Saturday 11 October 2014
Photos from meeting ... mini-workshop on gel plate monoprinting

Wilma was beavering away at monoprinting and Dell was her satirical sidekick

From Show&Tell

Wilma's visual journal cover with teabags and gel printed tree

Patrise attended a three day workshop with Cecile of Unique Stitching with three different teachers ... here are two examples from the one taught by Cecile.  She encouraged them to construct fabric by gluing on tissue papers with gel medium and stamping followed by colouring in the stamps.

From her one day class with Jane Devila

From her workshop with Alsyn Midgelow-Marsden ... the background was silk paper with built up fibres and paint.  Her book: Stitch, Fibre, Metal and Mixed Media.  You can see her talk about her work and see some pieces on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnAW9FnMkA4 

Meeting 13 September 2014

Today's meeting was very inspirational with lots of "Show and Tell" with ensuing discussion.

Many members brought their challenge piece - an article they had made that included a word or more.

Buffy's quilt with quote from Nelson Mandela

"Have a girl's look" by Anieta

"If only" by Andrea

Pieces with words by Kristina and Patricia

Words in artworks by Dell

Anne's homage to Dianne Firth

Also on display were finished projects,pieces that members had begun in workshops, quilts that were in progress, and examples of monoprints made with gelli plates.

It was decided that gelliprinting would be the mini workshop for the next meeting.

Buffy's gelli print on Evelon

Cornelia's quilt in progress from a Caroline Sharkey workshop

Patrise's journal pages from a Ro Bruhn workshop

Patrise's commission - quilted islands

Detail of Margaret's work in progress -bush turkeys in the rainforest

Patrise's journal cover from a Ro Bruhn workshop

Call for Entries - Living Colour!

Canberra Quilters' member Brenda Gael Smith is curating another travelling textile exhibition. You may recall "Beneath the Southern Sky", the first such exhibition Brenda organised.
Information from Brenda:

Following the fantastic response to "Beneath the Southern Sky", I am curating another travelling textile art exhibition that will premier at the Australasian Quilt Convention in 2014.  ALL textile artists are invited to submit an entry exploring the theme "Living Colour!" Each work will be in a 100x40cm (L x W) vertical format and up to 30 works may be selected. To submit an entry, please review the Conditions of Entry and complete the Online Entry Form at http://www.livingcolourtextiles.com

The closing date for entries is 31 January 2014. No entry fee is payable unless your work is selected. International entries are welcome.

Please help spread the word.  I can't do it without you!

Please consider being part of this exhibition. With a title like that it promises to provide a wonderful exploration of colour.

Art Quilt opportunity in Tasmania

Another Art Quilt opportunity has arisen for you to consider, this time in Tasmania.
Details:
The Tasmanian Art Quilt Prize 2013 is a collaboration between the Tasmanian Quilting Guild and the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery.

The theme of the competition is

"What a Site!"

and celebrates the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery being on the same site for 150 years.

Expressions of interest are invited from textile artists within Australia for the Tasmanian Biennial Art Quilt Prize. The exhibition of finalists will be held in October 2013 at the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery, Hobart.

The Terms& Conditions and Entry Form,
can be found here.

email: info@tasquiltguild.org.au
or phone: (03) 6267 4159 or 0438 674 900.

Major Prize - $3,000

Closing date for entries - 5pm, Friday 26 July 2013.

Another soy wax experiment

Here's mine:

I added some crayon afterwards ... just a bit so there would be another colour.

Cheers, Buffy

Results of soy wax resist activity

This is one of the pieces I did with the soy wax resist. It had two layers of wax - first the larger spots made with  the chocolate box filler and painted and then  with the potato masher, followed by more painting with the same colours. I have then added some detail with a rubbing plate and metallic oil sticks in similar colours to the blue and green paints I used.

What a fun activity this was! Thanks Wilma and Buffy.

Art Quilt Australia 2013 - Call for Entries

In 2013 Art Quilt Australia will be a curated exhibition of innovative, new contemporary art quilts to celebrate the centenary of the naming of the nation’s capital city as Canberra.

Works will be selected that are inspired by, or reflect on ideas of people, place and nation.

With the definition of a quilt as "a stitched layered textile", the exhibition is open to all artists across Australia. It will be curated by Valerie Kirk, Head of Textiles at the ANU School of Art and be held at Craft ACT Design Gallery in Canberra from 31 October to 14 December 2013.

 Entry is open to full members of Ozquilt Network Inc and all Australian artists. Large quilts are preferred but must not measure more than 2 metres in either direction.The closing date for entries is 19 July 2013.
Go to the Ozquilt Network site (click here) to download entry form and get further details.

Audrey Cureton's fish

Audrey decided to play with the whole fish concept and she made a cover for a large visual diary.

November meeting Show&Tell

See photos below of shoes decorated with printed serviettes that we started at the October meeting ... how amazing!!

Here we are - sitting at the meeting ... Talking about our fishy quilts, and how we should post more photos here on the blog ... I probably should be listening to what we are discussing ...

I finally have a photo of my snippet quilt plus windmill.

Anieta

Ok ... Here is what I did last meeting

... Not as good as some of the others turned out (mainly because it is far from a finished item, and it is a bit dull and dark to be a good photo) but nobody else has posted theirs yet, so maybe now I have set the bar at a low height, maybe someone else will post photos of better ones? LOL

We had all sorts of wonderful fun, starting with a bit of textured wallpaper, which we painted and let dry (those water filled heaters in our room came in handy for that :-) then some people rubbed on oil pastels/etc
(I didn't have any, could have borrowed but forgot/got too carried away stamping tea bags ;-) then we glued (with gel medium ... but I used PVA glue because it was what I had, and I wanted to see if it worked) tea bags (used ones, emptied and dried out - if u have milk in your tea, take out the teabag before you add that!) on top ... and then we kind of ran out of afternoon ... LOL
... Next step is ... Whatever - can add more oil pastels/etc (forget what they are called - they come in metallic colours ... probably several brands/varieties - think I might buy some, when I get around to it ;-)
... after that can be layer of organza, or not (which can be melted with a heat gun, or not ...) and some/lots of hand and/or machine stitching ... and make it into a journal cover ... or something ...

Ok ... I am not sure exactly where in this post the photos will appear - I am doing this pst with the blogger app on my iPhone (just went and found/installed it so I could test it out :-) or even IF they will appear ( if not, I will log in on computer and add them in) ... but ... I have taken/added one of the whole thing (and, yes - that IS the dogs nose at the top of the photo - he had to check out what I was doing ;-) and the other photo is a close up of part of one end - showing the wonderful bee stamp I used on my tea bags (another one for my shopping list? ;-)

Andrea,
Getting a laugh from all the weird things spell check came up with for all the typos I made while typing all that stuff on my phone ;-)

I managed to log in today.  I am designing an australian windmill silhouette to put on the small snippets quilt from Jenny Houston's workshop.  I will post a picture of the result soon.

Anieta Barendrecht

Art Quilters Opportunity- One Step Further

The following message has been received from Linda Bear, Publicity Liaison for the Victorian Quilters Inc. It may be an opportunity members may wish to pursue.

Entries are now being sought for “One Step Further”,an annual juried exhibition for quilters who wish to explore colour techniques and contemporary design strategies
Entry Deadline: October 15th, 2012
To be presented at: Whitehorse Art Space,
Box Hill Town Hall
16th November to 21st December 2012
Entry forms and more information can be obtained from www.victorianquilters.org

Expressions 2012- Call for entries

The National Wool Museum is seeking entries for the exhibition Expressions 2012: The Wool Quilt Prize.
To paraphrase the public programs officer at the National Wool Museum: The exhibition runs biennially and has grown in popularity since its inception in 2000. It demonstrates the breadth of innovation and creative possibilities afforded by the use of wool in art quilt making.

Copies of the entry form and information sheet can be obtained from the website: www.nwm.vic.gov.au
Deadline for submissions is 28 September 2012. The exhibition will run from 17 December 2012 until 10 February 2013 at the National Wool Museum in Geelong, Victoria.

Sun printing - our last activity for the year

As well as enjoying a social lunch today, we played with sun printing.

A great variety of effects

We used a variety of fabrics, including cottons, polyester, and quilted and stitched sandwiches as well as a variety of brands of paints. It was very interesting to see the effects that resulted from using different fabric manipulation methods including basic masking, scrunching,  twisting and folding.

 Lyn's quilted piece which had been partially painted previously showed am amazing range of effects on both sides of the sandwich, especially where the paint on one side flowed along the stitched lines on the other.

Painted side of Lyn's quilted sandwich exposed to the sun

Reverse side of Lyn's piece - previously partially painted on the left
and showing paint from the other sides along the stitching lines on the right

 We thought this might be an interesting activity to do again some time, building on what we learnt today and perhaps using stitched and quilted  fabrics and commercial fabrics of a varied palette.

PS. We missed you Buffy

Photographic hologram

After reading a number of articles on photographic holograms, I was intrigued by the possibilities. The holographic effect is achieved by using two identical photos, one of them on a transparent fabric, separated by a spacer. The articles I read nominated stretcher bars to provide the spacer, but I decided to use an inexpensive paint canvas to provide a frame and to create the space needed to produce the effect.

 Preparing the frame:

I chose an 8”x10” canvas. By turning it over and using the back of it, I had a ‘box’ with wooden sides and a canvas base, with a 5”x7”opening - perfect for a photo. I left the canvas attached to the frame, and discarded the wedges that came with it. I wasn’t sure how much of the inside of the box would be seen once it was all assembled, so I painted the inner sides with black acrylic paint, making sure that there was paint inside the grooves provided for the wedges.

Preparing the photos:

I chose a photo of the beach at the northern tip of Denmark taken on a visit this year. I made some adjustments in Photoshop to brighten and sharpen the photo; then printed it once on cotton for the base, and once on semi-transparent silk organza for the overlay. It is important that the photo on the organza is in the centre of the sheet, but you can be more conservative with the cotton. I used a Jacquard Cotton Sheet bought from www.ozquilts.com.au ($22.95 for a pack of 10), and ExtravOrganza also from ozquilts ($17.95 for a pack of 5). After printing, I cut the cotton sheet to the size of the photo but left the organza sheet whole.

Attaching the first photo to the canvas:

I was not sure how the photo printed on cotton would react if I used a wet glue to attach it to the canvas base, and I knew it would be awkward to get an iron into the box to attach it with vliesofix, so I decided on a two-stage process.

I first attached the photo to a piece of adhesive backed felt with vliesofix, then peeled the backing off and pressed it onto the canvas base of the box with hand pressure. This seems to have been successful.

Attaching the overlay:

I lay the silk organza sheet over the top of the box and carefully and evenly stapled it all around the top. The trick here is to make sure that the image on the overlay is exactly over the base image. Once it was securely fastened I trimmed off any organza overhanging the outer edge of the box and made sure that all the staples were well embedded in the timber around the top of the box.

Finishing:

To complete the picture, I added a frame of stiffened felt (available from Spotlight in a variety of colours) to cover the top edge of the box. I cut it 8”x10” with a 5”x7” cutout in the centre and attached it to the top of the box with gel medium. As a final touch I also used gel medium to attach some small stones I had picked up on the beach. It has held them well.

Notes:

I am not sure that this is the best sort of photo for this technique – perhaps something with more action or colours or contrasts etc might be better. I also now wonder about the necessity of the base photo being printed on fabric. Printing it on photographic paper would make it sharper and clearer which might improve the final effect. Each of these ideas will be tested in my next project!