Category Archives: Knitting

Another day another banner. The background image is taken from some dye play I did tonight. When I was processing the photo below I realised the lino print section (spectacularly unsuccessful) would make a great background for a banner.

The banner image was taken from the section on the bottom right.

Mucking around with some dye and thickener (which was too thin!) This is part of a larger piece of fabric.

This is my favourite cropped part of the photo and maybe used for a quilt at some stage. The square grids were created when running my dye soaked sponge roller over the fabric with an upturned ice tray underneath.

Tommorow I have to travel to Melboune for a meeting all day then I have a gallery committee meeting that night. So the question is… will I find time to create something tommorow? A drawing perhaps?

I know I’ll be up late rinsing fabric when I finally get home, perhaps that’s enough.

I was commenting to my sister on the phone tonight that Riscy and I spent many years living here with no involvement in the community, virtually no friends and a hell of a lot of time on our hands. I decided to become a little bit involved (gallery, spinners and handweaver, touch footy etc) and now I seem to have too much on. It’s a fine balancing act. But better than before. Continue reading →

I like the pod shapes. I’m indifferent regarding the quilting I have done, I’m not in love with the colour I have added and the lack of background quilting is really turning me off.

I’m thinking I can fix the colour and the background can be dealt with. So perhaps I don’t REALLY hate this quilt and I can salvage our relationship. Continue reading →

Thanks for the comments on my last blog post. It suprised me how much better they made me feel. I’m sticking with the philosophy that the only way to get through time cruch work pressures is to WORK WORK WORK. So I’ve been working at home of an evening and plan to work on the weekend… Not something I want to make a habit of. I’m more productive at home, which has been a total suprise, I am one of the worlds greatest procrastinators.

Still I found time to:

It has been a VERY long time since I quilted, this is something I LOVE to do, but for some reason I have been ‘not quilting’ for ages now. Well, last night after the laptop was shut, I started working on the Orange Bag. The bag has a very bold horizontal stripe, but the whole surface will be encrusted with stitching/quilting. This is my favourite thing to do.

The best thing about this is that the bag will be all about the stripe from afar, but on closer inspection a surface rich in texture and delicate in line will become apparent. This is what I like about quilting/embroidery, it has interest for the viewer on so many levels. This is what I hope to achieve anyway 🙂

I’m going to enter my collagraphs in a printmaking show at ARCYinnar next week. They will not be for sale.

I have reached a decision. I won’t be making stuff to sell in the forseeable future. I have found that as soon as I declare my intention to make stuff to sell, my productivity slows right down. Quilted bags and Spinning being cases in point. You know, it is weight off my shoulders to declare this.
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I’m making progress with my piece for the journal project which needs to be posted early next week. Although I forgot to email the next participant for their snail mail adress until today. I hope she gets my email soon or we could get behind.

I was very late in sending off my next entry for the Amulet Challenge which was organised by Becky. I had lots of trouble with my first concept, so I settled on this idea. You can see a bit of Becky’s piece in the photo.

I’ve already put my muslin manipulation idea into practice on the little bag as you can probably see.

I’ve been making progress on the Wave and Shell Scarf too. The couch wasn’t the best background for this photo, but I like the way you can see the colour changes clearly, even if the lace doesn’t show too well.

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More Jewels Darlings 🙂

They are so much fun, rather addictive and not really what I need to be working on. But what’s new? I’ve also been dyeing up some merino.

And spinning some more:

Its cold cold cold here. Winter came early and looks set to stay.

Riscy is headed to Tasmania tommorow for his mum’s birthday. I’m sort of bummed that I’m not going too, but it’s too close to our trip to Fiji (notice that I mention this in nearly every blog lately? LOL) and I don’t want to be away from work for too long. Ahhhm, I don’t know where this work ethic came from. Very worrying. Continue reading →

I’ve had excellent cotton dyeing results using Adriene Buffington’s book Hand Dyed Fabric Made Easy. I don’t follow the book 100% but I normally chart out my plans prior to dyeing and generally achieve a beautiful range of coloured fabrics to add to my meagre stash.

Today I decided to experiment, go with the flow, splash some dye here, splash some dye there. I ended up with metres upon metres of utter crap. I am now the proud possessor of much burgandy/maroon fabric and a few metres of greyish/purpley fabric and various miscellaneous pieces I’m not too sure about.

hruuumph 🙁 Only two larger pieces have promise and there may be a few khakis that I have a little bit of inspiration for.

Since I try to provide a photorific blog, here is a scan of a pinky greeny fabric from today’s disaster:

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Tonight’s Jewels:

Once again, too much stitching. The orange piece was very good before I went crazy and stiched it to oblivion THEN hacked it up, then sewed it back together, then sewed and sewed, THEN hacked it up. Still, I think its wearable.

I’ll be away for a few days. Tommorow night I’m away for work, then Wednesday we are staying in Melbourne for the Tori Amos concert. I have to go pack now, cheerio. Continue reading →

I’m not 100% happy with this piece. But, wasn’t I just saying recently that I need to accept the crap with the good otherwise nothing would be created at all?

I wouldn’t go so far as saying this is totally crap, but it isn’t a strong as I would like. I like the grid type arrangement in the previous pieces, so I’ll probably try a few more like that. The main aspect of this piece was that it was too ‘candy’ coloured and I needed to add a lot more stitching to tone it down.

What I do like about the piece, and the others, is that it has a nice textured surface. You probably can’t see it from the scan here, but each matchstick is padded with it’s own sliver of batting (wadding). This does mean that I have to add a fair bit of stitching anyway to cover up bits of white showing up the sides of the sticks.

Where is everyone this weekend? I’m still unsubscribed from the QA list so I rely on my blog buddies to keep me entertained LOL.

Actually I don’t miss QA much, so I don’t see myself subscribing again soon. I figure that the best thing was for me to MAKE work rather than spending my time reading other people get narky with one another. And I could never participate in that list as I HATE it when people get narky with me 🙂 Continue reading →

The gallery opening was great, best one I’ve been to for a little while.

The works were truely wonderful. The artist, Jenny Peterson, is a printmaking lecturer at Monash Uni in Churchill and obviously much loved by the art stalwarts of the area. I’m very new to this scene so I went armed with few preconceptions and was blown away by the lovely work, her box series was particularly good.

ALSO, my jewel 😉 earned me quite a few comments and offers of putting some in various gallery shops. I had to laugh as I’ve made a grand total of 2 ‘objects’ so far. Still it’s nice to hear such things.

About 9 O’clock last night Riscy was called into work and didn’t get home ’til 4am, so I slept badly thinking he had run off the road on the way home (you mustn’t blame me, I spent a fair portion of work time last week reading crash reports, which always sends my imagination into overdrive).

Whilst Riscy got his beauty sleep this morning, I had a little road trip down to Yinnar to visit the ARC Gallery. A lovely little town and a nice arts facility. I tried to buy some earrings but we couldn’t get the big glass cabinets open… It was quite comical us pushing and pulling on the glass door. There was also some fantastic (and reasonably priced) pottery displayed, I would have whipped out the credit card, but with our trip overseas next month, I thought the better of it. Continue reading →

Ok treasured readers of Little Fish, you may have wondered if I was off my nut yesterday when I mentioned that I would like to explore quilt jewellery.

This is a little piece in homage to Melody’s matchstick moons, executed with about 1% of the finess of Melody’s work, of course, but here it is. Matchstick Brooch:

I’m gonna wear it to a gallery opening tommorow night. I haven’t worked out exactly how I’m going to fasten it to my clothes but I suspect a safety pin might be called into service.

You can also tell that I’m loving the deep orangy red fabrics used in this piece and other recent work… Of course my dyeing is totally unscientific and I have no idea how I got to this colour or how to reproduce, but then again, next month I might just fall in love with a totally different, equally accidental fabric, so I’m happy 🙂

I also love the gold rayon thread used here, love love love 🙂

EDITED TO ADD:

I just made another and thought I’d add it here before I go to bedfordshire.

Imaginatively named Matchstick Brooch 2:

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