Creating Texture - With Old Tomato Paste Tubes!

Sometimes, I do weird things. 

It's kind of fun, and keeps the people around me shaking their heads...

Today, it's been reclaimed tomato paste tubes. (Yes, I cut it open and washed it carefully first - after we ate the spaghetti bolognese, which was awesome, by the way...)

The inside of the paste tube is the loveliest, soft, buttery gold colour, and it's easy to bend, fold and generally manipulate. Here, it's got some painted vliesofix and a chiffon scarf ironed over it, which gives it that orange-y colour in patches. Keeping it company is a piece of copper shim, with many holes poked through it with my trusty - and very blunt - awl. Don't worry, I keep an old awl just for nasty, tough jobs like this. There does exist another pointier, sharper, better looking awl for the tasks awls were really designed to carry out. 

The copper shim becomes a kind of 'claw' to set the glass bubble in, and after a bit of free machine embroidery (plus three broken machine needles and countless broken top threads), the end result looks like this:

This little lumpy treasure is destined, along with some other lumpy treasures, to be the focal point on a canvas that's been evolving in the studio.

If you promise to eat all your vegetables, I might even show it to you when it's finished. (Yes, Carmel* - that means you!)

*Carmel is my Mum - who is awesome - and also happens to be the worst vegetable eater in the history of the universe!

The Latest Scarf

How good is your imagination? Can you imagine this scarf wrapped around a living human beings neck, rather than around the not-at-all-humanoid form of the citronella oil burner? Mabel, the dress form, has been called to perform a higher purpose, which has been fine - right up until I wanted to share the latest scarf creation with you, and had no model. (I'm kind of frightened of that hold the camera up in front of yourself and click style of portraiture...basically the camera is too close, and at that range there are too many wrinkles and saggy bits. I care for you way too much to subject you to such an ordeal!)

I'm a bit excited about this scarf...

Finally, some of that lace that's been languishing in the lace box for who knows how many years, is finding a home. I discovered a great paint - on dye from The Lace Cottage, which has given colours that worked really well with this vintage look ... Added to dyed silk tissue, and a somewhat random assortment of yarns and silks - It turned out pretty much as I'd hoped.

All that's missing is a model...I enjoy 'my girls'* company so much that when I have them here to visit, I don't think of suggesting we stop chatting (and laughing and drinking wine or eating choc chip cookies) to do a photo shoot; so I'm left with the outdoor furniture to do the holding up of the latest creation.

I guess I could always ask Garfield to help me out... the colours would flatter his complexion, I'm sure!

*FYI - 'my girls' are in fact my handsome princes significant others...I'm blessed to have them in our home often, and after many years of being the lone female in the herd, it's a treat to share these baffling males with some equally baffled- by- them women.

Step by Step Soluble Scarf Lesson 1

I have been promising...well, it's time to make good on the promise! Get settled in for part one of your very own soluble scarf lesson!

Begin by procuring some soluble film. There are a number of soluble films on the market, and if you're into research and discovery, you could test all of them to see which ones you like best, or, you can take my word for it that for this particular style of scarf, Romeo is best! I tell you this because it's reasonably heavy (in soluble film terms), tolerates a reasonable amount of humidity in the air and moisture on your hands without turning all gooey, sticky and generally disgusting while you're working on it. It can also handle quite a lot of heavy stitching without tearing - that's not such an issue with this particular scarf, but makes it a very versatile film.

The Romeo is the clear plastic looking stuff in the photo above, it is joined by some hand dyed silk ribbon/yarn, which will be the 'guts' of the piece, and some silk yardage, which will serve as the snazzy details.

Begin by cutting the romeo into a long, narrow rectangle (pretty much a scarf shape...who would have imagined?!) an inch or two bigger around than you want the finished scarf. If you need to create a bigger piece - just whiz it together with your sewing machine, one piece on top of the other.

 

This little foot is an optional extra. You can achieve the same result by carefully running the yarn under your normal machine foot, but if you have one of these - this one is on a Bernina - your life will be complete!

Now - get sewing! Feed your ribbon/yarn (sorry, I can't decide just what to call it...) through the little opening in your foot and start stitching rows of ribbon down the length of your Romeo.

Keep sewing...These are stitched lining up the edge of the foot with the next row of yarn - no more than a half inch gap between the rows.

OK, now it's time to change direction. The trick with soluble films is to create a net or grid effect, so that when the film is washed out, all your yarns and stitches will be well connected to one another. You'll see up in the top left hand of the photo that instead of cutting the yarn and starting again, I've just swung it around and left a loop - saves yarn and saves time - and I'm all about saving time! We'll just snip through those little suckers later on.

Here is the piece, all stitched up, it's 'guts' in place...ready for part two, which will involve that delicious looking silk from the first photo.

You'll notice that as it hangs around Audrey's neck, I've left some more spaces between those short runs across the scarf. You can go this way, or you can stick with the even, close together spacings right along...whatever blows your frock up really!

If you're hunting for Romeo (or, like me, live a long way from anywhere you can walk in and buy some), I can share with you that I get mine from Dale Rollerson at the Thread Studio. Dale looks after her customers wonderfully well, and has all kinds of treasures that I can't live without!

Lesson 2 coming up soon!

A New, Fresh Look

I'm pretty excited today! For a little while now, I've been communicating with Rachelle Sartini Garner from Owl and Bear on Etsy, and she has been toiling away, coming up with a fresh, new look for my marketing materials...How do you like my new Blog header; and what about this neat logo she's designed? I especially love this - I sent Rachelle some images of my work, and she picked up this pattern from the machine embroidery I had done on one of the surfaces.

The blog header, and my Etsy graphics all feature this detail of Cherish, which is, as you may know from my earlier posts on it, the piece of work of which I am most proud so far. Rachelle didn't know this when she chose it, but it seems like the perfect piece to be using.

So, it's just a quick post for today - to encourage you to have a dig around on the Etsy site - there are some wonderful artists lurking there, just waiting to make your dreams come true - whatever they may be! I truly cannot say enough lovely things about Rachelle - I was possibly not the easiest to please - I kept asking to tweak this, and change that, but she remained ever bright and eager to please - and please she did!!

I now have some work ahead of me getting my Etsy shop stocked up again and 'hanging' all my new graphics...sure beats getting stuff ready for the accountant at tax time, which is what I have been doing!

Teaching - A Wonderful Way To Learn...Blackall Style!

Meet Jill. It's all her fault. She's the one who tracked me down and asked me to do a couple of workshops in Blackall. I have to wonder if it really is OK to get paid for having that much fun! She's also the one who patiently directed me to find her home in the drizzly rain (that took three separate phone conversations, at the end of which, I'm certain she was worried she'd employed a complete fruitcake!...I did struggle with the 'head west ' direction when there was no sun out though! We had a good laugh about it all later...) Jill looked after me SO well! I enjoyed wonderful food and hospitality throughout my stay. My 'flat' at the Cultural Association Centre (which I'll do a post on soon) was very comfortable, and everyone I encountered in this lovely town was remarkably welcoming. There is much to tell you about the trip, so there'll be more photos to follow, including the fabulous sculpture dotted around the town and the great Cultural Centre facility that this creative community puts to excellent use.

While this isn't a great photo, it gives you an idea of the size of the workshop area - this was once the dining room in the days the centre was a student hostel. The girls are busy exploring different mediums, making beads, silk paper, textile bases...we managed to make a lot of mess while they created some very cool little pieces!

Lisa is Jill's daughter. I seem to remember her suggesting she hadn't sewn much...I think I must be mis-remembering, because she powered on and produced a couple of gorgeous scarves on soluble films. The one she's working on here ended up very lacy and light - a perfect summer accessory! (Clever girl, this one.)

In fact, they were all clever girls! Above, Penny and Jenny show off their creations, along with Robyn and Yvonne below... I was fascinated that at the end of the workshop, their scarves - that had been started the afternoon before -  all matched what they were wearing very well!

Jill had finished two scarves by 'modelling' time, and Lisa's lacy one is off drying on a railing while she has her picture taken.

My greatest hope is that these terrific ladies enjoyed the workshops as much as I enjoyed being there!  As is always the case, when I head off to teach people something new, I learn such a lot myself...watching these girls pick up the techniques I was sharing with them, and taking off to use them in their own unique ways was fascinating to me - they instinctively did things that I have never thought to try - like including wool tops in the scarf, that we washed the soluble out of with boiling water! I have always avoided that on the assumption that the wool would felt...Yvonne's didn't, and it created a lovely warm, thicker scarf - perfect for those cold Blackall winters! Of course, we were very careful not to agitate it too much as we washed out the soluble.

Thank you to each of you for your warmth, hospitality, thoughtfulness and interest (including Veronica and Sandra, who weren't available for modelling shots on Sunday afternoon.)

Stay tuned over the next few days for more about beautiful Blackall on the Matilda Highway...home of the Black Stump (which Jill tells me isn't the same black stump, in the same location, that was in the back of the school yard when she was a child!)

Loving these leaves...

A while ago, a photo of a piece of silk paper made an appearance here...at the time, I thought it would make a great cuff, all stitched out with leaf shapes. The stitching was started, and frankly, it looked pretty lame and disinteresting. So much so, that I tossed it in a corner, amongst a bundle of other lame and disinteresting stuff, to be forgotten for a while. (You might be surprised just how much stuff is in that bundle!)

It was rediscovered when I was thinking about creating some special sample pieces for the Exploring Soluble Films workshop in Blackall. It may have looked lame with only stitching, but what about adding machine stitched slips created on soluble film? Hmmm...better!

Many laves (count them!) were patiently stitched on Romeo soluble film. Romeo is a plastic like sheet - it reminds me a bit of the clear, heavy plastic that school librarians were always busy covering books with. Using a slightly different variegated thread in the needle to the bobbin, some subtle colour changes were fairly easy to create. Once the leaves were finished, the whole lot went into a tub of cold water, the plastic dissolved, leaving the thread in these neat leafy shapes, ready to be stitched down on to the base...in this case, the silk paper.

The addition of a handmade bead (foiled black fabric wrapped around a satay stick, secured, and with a little embossing powder added) and a machine wrapped silk loop...and a cuff is born! I'm still trying to decide whether it needs more leaves, some hand embroidery on the silk, or if it's fine the way it is. I change my mind every time I walk past it! So, what do you think?

It's time to go pack my many bags for my teaching (and road) trip... Stay tuned for an update towards the end of next week!

Working on Pieces for Bush Christmas

Aren't these colours lovely?! There's been some paint splashed about onto a variety of surfaces, in preparation for further creative pursuits...in other words, the rapidly evaporating time till Bush Christmas has got me in a frenzy! These pastel coloured chunks are rock salt, that was sprinkled onto some painted watercolour paper while the paint dried...this gives a very cool speckled effect, and the salt takes up a little of the paint colour. It reminds me a bit of the coloured rocks the boys used to have in the bottom of the fish tank years ago. The boys weren't all that into the fish - when the last one died, it was at least two weeks before one of them exclaimed in dismay "Where's the fish gone?" Heaven, my darling, but I promise I gave him a lovely funeral....

Thankfully, my days of fish funerals beside the toilet are long behind me now! Which has nothing whatever to do with this piece...but I'm a great believer in the benefits of gratitude (and expressing same!) The text here says: Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. (Maya Angelou) It's a definition of success I respect greatly, and now that I'm no longer needed to perform fish funerals (which I didn't like doing) I think I must be free to feel successful! This piece is worked on a base of tissue bonded to felt, with handmade silk paper embedded with feathers free machine stitched in place. The little collection of discs at the bottom are from the bottom up: an abandoned grinder disc, a bottle cap, and a neat stoneware button. The disc and bottle cap have been painted and embossed to look bubbly and lava like...neat! (and fun!)

The Next Installment

Well, the soluble film has been washed out of all that stitching...and, I was right..it's perfectly gutless, as you can see! Pretty in it's own way, but gutless! So, next step will be to come up with a firm base to anchor it down onto...I'm thinking maybe felt with a layer of painted vliesofix...?

In the meantime...silk base, lots and lots of snippets of threads and fibres and yarns and fabrics, some gold flake, all covered with a layer of chiffon...and machine stitched within an inch of it's life! This one is developing with a much more appropriate weight for a belt...looks promising!

But, for now, the men are all back for lunch...with more poddy calves in tow!! I might have to post a pic of them at 'dinnertime'...hungry little critters, and so cute! We have Sheila, Spanky, Cleatus...and the new babies are still to be named...Oh my!

"Cherish" is finished!

The book for the "Curves" Exhibition is finally finished!! I've posted each page in a separate post...my computer had a huge hissy fit when I tried to upload a lot of photos in one go!

Each page inside has it's own title, and has been scanned and printed onto watercolour paper, which was bonded to the back of the page, so that I could add a small amount of text to the 'story'.

My warmest thanks to those precious women who entrusted me with their bras...and especially to Jill - trusting me with this has meant the world to me. I can't wait to show it to her in the flesh!

All the pages follow - I'd love to hear which one/s are your favourites!

Fate Knocks At The Door

The first page of the book...Fate Knocks at the Door, takes it's title from a very, very old book cover (the one I snaffled at Reverse Garbage in Brisbane ages ago). This page has a base of woven strips of silk paper, with appliqued and painted pieces of bra cup lycra, foil from tomato paste tubes, a handful of bra hooks and some little artgirlz charms

Kind of says it all, I think!

My Cup Runneth Empty

Page Two! One of my original ideas for the title of the book was My Cup Runneth Empty...I worried that perhaps it maybe a little lacking in sensitivity... But, it persisted, and became the title of this page.

The base is silk paper, with torn pieces of bra cup fabric incorporated into it, with lots of hand stitching, an embossed velvet tree and some buttons. The colours, swirling feel and 'bandage' appearance from the torn bras speak to me of anaesthetic, nausea and the haziness of being plunged into this journey...

New Life For Obsolete Bras!

I'm excited to have been asked to create a piece for an exhibition called Curves - Through Art We Share Our Experiences Of Breast Cancer, which will be held in Surat at the Surat on Balonne Gallery in September.

What you see here will be the cover of an artist book - yet to be named...I have a thousand ideas floating around my head - but none quite right just yet. (Maybe you have a great suggestion?)

My inspiration is my friend, who, after way too many other life challenges (really, really tough ones), found herself facing a double mastectomy. Her positive attitude, strength, humour and courage have been a true inspiration.

She had been troubled by what to do with her bras... no longer any use to her, and quite a symbol of her loss. She bravely (and very trustingly!) handed them over to me when I suggested they could be used in this piece. Her daughter, sister-in-law and friends have also contributed to the collection. The fabrics were cut out of the bra cups and then torn into smaller pieces; laid down on a felt base with straps and bows, and machine stitched into place. The whole piece was then painted with dyes and paint.

I'm off to see what else I can do with these abandoned undergarments!