More fabric drawing

I'm really enjoying drawing on fabric, even when I don't actually have a plan for what I've made. I have a large collection of paint rags, some painted or printed deliberately, some the by-product of painting sessions, but most a combination of the two. I trawled my folders today and found this piece:

It's a bit boring, but it's been hanging around since 2006, so I decided to use it for drawing today. Here's how it looks now:

You'd hardly recognise it as the same fabric, would you? I was planning to cut it apart but I actually like it as it is. Back into the fabric folder, I guess!

Another t-shirt

I've been busy making things for the ATASDA Open Studio on 6th & 7th November. Here's another painted t-shirt. This one is inspired by my granddaughter Kate.

The Open Studio will be held at Epping Creative Centre, Dence Park, Epping, in Sydney, Australia. Lots of interesting work from talented textile artists - should be fun!

Time to play

Back home again, after a fantastic trip to France (of which more later). It's so terribly hard to get out of holiday mode, don't you find? I managed to wring a few more days out of my holiday but this week, my computer is reminding me of things I ought to do, and the usual activities that fill up my days are happening, so I can't really pretend any longer.

One of the things my computer is insistently reminding me about is the ATASDA Open Studio weekend, which will happen on November 7 & 8 at the Epping Creative Centre, Dence Park, Epping, where most of our meetings and workshops in NSW are held. The idea is for ATASDA members to showcase their work, which is not only different from more traditional kinds of textile work, but different from each other's work as well.  Normally, this would just be a reminder to me to show up on the day, but in a fit of madness, Fibrecircle decided to take a table for both days, to show off our work and maybe even sell a few things. So I really need to make a few things, and maybe (gasp) finish a few things, so I can show people the kind of stuff I make.

So today, I drew and painted a kid's t-shirt. As you may have noticed, I'm rather interested in graffiti lately. (I must say I was disappointed in the Paris graffiti I saw - perhaps I just wasn't in the right places?) I've always been interested in layers - palimpsests on old documents, sgraffito work, walls with patterns marking traces of past occupancy - basically, traces of what went before and the interesting things that happen when you superimpose unrelated things. Graffiti is part of that interest, I guess, since graffiti artists seem to have no concern about what's already on a wall before they add their work, and even sometimes seem to incorporate it into their designs.

My graffiti designs are not that complex - they're time-consuming to draw and paint, and are much less layered than I'd really like. I think there's more to do with this idea, if I stay interested.

Anyway, here's the t-shirt.

It's a kid's size 4 and I'll probably be selling it and other stuff like it at the Open Studio weekend.

Time

Time is such a slippery thing! It seems like only a moment since we celebrated New Year and in a moment we'll be in March. How did that happen? Of course, I know how that happened. January was full of birthdays and lazy summer days, and February has been Suitcase Month. No, it's not my own travels I've been organising; it's the travels of Saffron and Jasmine, sister suitcases of The Maharajah's Garden travelling suitcase exhibition. About sixty member of ATASDA have made works for the exhibition, and a further 45 have made bunting pieces, to be tied together to dress up the show, or treated as individual works. The exhibition begins to travel in March, first to our Branch meetings in Sydney and Brisbane, and then all around Australia for at least two years. The range of work is amazing. Each work is accompanied by a techniques board, explaining the inspiration of the work and one technique used by the artist. Such a diversity of techniques! We on the organising committee have all found new things to try. Images of the works should be on the ATASDA website sometime in March, if all goes well.

Now the suitcases are just about ready, I feel like a mole, emerging blinking into the light and wondering what to do next! I have managed to find a little time to do creative things this month. I made my graffiti fabric into a bag, using some suede leather scraps that were the perfect colour, given to me by a friend from her stash. She in turn acquired it from someone else's stash a few years ago. The bag looks fantastic...

..but there's a tiny problem. Although I checked the leather closely for faults, it isn't quite the same leather it once was, I fear. As I sewed, I began to notice myself turning a delicate shade of pink. No, not an allergy, just the leather colour, coming off all over me. Like the fool I am, I pressed on, instead of pausing to take stock. Yes, the bag looks brilliant, but it's completely unusable, because it crocks colour onto everything it touches. Not only that, but, despite using the appropriate leather needle, stitch length and thread, the leather is simply pulling apart along the stitch lines. I suspect that leather might be older than I am, and it's decided that it's had enough.

So, I did finish my graffiti bag by the February deadline, but it's going to have to come apart again, once I acquire some new red leather. I am so in love with the look of the bag that nothing else will do!

So the moral of this sad tale is : if things start looking a bit odd when you are in the midst of a creative flow, STOP!! Do not go on mindlessly ignoring the problem. Who'd have thought, eh?

Graffiti art

Remember the graffiti fabric I did with the Fibrecircle group last year? You can read about it here and on my blog here. I decided to add some colour to my piece, so I painted it with Setacolor transparent paints. I used the transparent ones because I wanted to retain the layering of other elements underneath, whether they were painted or not. Here's how it looks now...

I just love it!

Several people who have seen it asked about the colour blending. I wanted to make it like graffiti as much as possible, so I worked on the assumption that most graffiti artists don't actually carry a huge sack of spray cans with them. I figued it was more like primary colours plus a black, at best. So I limited my palette to red, blue and yellow. The blue is actually an opaque paint, which I mixed 50:50 with the base medium, which made it transparent. Where I wanted to blend colours, I sometimes laid down the brighter colour first, eg yellow, and then overpainted it when it was dry. Other times, I painted up to a wet section with the second colour and then brushed the two colours into one another with a damp brush. Texture was added from the drawings over which I was painting.


We are supposed to make it into something before Feb 8, but I'm not sure I can bear to cut into it.

And now for something completely different!

Last week at Fibrecircle, we spent the day graffiti-ing fabric. We'd planned ages ago to do it, and this week, after the seriousness of all the ATASDA AGMs, seemed like a good time to be childlike again. We used a piece of donated fabric, and each person moved round the table so every part of the fabric was drawn on by everyone. Then we cut the fabric into equal parts.
Here's my section:
Isn't it fabulous?

Now I have to do something with this fabric by early next year! I am toying with adding colour - graffiti is usually coloured in flat areas, or maybe adding more texture (which I can do by stitching). Will I use it whole or cut it apart? I'm sure you'll see more of this over the coming months.