Fun With Sharp Needles

Fianlly, what I started at Geelong Fibre Forum last year has been finished. Well, more or less finished - it is a triptych and I can't decide how to arrange them or finalise the piece.

The work is called (at the moment anyway!) We Look At The Land Through Different Eyes, You and I.

I won't go through every step of the technique I used, as Carolyn Sullivan teaches this and it is definitely not my place to reproduce her class! But I will run through the main steps.

The base for these pieces is wool/viscose felt from Spotlight - good quality and nice to handstitch through. Then I used an embellisher machine to apply bits of hand-dyed scrim (by me) and prefelt (not dyed by me), embellished a few pieces of hand-dyed silk ribbon (not dyed by me either). Then lots of stitching in Appleton's crewel wool, two strands in the needle - mostly kantha stitch and seeding stitch. Then I ran the embellishing machine over the whole piece again to embed the woolen stitches (and make sure the other bits were thoroughly embedded. Finally, lots of kantha and seed stitching in variaged perel cottons (commercially dyed).

The inspiration - we spent a morning sketching views and close-ups near Geelong Grammar, and taking photos too. During the afternoon of fiddling around with our sketches, narrowing down possibilities and in many cases making further sketches from photos, I settled on a sketch I had made of a photo of a eucalypt.

Carolyn helped me to isolate a section of the sketch I had made. While mulling over the final sketch I was suddenly sparked by memories of a lecture the previous night by an artist whose name I have forgotten, and a book I studied for Literature - That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott - and came up with the idea of looking through the tree and seeing the landscape at morning and night out over the water, and in reverse from the sea to the bush and midday. Using the lines of the bark and seeing the background through them - to me it gave me the idea of a 'ghost gum' - not in the sense of the actual gums that are known as ghost gums, but a ghost of the past/present/future of the landscape and the people.

It's another example of slow creating, as it took quite a while, but I can honestly say that I loved every second of doing this work. So much so that I have another one at the design stage, vaguely inspired by Mrs Dalloway - I certainly didn't start out intending to create works based on books I am studying, but it seems to be turning out that way right now!

Edited to add - an embellishing machine is a needlefelting machine - it looks like a sewing machine but is much lighter and has a set of needles (5 in mine) with barbs which mesh threads together when you run it up and down through the fabric. I have the cheapest domestic version.

Geelong Fibre Forum 2014

I still don't have any embroidery pictures to show from Fibre Forum. I have been too busy studying and, since my last exam last week, slobbing out, to finish my embroidery. But it's next on my list of fun things to do, so maybe photos will come soon!

On our first morning we went down to Limeburners' Lagoon, a little bit of Corio Bay that is very close to Geelong Grammar, to sketch. The idea was to work on something inspired by our natural surroundings. Now, I still maintain that I 'cannot draw' but I can cobble together vague ideas which was all that was required. We spent a lovely three hours in mild sunshine sketching the bay and flowers/plants that were growing around us. A number of us also took photos to give us further ideas if necessary.

I really loved the bark on this eucalypt. In fact it was this photo that I ended using as the inspiration for my main piece (we also did a sampler which was quite prescriptive but very useful for practice). I sketched it when we got back to the classroom, fiddled with a bit of colour (also fiddled with some of the original sketches) and eventually, with guidance from our tutor, I narrowed down to a section of my sketch and used it as the basis for my embroidery.

I took quite a lot of pictures. I especially loved the lines and texture of this cracked mud. Over the years I have taken quite a lot of photos of interesting textures and things and this workshop gave me the confidence to think of them as being potential inspiration for other pieces in due course.

The Geelong Wool Museum is always worth a visit. This time round there was an interesting exhibition by Australian (though resident in the US) textile artist Ruth Marshall, whose exhibition Vanished Into Stitches is still on till 7 December if anyone is interested. She knits perfect reproductions of endangered animal pelts.  Her work is pretty stunning. I really liked her tiny reproductions of native marsupials.

And for some bizarre reason, the Wool Museum has this lovely exhibit above - Super Croc I think it was called - the skull of an extinct (thank god!) giant crocodile. Nothing to do with wool, but native to the area, possibly. With cool lighting. Very strange.

And of course there is yarnbombing outside the Wool Museum!!

Wordless Wednesday

Sublimation Printing - TAFTA Geelong Fibre Forum

Last week I spent a fantastic week at Geelong Grammar attending my first ever TAFTA Fibre Forum, and I'll post pictures of what I have been making over two or three blog posts.

I did a workshop with Melbourne jeweller Anna Davern studying sublimation printing onto metal.  It also involved quite a lot of basic metalwork techniques for those who needed it, i.e. especially me!

Sublimation printing = 'Design your graphics in your computer and or scan the image into your computer. When you get ready to print the image be sure to "flip or mirror image" the image so it will be a transfer. If you will design a hairline rectangular border 1/8 inch larger than your metal plate you wish to print and center all your graphics inside that border; it will help you center the graphics on the plate when you are ready to print. You will be printing the "border" with your graphics centered in the border.

It will take approximately 15 minutes for your heat press to get to printing temperature so turn it on ahead of time. Set the temperature to 350° to 360°F. This temperature is important. Any setting under 340° may cause the toner to stick too tightly to the metal and may cause gray printing. Any setting over 370° may cause the toner to "bleed" and the edges of your characters may be slightly distorted.

Remove the plastic protective covering from the metal plate. Preheat the bottom pad of your heat press for 5 or 6 seconds by closing the heat press without anything in it. Now lay your transfer "ink side up" on the warm pad of the heat press. This will pre-shrink the paper prior to printing. This will keep the image from blurring during the printing process. Center your cut metal plate inside the hairline rectangle you designed on your computer. Pull the handle of your heat press down until it locks in place. This process does not require heavy pressure. Set the timer for 20-25 seconds.

When the timer goes off, open the heat press. Immediately, while the metal is still in the heat press, separate the paper from the metal plate. The best way to do this is to pick up one edge of the paper and quickly turn the paper and the metal plate upside down. You will find the metal and the paper are stuck together. With your other hand (with a clean glove on or a clean heavy cloth wrapped around your finger) hold the metal plate down and pull the paper away from the metal. Do this quickly; you have a window of only a few seconds to separate the metal and the paper. Do not move your finger around on the metal as you may pick up some toner on your glove and double print the metal where the glove touches the metal the second time.

Now remove the metal from the heat press and lay in down on some object (that is heat resistant) to cool down.'  It's too complicated for me to explain in my own words, so I borrowed some from here, an American site called Sublimation TOG LLC - there are also Australian firms which sell the stuff.  

Will talk more about the process in other posts but now I want to put some piccies in:

The square pieces have been printed with an image or images, and sometimes overprinted with other images,, and then have had another printed piece/s glued directly to them (with superglue).  They are going into the mixed media stash and will be used in various ways.  If I ever use them, I'll post photos of the finished works!

The smaller blanks have all been printed with one image on each and mostly turned into brooches, except of course for the obvious pair of earrings that I made to match one of the brooches.