silk painting workshop
This week at creative textiles, we had a morning workshop preparing a silk painting for stitching. This beautiful sample was created by Rhonda for us to follow.

The background was painted first. Rhonda has left the sky area unstitched, which I think works really well. We're all doing the same landscape design so it's easier to keep control of us, LOL!

[Click to enlarge so you can see the stitches.]

 

foreground grasses and flowers

To begin, we did a practise piece on cotton fabric using Genesis paints. Oops, I was working from another sample and forgot to leave a space at the top left of the yellow/dried grass section.

cotton fabric, stretched and painted

Once that was dry, we started on the silk - first drawing the basic landscape design and using a resist over the pencil lines so the paint didn't bleed into an adjoining area.

silk, showing resist lines

The paint was mixed, watered down and applied, then dried with hairdryers in between each colour. It can be a bit tricky to ensure that the paint doesn't run through the resist - thankfully, I didn't have any problems.

The paint behaves very differently between cotton and silk, but this background will be hidden - it's just a guide for thread colours.

At home I pressed it with a warm iron to heat seal and now it's ready to stitch. Next week we begin ... hope I can wait that long!

teacosy finished
and un-gifted back to me for pics! I'm happy with it, although the shape has turned out to be a bit weird ;-)))

Davida's 'scraps' of felted pieces became my beautiful leaves, stitched on by hand and machine.

one side ...

inside, lined with two lengths of gorgeous sari silk

 

Next time I'll insert a gusset(?) thingy at both the spout and handle ends and it should sit a bit more politely?

... looks a bit like it's been caught

in a strong sea breeze!

layers of hand dyed felt, topped with

stitch and dyed gauze and

hand dyed felted fabric pieces on top

... the other side

 

Thank you to my new followers. I do appreciate you being here xo.

Have a great weekend everyone - we're planning to head out somewhere interesting for lunch!

ooops, it's happened again
How time flies!

I have been doing a little bit of creative textiles work over the last few weeks (sorry, no photos) ... but mostly I've been involved with preparation for major house renovations.

So here is a little catch-up since April.

India Flint
Bunbury artists were honoured to welcome India Flint in April for a workshop, and I was lucky enough to attend her talk and demonstration at the end of her stay.

India's trusty old battered dye pot (below, right) travels the world with her and was used to create the sample pieces, which were freshly unravelled and still wet at the end of the talk. Wish I'd taken a close-up pic of its yummy, rich, slurpy contents!

India Flint, and her trusty travelled dye pot

India's book, Eco Colour

 felted and hand stitched samples

All the flowers, leaves and bark pieces used in the sample below were collected from within 50 m over the road from the venue before her talk and demo! There are no harmful chemical additives - the natural colours vary depending on the type and age of the leaves and there can be a huge range, just from one tree.

sample pieces dyed from leaves

found over the road!

 

India's work is so inspiring - I literally wanted to go home and throw out all my dyed work using commercial products (but I didn't. Yet.) 

She also signed my book. I'm such a groupie ...

misty day in Bridgetown
On a grand day out with some gal friends in Bridgetown last week, I found a large old cupboard - with enough shelves and drawers to house a sizeable amount of my textiles stash. What a find! 

So, Himself (wonderful as he is) agreed to take me back with the trailer on the weekend. All measured, sizes checked and everything will fit, yay! After it was loaded, we warmed our 'sitting bones' ;-))) by the open fire and warmed our tummies with hot soup at a nearby café.

Here are some pics of the misty views along the way.

fruit trees near Mullalyup

eucalypts and mist

sheds at Balingup

Stay tuned for some progress on the cupboard restoration.

tea cosy
The beginnings of a tea cosy to be gifted to my friend Fiona. It was such fun to stitch and play ... the pieces were hand or machine stitched in place. Then I forgot to take a pic when it was finished. Now I'm inspired to make some more!

 

playing with layers

playing with stitch

 

 

Thanks for visiting!

 

UFO update
Here is the finished UFO from our textiles group swap last christmas. I was very happy with this one.

All I did was dye it deep, dark, rusty red - top with spirals of sari silks and make it into a small cushion. Lovely.

 

[Scroll down to see the original post]

Circles quilt
It's now named River Song (from Dr Who), finished and on the spare bed!

front, with top folded over

 

back

 

 

close

 

done!

 

I think I'm back!

It's been a loooong couple of weeks (OK, 4 months, LOL). I've now deleted most of my posts and saved only a couple of favourites or those projects I'm still working on.

Sincere thanks to blogger friends and personal friends who have encouraged me to come back. For a while there, it seemed like my blog had run its course ... and it was easy to just let it go. Your support is much appreciated ;-D

So, we'll see how Blogger behaves following all the deleted posts now!

As it's easter, I thought I'd start with a pic of two chenille bunnies I made for the (grown up) kids' visit! One each for the boy and his gorgeous gal.

the tale of two bunnies ...

 

 

Circles quilt update
This quilt is now finished, YAY!!! But I don't have a pic of it yet. It was inspired by a quilt I saw on a New Zealand Quilter magazine cover several years ago, entitled Butterfly Tears and made in Japanese fabrics by Juliet Taylor.

My quilt is significantly different, but the seed of the idea developed from Juliet's quilt. Unfortunately, I can't find any other reference to her work.

Tangled up in Blue
This top went to the lovely Jenny for machine basting last week. I'll have it back soon and plan to quilt it myself (this could go pear-shaped!) using concentric circles, which I saw on BLOOMING POPPIES blog recently - thanks to Michelle via online group, Southern Cross Quilters.

This is a stash buster quilt, simply using up old blues and mustard/yellows that I still love. It's a tad Gee's Bend style because I wanted to use some larger pieces of fabric, and some of the scraps were only strips. See more here http://ruggedcottontwill.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/quilts-of-gees-bend.html

The title comes from a WHITLAMS song. Love, love.
 

 

Tangled up in Blue

 

It's good to be back ...

to blog or not ...
Blogger has decided that I can't upload any pics, due to some problem with space. It seems I have to buy extra space. Hmmm, not happy. Will see what I can do. Back soon ...