Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Dyes, felt and threads

all add up to an interesting five days at the Gail Harker Centre for Creative Arts.  Not only did we dye felt and threads, we also practiced and experimented with hand stitches using our dyed threads.  After choosing my colour palette, here is a picture of how my felt pieces turned out.


Then it was on to dyeing the threads.  Here is what they looked like once they were hung to dry.


Now we had the material to play, practice, and experiment with some hand stitching.  Before I started, I laid out the felt and thread together to see how they would all fit together.  Can you just imagine the fun I had playing with these colours?  
Here have another look.

 Now I'm off to finish my little stitch book.  Till the next time, happy playing and creating.


Sunday, April 20, 2014

Happy Easter!

Whatever your faith, whatever your spirituality, take this time to reflect, rejoice and be grateful.  Happy Easter!

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Answering a call

Last month the local gallery (Gallery Vertigo) had a fibre art exhibit.  I attended with a group from my Guild called QuArtz (QUilting ARTistZ).  It was exciting to see that two of our members had their little quilts on display, along with other fibre pieces including felted vessels, knitted scarves and various fibre sculptures.  It's a small gallery run solely by support from membership.

A week later I read in the local newspaper that the Gallery put out a call for artists to submit pieces for a juried show with the theme "The Colour of Music".  The piece could be created in any media; paper, paint, fibre, whatever.  After some hesitation and some encouragement from my friends at QuArtz, I submitted my piece A Tribute to Frank Mills.

Remember? This was the piece that I created for the Tangled Textiles group for their MUSIC theme, and posted about here and here.

Well, .... I GOT ACCEPTED!!!  I was so excited.  It's hanging in the Gallery as I write and will be on display until May 3, 2014.  If you are in the area, stop by and visit the Gallery.

Monday, April 14, 2014

The shape of texture

My local fiber art group, QuArtz has been spending this year studying the elements of design.  For each of the elements (line, shape, texture, balance) the group was issued a challenge.  You saw my result for the challenge related to "line" here.  In that post I noted that we were also challenged to come up with a piece relating SHAPE and TEXTURE, but with the added obstacle of incorporating a copper "scrubbie".

Well, it took some time, but here is a close up of what I did with the scrubbie.
I pulled some of the wire out of it, turned it into a bow and attached it.  I made some of the scrubbie pieces into little rolls and attached them with hand stitching.  Fancy machine stitching was used to apply the cotton pieces.  Here is a picture of the entire piece.

I called it The Shape of Texture.  Incorporating the scrubbie was indeed a challenge.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Cut and Collage

Carrying on from my Sue Benner class post, our third piece was a Cut and Collage.  After all that fusing and cutting, each of us had a number of small left over fused fabrics that we could free hand cut into small squares, rectangles, and strips.  Using parchment paper as a base, we arranged these cut leftovers into a collage that was pleasing and balanced.  Applied an iron and presto, the pieces all stuck together as one and were now ready to apply to a background fabric.  I created several.  Here are two of them. 

I think these two, along with several others, will be used to create a wearable item; maybe a vest or a bag…hmm will have to think about that.  I did another piece in some different colours and liked the look of it on a hand dyed background my friend graciously gave to me.  This one is going to hang on the wall just as soon as I get it quilted.

Our final goal was to create a landscape piece from strips of fabric.  We had been asked to bring along pictures for inspiration.  I brought along this postcard.

and had to proportionally enlarge it.  Hmm… I was running out of leftovers so the piece could not be too much larger.  I decided to try for something just a bit bigger.  Here is how it looks right now.  

Still needs some work on it, (like the palm trees) but that shouldn't take long.  Another piece for the quilting pile.  Now I just have to finish the piece I was working on in my second session at Asilomar.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Rectangles and Curves

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had taken a workshop with Sue Benner at Asilomar during the Empty Spools Seminars.  That was back in February.  If you ever get a chance, take a class from Sue.  She made the class exciting, inspirational and had a lot of information to pass along.

During the four and a half days with Sue we created four small pieces relating to a specific design setting.  As with any workshop we were to bring along fabric, but we were told not to limit ourselves to just cotton.  So I brought along, black velvet, jacquard, hand painted cotton, upholstery fabric and some silk.  The hand painted cotton was some of the fabrics that I posted about here.  The jacquard was also fabric that I had painted and stamped.  Here’s a shot of it.

Our goal for the session was to create four small wall hangings.  Each would be an example of a particular design style; rectilinear, curvilinear, cut and collage, and landscape.

After selecting our fabric pieces, we fused the back of each with Wonder Under, cut each of the fabrics into rectangles, and cut the rectangles into frames.  Whew!!! That was a lot of cutting and all done without a ruler.  Yup!  That’s right.  Freehand cut frames!! We did some shuffling, fused the frames and rectangles together and the piece was ready to sandwich.  Using Sue’s technique for sandwiching (sorry I promised not to post about that) my piece is now ready for quilting.  Here is what it looks like so far.  Any suggestions for quilting?

Our second piece was a curvilinear piece.  Oh no!  Not curves!!!  As it turned out, these again were created by fusing a selection of fabrics, cutting freehand and fusing to a background.  The object here was to create a piece in such a way as at create the perception of a background, mid-ground and foreground, with curved pieces.  This was a tough one.  Here is my result. 

I think I need to try this again.  I’m not sure I have created the depth perception that Sue was trying to get us to do.  Any thoughts?  I will post in a day or two about the remaining two pieces that we tackled.