I'm feeling lucky

I had a couple of hours to kill before I would be picked up for my weekend away so thought to myself - what can I do in this time other than housework?

I printed my woodcut onto a wonderful tan shaded piece of fabric - very ethnic as I am wont to say. I used a foam roller and as you can see I didn't cover the block as well as I had thought. (BTW it is about 9 x 9) When I was playing with cropping and colour on the PC I chose "I'm feeling lucky" and it looks good too. I think I will use it as the theme for my weekend.

I think I will look into raiding the offcut bin at school for some smaller pieces of MDF and some of the more odd shaped offcuts. This could be lots of fun.

 

This week's print

Darn it, I lost my original post. I never have quite the same inspiration for words the second time around.

This week the tutor thought that my print was very Aboriginal and said that he thought it should come up well on fabric. I hope so because I made a complete dogs breakfast of my prints on paper - the colours tended to be too similar and didn't show the design well. I have done more carving on the woodcut since and taken out a lot more of the background. One day soon I shall print them all onto fabric. I haven't been enjoying the white paper that we have been printing on in that I don't like the white lines and would prefer to have coloured backgrounds.
Anyhow it will all have to wait a bit longer, I am away for the weekend.


I'm off to Wanaka for the weekend. The Otago Embroiderers Guild use the high school there and have a weekend of classes with a little shopping added on. I am doing the book binding class which I think will be fun - I am not really much of an embroiderer anyhow. I haven't really organised myself well for the class. I should have most of the things on the needs list somewhere around the house so I have started to gather them up. I have started to organise some clothes too and if I pretend to do some housework in the middle of it all then I will have accomplished something for the afternoon.

I will try to remember to take my camera and take pictures - some of the classes are quite interesting and very creative and can be easily interpreted in all sorts of fibres. I think there is even a class in paper making too. Fun, Fun, Fun. 

An old project

This poor thing has been hanging in the wardrobe for a very very long time waiting for me to get back to it. I was wanting to do something wonderfully inspired with embellishments on it but the hand quilting in the centre panel is all that I have managed so far. The centre is a hand painted panel that I bought many years ago and as you see inspired the colours that I have used. I have lots of wonderful threads that I have bought over the years and some wonderful pieces of shell but I can never decide what to do - almost as if I don't want to be in danger of doing too much. One day............ 

What I am planning to read

Of course top of the list is my Quilting Arts Magazine that arrived yesterday - wonderful thing overseas post as I am sure that with having a subscription it came extra early. There were some interesting articles and pictures that will demand lots of attention. I find that even the advertisements are worth reading and checking out too. I am planning to go over to the USA and Canada later this year and there might be some places that I can check out when I am over there after all I am not going all that way without doing some serious shopping.

I got a couple of books from the library on symbolism in art which I think will be an interesting read - I had read small pieces before about the symbolism in pictures and what it all means but I wanted to delve more into this and see what there is to bring to quilts.

My other book to devour is one on Hundertwasser. His pictures are so colourful and inspiring. I am amazed too by his architecture and design. He lived (and died) in New Zealand and his legacy to New Zealand I suppose you could say were that he designed some public toilets - apparently they are quite a sight! Anyhow I think this will be an interesting book.

Printmaking class

The top print is dry point which was very messy but fun. It started off a bit of a mess but when printed came out okay. It was supposed to have a Pacific feel to it. Not a method that I will do much more of but was worth learning.

The bottom green and yellow print was another woodcut which I enjoyed. I want to learn more and be able to carve my own prints and stamps for printing onto fabric of course. These are all done by the "reduction" method (sounds smart doesn't it) . Again this was supposed to have a more Pacific flavour but I decided in the end that it felt more Scandanavian - big turnaround. I would liked to have done it in red and black but had to work with the colours that we had in class. Can't wait until the next class to do some more.

On the line

There is nothing more enjoyable for me when I have been dyeing than to hang it all out to dry after washing out - I pet it all out and then stand back to admire and look at all the nuances of colour and texture in the pieces.

This was a piece that roughly pleated on plastic and then sponged colour on - I like the texture but I think I want to play with application of colour a little more. Down in the bottom left corner there was some blue that had run from another piece on the same plastic and I like how it stayed separate and didn't really blend too much with the other colour being sponged on top.


These both had the sponges placed amongst the scrunched fabric and then wrung out so that the dye transferred - very interesting and lots of fun. Love the seredipity of it all.

Love the earthy colours of the piece on the left but for the life of me I can't remember what I did, it looks better closeer up.

Would you believe blue, apricot and pink were poured on separate areas of these two fabrics scrunched together in a large bowl and then each colour mixed (separately) with brown rose poured over top. I find it hard to believe but that is what happened and this is what I got.

After all this I am still enthused to dye more - perhaps that is why I have ordered more fabric. But then I never can decide what to make with the fabric after that  

Back again

Oops, I am a bit back to front here - I lost these photos that were supposed to be at the bottom of my previous blot - oh well never mind.

I had a bit of fun with sponging dye onto some roughly pleated/folded fabric

I played with the sponges again and sponted onto the rumpled fabric on the two left trays and wrung the sponges out in the fabric in the two right trays. I suspect all these experiments will come out quite light but I loved the dark earthiness of the colours in the trays

And we can't forget a photo of my security guard. He turned up a bit late and was flustered until things settled down. He is always very alert and takes his role seriously. My Husband was in the shearing shed (hidden by the shrub) and was being a bit noisy which gained a growl or two. Tabby (very original name here) also sits on guard at night when I am in the spa. He takes his duties very seriously.

So now all I have to do is wait a couple of hours and start to wash out the fabrics. That is about as long I can manage to wait. I usually time it so that I have lunch during this waiting time. So then, more piccies later when I have it all washed and on the line. 

The sun was warmish so ...........

The day was cool but the sun was warmish so what else was a girl to do. Now this is not what my hand is supposed to look like - but I always get too excited when playing with my dyes and burst out of my gloves. Can't complain about the gloves, excess supply of surgical gloves that I was given from work


Now here is my dye studio - on the left the dyed fabrics, then we have my dry bench for fabric and my notebook and the small bench (ha, ha) has all my dyes. The water supply is underneath the small bench as you can see.

This picture of the small bench also shows my small dye mixing table - it usually has a nice table cloth on it to catch all those drips.


Oops, where did all my other piccies go - better send out the search party - there are more to come. 

Serendipity

I was auditioning fabrics and found these. When I am dyeing I always keep a few small pieces of fabric on hand, usually f1/8. When I have finished dyeing a piece of fabric in a tray I will layer one of these small pieces of fabric over the top lightly and where they touch the surface they pick up colour. It was originally to stop the tops drying out too much in the sun (in times past when we had super hot days).


I like the marbly type of effect they give. The pink and green have both been used more than once and I may use them again to give some more multi coloured effects though they can also come up very good on multi dyed fabrics as well. Of course now that I have the pieces of fabric I am not sure what will happen to them next but they are nice to have in the stash and admire every so often. I always enjoy the serendipity of doing something like this - never knowing what to expect because it is never the same each time.

Now that Autumn has come with a crash I must order some more fabric to dye on the few warm days that we will have before winter. The cold days of winter will become my days to do printing and play with the wood cuts that I am hoping to make in class over the next couple of months. 

Playing around

I'm not having much luck with my last posts that disappeared on a little adventure of their own. Perhaps they might turn up somewhere, perhaps not.

Now I have my photos a little out of order here so let's just admire the fabric first and then down to the sketch.



I was trying to do some sketches of the fern style wrought iron that I had seen earlier and it started to look like a feather quilting pattern. I becane distracted by doing some oval/circle designs instead. Now I liked the one on the left and decided to see how that would go. Now this is a teeny tiny scrap of paper that I started with and it changed slightly in trying to draw it to a larger scale. BTW the purple background that I photographed this on is for you Shirley.


Okay, I know it seems a bit bright but this is what I have come up with so far. It is A4 size which is still small but will have to do for now. I started to think rocks in water as I was auditioning for a background fabric and I did like the contrast only it will change over time with a little bit of this and a little bit of that plus some quilting.

 

Doing some sketching

I was still annoyed with myself this morning about not taking my camera with me when I went walk about in Christchurch that I got up at 5:30am and did a small sketch trying to re-create what I had seen but of course my memory is not very accurate. I think I will do a small series to sketches and play with the basic idea of the stylised fern leaf fitted into different shapes, e.g. square, rectangle, various triangles, hexagones etc. I did have one or two ideas as to how to approach it as I tossed and turned before getting up to do my sketching and I want to plan to do something in a modest scale, say about A3 to start with. It could be the sort of thing that turns into a series. Once I get organised I will take some photos of my progress and post them.

Having a camera helps

I had to drive up to Christchurch today - it is a long boring three hour drive and then to turn around and come home again after a couple of hours is even more tiring. But to try and make the most of my trip I took my camera with me to try and take photos in the brief stops that I made. And what happened when I saw some wonderful wrought iron - yep I didn't have my camera with me. I was so annoyed. I was too far away to go back and get the camera and never thought to take a sketch either. The wrought iron was in a fern shape and was used in alternating mirror images at the edge of a paved area to keep people from walking straight out into traffic. I was very drawn by the stylised image and the repetition of it.

I want to take my camera out more - I think that taking photos just as much as sketches will keep me focused more on being creative. I will look at doing some sketches later and see how I can expand upon them.

Fun, fun, fun

I decided to do a night class on print making. Over eight weeks we will learn different techniques of printing. Tonight we did wood cuts as you can see above and I also did some dry point which I will finish next week. There is a bit of glare on my picture and thankfully you can't see where Tabby (the cat) stepped onto the picture trying to gain my attention. I am sure that cat is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Anyhow this was fun especially with printing in two colours. It is supposed to be sort of leafy.

I think for me to better use this techniqe for fabric printing I might do some smaller wood cuts. This one is about eight inches square.

Lots of fun and I managed to come home without too much paint on myself. 

Trying to take photos

I have always liked this group of sheds - something about the different roof lines. There are lots of interesting angles around allthe farm sheds (on my small farm) and now that I have a camera to take all these wonderful photos with off I went on a photographic expedition.


My apprentice was not having too much attention taken from him and so I had to take his photo too - he was very obliging and sat on a fence post squinting into the sun. So here is Michael one of the loves of my life. He is actually a Cream Burmese that we rescued (another long story) but for now I think he is being the Farm Manager/Security Guard/Photographers apprentice. I think he imagined he was guarding me from the sheep who are avoiding having their photos taken. Yes, I have sheep too - more than enough to make a few sweaters.


Better luck next time but with three cats, friendly sheep and nosy cattle I don't have a lot of luck with being alone to take photos. The joy of the digital camera is that I can take lots and lots of photos and only keep the good ones - yippee. I must remember though to take prints too. 

Having fun

Having a bit of a play here - my first photo that I had put up myself - a real learning curve but I a getting there.

I had this icky notebook pictured above and I decided to have a small creative moment and made a cover for it, also pictured above. I made the cover that it will come on and off the notebook. I used one of my overdyed gosh cloths as the base and sewed strips of other dyed fabrics on. I used my wavy cutter blade for the first time and sewed the strips on so that over time and wear they will fray slightly to give it an aged worn look. 

Taking photos

Well I have the camera, it is fully charged and ready to go. The fact that I don't know how to use it does make it difficult. And of course I don't know how to put photos on my blog. So thankfully I am off to see Shirley (she of the red leg) tonight and will con her into showing me how to do it and also how to add links - I did try and all I managed was to delete the samples that were there instead. Why suffer all the problems of trying to do these things when I can make use of someone who has already gone through that process and knows what to do.

I will be able to go photo mad and why not, what else are cameras and blogs for!

Dyeing to have fun

I just bought two new colours, rust orange and burgundy so of course had to had a play with them. I particularly wanted to do some overdyeing as well so did some icky pieces with a navy overdye and then some others with what I had hoped was a dark red but was too fuchsia-ish.

I used some dry fabric that had already been soaked in soda ash and spooned the colours on to cover as much as possible. I used variations of the two browns, a medium blue and some apricot. A greenish colour that I created seems to have disappeared on the fabric but there are patches of blue amongst the terracotta and burnt orange tones. There is a small pinkish tinge from the apricot. I am quite happy with how things turned out.

A little something

Well it was small and not quite a quilt or wall hanging - a notebook cover in fact but it was at least creative. I quilted a piece of a dye wipe up cloth in a random pattern, added small strips of dyed fabrics cut with my wavy cutter (I needed an excuse to use the blade) and top stitched around the edges in a nice thick threat which gave it a very rustic look. I am quite pleased with the effect and have left it so that I can slip if off the notebook. I am hoping that over time the strips of fabric will fray and give a more worn look.

All in all I was pleased with what I had accomplished, so much so that I have some more notebooks that I think I will do and keep them for presents.

A bend in the road

I have wanted for a long time to do more art quilts but never know where to start. I have lots of inspiration but never know what to do with it. In the meantime I get off onto making some quilt blocks and soon become totally distracted with something more traditional. At the moment I have about 15 plus quilts sitting around at various stages of completion from needing borders, needing sandwiched and of course needing quilted.

I did have a bit of a think about it all over at 43 things and I will send all the sets of blocks (except for some more "personal" ones away to a quilt orphanage and let someone else have the pleasure of putting them together and sending them away to orphans in Indonesia. That will then clear the deck for me once all the other tops are slowly finished.

This will leave me to dye more fabric (as if I don't have enough), print and otherwise embellish the fabric and then do something with it. I do have a couple of ideas that I will play with, perhaps in smaller sizes first.

And of course I can keep my stash and traditional blocks to my Friday club nights when I can do lots of piecing which I do find peaceful and relaxing just to sit and sew. These can be the bed quilts that I can make for myself and friends. Afterall there are all those cat fabrics, the horse fabrics, the orientals, the greys (what did I have in mind there), all the wonderful batiks and all the other small collections of fabrics.

All that being said I should plan to go and organise the orphanage parcel - it is a very cleansing feeling to pack up blocks that you have had sitting for a long time and feel guilty about not using. And of course an orphan somewhere gets a lovely quilt.

Being Brave

I am a step closer to opening up my blog. I am considering joining a web ring which will open me up to visitors (which it is all about). I feel a bit of an intruder going to so many blogs and not always leaving a message but I do try to in a regular basis just to give some feed back to the blog owners, I mean they are baring their souls to a lot of unknown people. And of course I then wondered where on earth I came up with the name of my blog or my ID - I suppose in an effort to be totally anonymous but that will have to change. At the moment this is still my small collection of thoughts - I enjoy the release that it gives me to put them into words.