn.  I am told this is a four shaft table loom, and was made by Dyer and Phillips in Melbourne after WWII,  so may be 50 years old or thereabouts.  It seems to have all the component parts, needs a little cleaning of the metal bits, but appears it will work.  Should be fun – when I have time to learn.

Finally for today – and for those who live near enough to attend – the Embroiderers Guild Biennial Exhibition is happening in Castlemaine next weekend.  It will be a great show, and coincides with the State Festival being held at the same time – so make the trip to Castlemaine and see it all!

Don’t forget to visit Fractions in Time – there are always new photographs to see….

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Behind the Gate

The fabric book has finally been finished, I completed the binding of the pages last night.  I’m fairly pleased with it, but as always , if I were doing it again some things would be done differently.  There are eight pages inside the cover, each one demonstrates a technique learned at Nifty Needles, the EG interest group that focuses on non traditional embroidery techniques.

The pages are bound with a simple stitched Japanese binding.

Each page is backed with a hand-dyed fabric, and the edges finished with buttonhole stitch.

Each facing page has a label with the name of the piece, and details of how it was made.

The labels were printed on the computer and attached with Vliesofix

The background fabric for the covers was made by enclosing a piece of wool prefelt between two layers of hand dyed silk, stitching them together by hand and machine, then felting the three layers together. It is a lovely texture to touch.

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Another Page…….

This one is to show what one might do with a monoprint.  In class, this was scribbled on glass and printed on calico.  Today I coloured it with acrylic paints and added machine stitching.  I really like it and would like to try it again with a little more planning and attention to detail…….

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More pages…

You may recall that this book is a project from Nifty Needles, a sub-group of the Embroiderer’s Guild, where we explore contemporary textile techniques and experiment with new and unusual materials.  The group decided each would make a book to show what was covered during the year,  to a theme of their own choosing.  Initially I planned to make my pieces only 5 x 7 inches, and my theme was Inside the Front Gate, which I thought would give me plenty of scope to do just about anything.  As we went along, I found the small size restrictive, so some pieces are larger – hence the need to make a uniformly sized background, which has become the page.  Experience is a good teacher, if doing it again it would be quite different in many ways, and my theme would be something much more simple.

There was more rain today, so I have been stitching, and completed a few more backgrounds …….not sure if I like them all, but here they are.  The colours of these photos are not quite right either, as it has been such a dark day…… I think they will look better when all bound together into the finished book, however, looking at this now, I think I might redo the stitching on the background for this tree trunk piece for starters…….

This one was to show the use of marbled fabric, and supposedly depicts part of the front driveway, garden bed, lawns and trees….

Worked primarily with felt, fibres and the Embellisher, this page was to make note of the 50+ Silver Birch trees that have been planted on this property since I first came here in 2005.

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Rusty Page finished

This is the full page, now completed – somehow it has a Celtic feel to it…..must be the various curves.  The background has been embellished with silk and wool fibres, and will also have a blanket stitch edging when I have cut it to size – this will not be done until all pages are fully completed.  I have been working on this today while it pours with rain, and all backgrounds will reflect the colours and stitching of the centre piece……..I’m hoping the end result will be as I imagine…..

It is raining heavily again here, and there must be thunderstorms on the way as the Bella, the pink dog is beginning to panic.  I know it will pass in a few days time, and things will be normal again – I’m lucky.

I cannot imagine how those in Queensland affected by the terrible flooding will ever feel things are normal again.  The losses and devastation are horrendous – lives, homes, pets, possessions, treasures, properties, stock, crops and livelihoods gone.  The cost is going to be in the billions of dollars, and the cleaning up will be a Herculean task.  My heart goes out to each and every one affected.

Various online stitching and quilting groups are talking about making quilts or getting together bags of stitching supplies for those who have lost everything, it seems to me that while their intentions are good, at this stage the best thing to do now is to donate is cash to the Red Cross or the Queensland Government sponsored site here. Material goods may be appreciated later.

Some textile folk are holding auctions to raise funds for the relief, so have a look and do what you can.  These are a couple I know of so far…..I’m sure there will be more.

My friend Lizzie – here

Tasmanian Toni – here

As usual, Victorian Jan Macfayden will be putting quilts together to send at a later time……if you want to help by making Quilt as You Go blocks, or by sending batting or supplies…..see the Oz Comfort Quilts Blog.

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A Rusty Page

At long last, some stitching ……nothing flash or particularly clever,  just another page for the textile book.  This one is to illustrate some of the possibilities of dyeing fabric with rusty metal objects, and then using them as the basis for stitchery.  The design came from a piece of curly wrought iron which I found in the garden when I moved here, and it now adorns the old dunny door which serves as a gate to my fenced and netted vegetable garden.  The underlying fabric was obtained by wrapping an old steel star picket in cotton and leaving it in the rain for a week.

This will be mounted on another background of embellished green felt which will be the actual page, and then this and the other pages will be bound together to make the actual book.  There are still a couple of pages to be completed, and the whole needs to be completed by April for the Guild Exhibition.  Better get a move on!

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