Post Exhibition Exhaustion!

Now we have come to the end of Touched and Felt and it has exceeded expectations. New friends have been made,  and as one visitor was heard to say, "everyone's talking about it". Each of the artists sold several items. We managed to cover the rent  with money donated, with some over for charity.It has brought us in contact with a lot of local artisans, and people are saying "When's the next one?" Megg and I are in a haze of exhaustion. It is surprising how tiring it is to run an exhibition, and you run on adrenaline and excitement a lot of the time. Now is the time to retreat home, clean my much neglected home, give my long suffering husband some attention, catch up on chores with horses and cattle, and water and weed the garden. The sewing room of course is a complete mess again with all the stuff from the show going back into it.
Once the dust has settled it will be time to think about the next challenge!

Touched and Felt Exhibition up and running!

We are now four days into the show and it has been a very busy and exciting time.
Setting up all the quilts and other items  took a long time and  it has taken awhile to assemble all the price lists and information. We are feeling quite exhausted. But there has been  a constant stream of people coming in,  and it has been interesting talking about art and craft all day.
What surprised me was how many artistic people are living in our area, working away at home , not part of any particular group. They are all coming out of the woodwork to view the show and talking about their work, a lot of which sounds free and wonderful.

The first picture is a crocheted rag rug made of recycled sheets, made by one of my students
This van was seen parked outside the exhibition
Below, Adi's wonderful felted cape and hat, against a background of one of my 1880s quilts "Atlanta", with an exquisite double wedding ring quilt in the  background,
and below, one of  Megg's tiny felted pictures  photographed at the entrance door of the hall.

exhibition just a week away!

in exactly a week, we will be attending our exhibition opening
My sewing room  looks like a bomb hit it, there is fabric everywhere, my husband is making quilt hangers and Megg has been  running around town putting up posters.
The local paper is taking photos of us and our work tomorrow.
A very exciting time...

Sun bonnet sue is in the quilting frame, a lovely 1930s quilt top that I am working on

There is also a stitch and flip table runner which I  will be teaching in classes, and  20 hand pieced blocks which I  have joined into a quilt, backed and quilted.

Not long now...

Fibre and Fabric exhibition, Murwillumbah Nsw Australia

A group of 4 of us, fibre artists, are exhibiting in Murwillumbah fromOctober 10th to 21st.
The  exhibition, "Touched and Felt"showcases  quilts, beanies, capes and other textile works of   four  creative women.
There will be a variety of classes in small quilting projects, crocheting and needle felting.
See our Facebook page for our "Virtual Show"
www.tinyurl.com/TouchedandFelt
Location - old Salvation Army Hall , Queen St, Murwillumbah
Opening Hours  9 am to 5 pm daily
Exhibition opening night Thursday October 10th 6-8 pm.All Welcome.

This is  a detail of one of the vintage quilts I will be displaying at the exhibition.
These old quilt tops, put away and forgotten, have been restored and completed by adding backing and wadding, and creatively quilted.
They provide a fascinating history of fabrics and techniques of quilting from the late 1800s to the 1950s.

An inspiring week...

This is  a foundation pieced small quilt I did  some time ago. Easy technique, very eye catching in the black and multi colour.

The  most exciting quilting thing that happened this week was that my friend Louise bought one of my quilts at a charity auction, and  wants me to enlarge it  from double to queen size by adding a border . It was very encouraging that someone liked my quilt enough to actually pay MONEY for it.

Also went to the Craft and Sewing Show in Brisbane on the weekend. Most impressive were the "Under the southern Sky" quilts,banner shaped quilts  depicting many aspectts of Australia and New Zealand.  Another interesting thing  at the Show were talks by the woman from the Punch with Judy  stand about "upcycling" or re shaping or embellishing plain T shirts and sweatshirts to make  new clothing. That is exactly what I am interested in at the moment.

Off the sickbed and back into the routine

Hello, back again after illness and a short stay in hospital. Nothing serious, all better now.

this is just a doodle where I started in the centre and just kept adding. I have noticed a theme  in my doodles  of repeated shapes connected by bars.

This photo below is the portrait I have been working on.  It looks quite strong and compelling in a photo.  I have overlaid some beige satin on the highlights of his face, ready for some free motion machine stitching.

My journal has lapsed a bit also. It's so easy to get out of the routine. But I am making the effort and trying to do the daily drawing again.

fabric journal cover

This is a fabric journal cover that  I made, using leaf themed fabric and appliqued leaves drawn from real Australian gum leaves. Inside the covers the fabric forms a pocket to hold the covers, and the top and bottom edge are bound in satin stitch .

self portrait, quilt design

this is  the week's  offering,  a basic quilt design inspired by a necklace.  I liked  playing around with the necklace to find the most pleasing design. The necklace had beads of a consistent size but I think the variation in size is more pleasing. This one definitely needs a bit more work.

this is a self portrait in pen  and watercolour pencil, done with a magnifying mirror. Bear in mind that this was first thing in the morning, and I am not a  morning person!

Miniature quilt nearly complete

My miniature quilt is nearly complete. I have added sashing and corner posts to the 12 foundation pieced blocks. It was  all very tedious and I think it will be my only miniature quilt. What was particularly hard was accuracy on the sashing. In retrospect this  should have been foundation pieced also as any tiny  error really shows up. Next step  is the quilting. I was going to hand quilt this in the ditch, but hand quilting is very difficult when there are so many seams and thicknesses. I did a few stitches then gave up,  so this will be a machine quilting job. It is destined to become a table runner. Miniatures are very cute but definitely for the obsessives among us. Having said that, it was good to do once!

I came across a great quote today, in a decluttering  and organisation website-

(with apologies to 'Me and Bobby McGee')

Freedom's just  another word for

Nothing left to do. 

Art Journal going great!

I  recently had a birthday ending in "0" and  the house was full of beautiful flowers from my friends, including these orchids. I can see this  becoming an art quilt.

A quilt design, this would be raw edge applique on the orange and green background.

The view from the back deck including  corgi Pixie and my husband's foot!

A bunch of roses also for my birthday, these were  exquisite deep yellow with red petal edges.

My rules of art journal drawing

1. relax. Don't stress about it. Take a cup of tea into your  drawing area.

Have a special place where you can leave all your supplies out.

2.  start in  or near the centre of the page, with the focal point of the scene and work outwards until you hit the edge of the paper. The location of each item is worked out by what is adjacent. This works well with flowers and landscapes but not so well with  horses and people where spatial  accuracy is important.

3. Don't judge it at all.

4. Be patient and keep going. Push through the stages where it looks awful ( and  you shouldn't be thinking it's awful as you aren't judging it)

5. As the drawing happens each day, it doesn't matter  if some  don't work out. Doing it daily takes away the preciousness of each work, allowing you to take risks and possibly ruin it by trying something new.

6. draw whatever comes to mind. If you are short of inspiration, look out a window, grab a magazine, pick up some scraps from the sewing room floor and scatter them on the page and join them with lines.  Another good idea is to choose an item and draw it each day for several days using different media, different scale, different angles.

7. After a short while it is easy to sit down and get into the drawing frame of mind (right brain) very quickly.

8. Stop when you've had enough, or filled the page, or   completed the sketch of the item to a point where it has come to a natural conclusion.

Enjoy your drawing!

gingko shirt

this is our gorgeous backyard with old 1970s pool, and a new garden which I am trying to establish (all you can see is some ornamental grass but there are plumbago and geranium bushes there also.

this is my next "upcycled "item of clothing. A plain green check top from the op shop, was embellished with gingko leaves. I googled "gingko"and got some images to draw leaf designs, then traced them onto  fusible web which I ironed onto a nice yellow  and green   hand dyed quilting fabric from my stash. They were then fused to the shirt and  sewn around with zigzag on the machine, using  a variegated  machine embroidery thread.

My aim this year is to not buy any new clothing,  just adapt my existing items. There are a lot of clothes in my Mending  bag needing just buttons or taking in,

and some just need a bit of a lift, embellishing, and I will be  putting these on the blog as I do them.

original quilt designs

This is a medallion quilt design, intended to be in cream, grey and taupe, very subtle with just a small flash of red. I saw some lovely japanese quilts at the Houston Quilt Festival which were very understated in these colours. The central tree and surrounding branches would be appliqued. The outer border could be a striped fabric or could be pieced in the black, brown and cream.

this is another applique quilt design, I would make this with raw edge applique. The background behind the purple fronds is supposed to be turquoise.  

This pear design would be made with appliqued pears onto the blue-purple blocks, and these would be appliqued to a large piece of blue for the background, along with orange squares and joining dark blue bars.

These designs were all done with derwent inktense pencils, which are a coloured pencil  that becomes watercolour when wet, so you colour in the area then go over it with  a brush and water. Magic!

illustration Friday Trial

Corgis, an angel and a dress makeover.

This week  I searched my mending box and found this op shop dress, which I then embellished  with  a leaf braid, cut into individual leaves. It makes quite a difference to a boring dress.

The leaves were sewn on with the machine using embroidery thread.

A closeup of the suede-look leaves.

I do a lot of drawing for a textile artist but I think drawing is the basis for all visual art, and  I hope that it will sharpen my   art quilting and sewing machine drawing skills, and some of these drawings will become quilts.  This is our corgi "Scruffin"

This is another one of our corgis, Pixie.

this is the illustration for the on- line weekly challenge, Illustration Friday. The theme this week is "messenger" and angels are "winged messengers".    I wanted to draw a modern angel  with normal clothes rather than a white gown.

Happy New Year to all my fellow bloggers and on-line visitors, and may 2012 bring you much success in your creativity!

illustration friday -"sink"

this is just my sink as I found it this morning... drawing takes priority over washing up!

Gardenias!

My friend Dianne gave me a posy of beautiful gardenias, which start out a rich creamy white and go gradually to a deep golden yellow as they age.
My mission  for the week was to draw a series  of the same  flowers in different media  as they changed, one drawing per day.
This is number 1 - pen and ink, coloured pencil, Kids watercolour paintbox and a bit of pastel for the
white highlights.

 Number 2- pastel on black card. It is very hard to draw cream  flowers  on white paper, so I thought I'd try the black.

 Number 3 - kids watercolour paintbox and acrylics.  The gardenias are changing colour.

 Number 4 - prismacolour pencils.
By now my drawings are getting larger and looser.

Number 5 - my favourite. By now the gardenias are  a deep rich gold and starting to wilt.
Pen and ink with -prismacolour   pencils in 2 shades of yellow with some orange. I enjoyed varying the thickness of the pen line - see the closeup.

Number 5 close - up. Pen and ink and prismacolour pencils.

It was a very interesting exercise.

thread drawing and art journal

My work this week was an exciting and challenging interpretation of a face.

First, lay down some fabrics, I used silks. Then  use free motion stitching to outline the  features.

On this second picture you can see the features starting to emerge, outlined in brown thread on the sewing machine. I chose warm colours because the face in the photo I was working from looked rugged and weathered like an arid  landscape..

Then I added some light sheer fabric where there were highlights and some dark sheers for the shadows, plus some more stitching around the eyes.  A work in progress... needs a lot of refinement but I am happy with  the direction so far...

Also I am having a lot of fun in my daily textile art journal with pen and coloured pencil drawings of the view from the deck..( note the dog in the corner!)

Some "zentangle" type drawings of a flower

and the late Amy Winehouse.

I have never enjoyed drawing so much, and look forward to my early morning cuppa and drawing session.  There is no pressure or expectation so just pure fun and playing.

calling Russian viewers

I note that some Russian viewers have been visiting my blog, please leave a comment, I would love to hear from you!

Textile Art Journal

One of my resolutions on returning  home from Houston Quilt Festival  was to keep a daily art journal. Each morning I head to the sewing room with a cup of tea and fill an A4 page with drawings, doodlings, fabric scraps, remnants of dreams, whatever comes into my head. It  is  easy to do and a lot of fun, and there is no pressure. Who knows, some of the images may become artworks. I have been experimenting with  various inks and watercolour pencils.

My other resolution is to clean up  my messy sewing room. Who needs to watch "Hoarders" when you can see it right here on my blog! Watch this space for the progress  photo  in a week or so.

The current UFO  being worked  on is a miniature quilt, foundation pieced pineapple log cabin. 9 blocks down, 3 to go.

Lastly is a photo of my little shrine in my sewing room - a buddha, my grandmother's Avon figurine, a wine bottle cover, and an antique implement which was used to darn socks on.

My messy room - see if you can find the sewing maching

This is where the art journal happens

a quilt design - trapunto fruit with  a couple behind

A technique of drawing without looking at the paper. Coffee mug, stiletto and pencil sharpener

The  blue paint was put down as blobs, paper folded in half and the rest of  the design was  then added.

Sketching with the sewing machine, feed dogs down, free motion stitching, using a photo from the newspaper as inspiration

sketch of our corgi Pixie

The miniature quilt in progress

My little shrine.

Apologies for the sideways photos.

If you visit my blog, would love to hear from you, Pleeease  leave your comments!