Pleased as Punch!

I wonder where that expression comes from? Punch and Judy, I guess, so maybe I'm not that pleased! But I am pretty happy. You see, I sold some stuff. OK, selling stuff is always good but it's more the who than the actual selling. The Fibrecircle group rarely shows work at ATASDA, although we are all members, so we decided to take a table at the March meeting to show, and maybe sell, some of the things we make. We were completely blown away by the positive response from other members. Remember, these are people who "make stuff" themselves, and they are very textile-savvy people. So it was brilliant to get such a great reaction and, yes, to sell things to this market.

So what have I been making lately? Most of my energy (read:lethargy), post-Christmas, has gone into making a bag for the Fibrecircle challenge. We each chose four paint chip cards, sight unseen, and we had to make something larger than a postcard, using only those four colours. It's something that quilters often do, to challenge themselves, but I haven't seen it done much among textile artists.

My paint chips looked like this:

I think I was very lucky in my selection. My only reservation was that they might be difficult colours to match, so I might find it hard to get materials together. My dyeing skills are coming along apace, but I'm not yet at the point where I can dye a specific shade with 100% confidence. I scoured my whole stash, fabrics, yarns, threads of all kinds, and assembled a bundle of things in the colour range.

Strangely, the colour I thought would be hardest to match, the rusty red, was easiest! Turned out, I made my daughter a corduroy pinafore (for US readers, a jumper) in the exact colour, back when she was about ten, and I had quite a few remnants left over. This is more than twenty years ago, so I guess this means it's pretty much vintage fabric now? 

The turquoise was also fairly easy to match and, as well as a stash quilting cotton, I was able to dye some cotton fabric. The difficult shade was the green. In the interest of finishing this bag before I died of old age, I decided to hand embroider my corduroy fabric, since threads are easier to match. Hand embroidery also suited my January energy levels. I drew designs inspired by Jacobean embroidery freehand onto the cloth with chalk. Here's how it looked with the embroidery mostly done.

Once the embroidery was done, there was the usual modular assembly. I'm not sure I've talked about that specifically before, so I'll add a how-to shortly.

I interlined the bag with Shapewell interfacing and the flaps with a heavy Pellon material, like thin Timtex. The top zipper was from my extensive zipper stash, coloured to match the red fabric, but I found I needed to buy the turquoise zipper for the front pocket.

It's wasn't quite finished by the due date,because I could only buy gold D rings and I found I had only silver rivets left. That being remedied, here it is:

Isn't it purty?
Off to do some dyeing now! I have been dyeing a stack of stuff, which I'll share next time.

Handbag done, and more dyeing

Progress at last! I’ve finished my bag and shown it at the challenge unveiling. You can read about that and see all the challenge works on the challenge blog here.

 

So here it is, in all its glory.  

I’m really happy with how it worked out.

I’ve also been having fun with putting colour onto cloth and yarn, with various methods.

First, I’ve done some more natural dyeing. This white 2-ply wool yarn skein was rolled around two tongue depressors, which were folded back on themselves and tied at each end, not on the yarn. The wool was soaked in water before adding to the wattle dye pot.

The same white 2-ply wool yarn was plaited onto two tongue depressors, which were folded together and tied at each end, without tying the yarn. The yarn was soaked before dyeing in Eucalyptus cinerea.

The same white 2-ply wool yarn was twisted around a single tongue depressor and dipped into a bath made from sawdust from David’s workshop. I put about two cups of the mixed sawdust into a calico bag and poured over hot water. This sawdust is mostly from Samoan hardwood, with some Blackbutt mixed in. The dye bath almost immediately went very dark brown. I left it to steep for a couple of days. Then the wool was added and the mixture was boiled for an hour.

I also dyed some silk scarves. This white silk PFD scarf was concertina’d and ironed lengthwise into quarters. This was folded as a concertina to match a large diamond block and smaller diamond blocks were clamped on, so there was an area of fabric around the block. The scarf was soaked in water before dyeing in the E. cinerea pot.

A wool etamine length had seven rows of small wooden beads tied into each end in an offset pattern to yield diamond-patterned dots. The cloth was soaked in water before dyeing in the E. cinerea pot. The beads tend to lose a little colour with boiling, which transfers to the cloth.





This scarf was folded in half and clamped at each end with L-shaped blocks. It was dyed in a wattle flower dye bath.  

It was fairly ordinary so I blocked it again with triangle blocks and dyed in with dark blue Drimarene K dye.

I’m really enjoying the Drimarene K dyeing. This silk yarn was laid down on Gladwrap and dyed with a syringe, with rubinole, turquoise, blue and black.

This is a loosely woven silk yarn from Virginia Farm Woolworks. I syringe-dyed this damp, using red, orange and yellow.

 I tried out a different Shibori technique with this piece of cotton cloth. This long strip of quilter’s muslin was folded in 60-degree triangles. Two corners were dipped into rubinole and turquoise, with the tips dipped in black.

I can see a scarf using this technique in my future!

 

This silk scarf was concertina’d into four, lengthwise, and syringe-dyed blue, rubinole and turquoise.

 

These four fat quarters of cotton cloth were layer-dyed in a cup, by adding a little dye and poking cloth down onto it with a chopstick. The first dye was blue, then yellow, then orange, then red, then yellow again.

 

I’ve also been space dyeing some cotton socks. I am so in love with these!

This silk scarf isn’t finished yet. I tied it in Kanoko with large beads, which were painted with yellow dye. I had drips and bleeds, so I capped the beads with plastic and rubber bands and painted the whole scarf in yellow and orange. The orange also bled into the bead area, so, after batching, I washed the scarf out and dried it with the beads still in place. I replaced the rubber bands with another set of ties over the plastic. I plan to redye it darker, as it’s much brighter than I would use, and I hope the double tying and the plastic capping will protect the colour over the beads. We’ll see….

Next, taking colour out of cloth. Even more fun, I think.

Dreaming about the ideal handbag

Do you have handbag passions? Are there things you absolutely must have in a bag? Make or break stuff? I know I do. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve turned away from fabulous bags, even at ridiculous prices, because I know how cross I’ll be when I can’t fit my phone into a place that’s secure but accessible, or my keys somewhere I can find them. I know I’m not alone in wanting the perfect handbag. Here are my absolute must-haves:

• Single zippered top – I really can’t be doing with which zipper I have to undo to find the segment with my keys in. Statistically, it will be the wrong one 50% of the time. Not efficient.
• No top flap – you flip it open and get out your wallet; flip it closed (coz it’s in the way); pay; flip it open and put in your wallet; flip it closed (see above); pick up your shopping; phone rings; flip it open… it’s like a teenage girl with her hair. Flick, flick.
• Inside pocket for my phone – why the heck would you want your phone in a loose pocket on the outside? Just begging to lose it.
• Inside pockets for money wallet, card wallet and keys. I gave up playing Hunt the Thimble a long time ago.
• Outside zippered pocket for all those things we need to have handy, like the train ticket. I’m sure all those people really don’t mind waiting while I scrabble through my bag, do they?
• Long or adjustable straps – the point of a bag is to have your hands free to do other stuff. Hanging from your wrist is not hands-free.
• Must hold my sketchbook. It’s only A5. It’s essential to life but it’s also a handy repository for those stray bits of paper that come my way.
• Must hold my folding umbrella, even if it sticks out the end a bit. This is where those dinky mobile phone pockets can be handy, if they’re big enough. They usually aren’t.

If you’ll buy any handbag with a designer’s label on it or you don't much care about the features it has, all this must seem pretty weird. Obviously, your bag fulfils other functions for you than being just a pretty place to carry things. I get that. I just want a bag that suits my style.

 Lately, I’ve given up on bought bags entirely, except for travelling, so I make my own. I’ve shown bags I’ve made here in the past, but I don’t think I’ve had my bag rant before! I’m making a new one now, which is rather like the graffiti bag, but it has a couple of useful improvements on that one. The new one is made from a couple of the fabrics from breakdown printing and I think it’s going to be gorgeous.

 

This is the main fabric..

... and this is the lining.

When I make bags, I tend to think of them as modular units. I have to make six units, a bag body with outer pocket and some kind of stiffening, a bag lining (which may also be stiffened), straps, tangs to hold the straps on (optional but a style I like), flanges or tops for the bag (adds structure and generally looks good) and an inner base to strengthen the bottom (which may go inside the bag or between the bag and lining).

Here’s the bag modular unit, finished.

It’s interlined with a stiff interfacing that I bought at Spotlight for hat making, because I couldn’t get Sinamay at the time. It’s fabric about the thread count of Shapewell, but stiffened with something so it’s almost crackly like paper. I think it was sold as buckram, but it isn’t like the buckram I’ve used before. It has a zipper in the top and a welt pocket inserted in one side, so that it doesn’t interfere with the fabric print to much.

Construction was pretty easy. I inserted the welt pocket in one side piece first. I won’t tell you how to do that, as there are fantastic videos out there showing the method. Then I basted in the interlining and sewed the zipper between the top pieces while they were flat. Easy! Then it’s just side seams and that funny little seam along the bottom corners to make the base.

The lining was made in the same way, with double pockets added to flat pieces of fabric. I always add a little pleat in the bottom of my inner pockets, so they have some fullness. Great for fat things like bunches of keys.

 

This time, I added an innovation. I was going to add a collar of fabric to take my umbrella, so it would stand up at the opening end of the zipper. Then it occurred to me that I could add a plastic pocket, so I can slide a damp umbrella back into my bag without making everything else damp. I cut a strong snaplock bag to fit the collar and sewed it on at the top, with the open edge of the bag aligned with the raw edges of the collar. So now my collar was lined with plastic with the bag hanging down below the collar to the bottom of the bag.

 

I sewed the open edges into the bag lining seam, so the umbrella pocket hangs along the side seam, projecting out into the bag. I have no idea how long the plastic bag will last, but if it goes into a hole, I’ll be no worse off than having just the collar in the first place, will I?

 The top flanges were made to sit above the edge of the bag this time. Stitching them to the bag is always a little fiddly, because of the zipper, but it’s a lot easier using a zipper foot. I could have sewn them on before I sewed the bag side seams but after I put in the zipper.

The top flange in the picture is the inside, the lower one is the outside.

 

The tabs and straps were made by knife edging the fabric around the stiffener. I sometimes reinforce my straps and tabs with wire or other material that resists casual cutting, especially if I’m planning to take the bag overseas, but I didn’t bother this time.

 

I generally find it’s a good idea to leave about 1/8in fold of just fabric past the stiffener, as it makes the strap easier to topstitch. In the same way, I tend to trim the stiffener at the ends so I’m not sewing through multiple layers when it comes time to attach the straps and tabs.

 The bag lining is generally sewn in by hand, by folding over the top edge and slipstitching. I could machine stitch it in, but it’s a bit fiddly, especially with this very stiff stiffening. Sometimes I machine stitch after I’ve hand stitched, for extra strength.

So that’s it. I’ll show you the bag next time, once I’ve finished off the last little bit. I’m thinking that, next time, it might be good to add a hole with a large eyelet in one of the inner pockets, so I can put in a key ring. Then I can snap my keys on their extender to the key ring. At the moment, I clip the extender to the pocket and that doesn’t do the fabric of the pocket any good. I suspect I’ll be twiddling the pattern for this bag for a long time to come!

Things I've done this year...

This blog is always way behind, because so much of what I do creatively ends up on the Fibrecircle blog. That's not all I create, of course, but managing two blogs does take rather more time than one.

So what have I done this year? I finished a blouse for my daughter but photos of clothes look nothing much lying flat and she hasn't posed for a photo (nor is likely to, really!) So you'll have to take my word for that one.

I finished all the blocks for my Dutchman's Puzzle quilt, including the half and quarter blocks for the sides, since the blocks will be laid out on point. This may not sound like a huge achievement, until you realise that that these blocks were from a swap with my library co-workers back in the 1990's. I blogged about here about twelve months ago. Here's where I mention that I hand piece my quilts these days, mostly as an end-of-day therapy, and hand quilt them too. I realised that one of the things I enjoy about quilting is the meditative process of putting a needle through cloth and that I wasn't enjoying spending all my time at the sewing machine. I sew clothes by machine, and machine embellish and assemble things I make, and that's plenty of time on the machine. 

My plan with these blocks is to sash them, so I'll make a template for the sashing and contemplate whether I want to use one fabric or many for the sashing. In the meantime, I'm making more 6in Prosperity blocks for my grandson's quilt. I have a nice pile of them but I think they'll be set on the square, so I'll need a lot more yet.

I've also made a pair of earrings  and have two other pairs in the making. I'm a real sucker for earrings and, while I don't yet have a different pair to wear every day of the year, I'm working on it! These ones are inspired by in a book called Making Vintage Accessories, using lace as an element. As I had some genuine elderly lace (if it isn't quite vintage), bought when my daughter was a baby, I thought I'd play with some of it.

I painted the lace elements to suit some feature beads I bought a couple of years ago.

I've assembled one pair and even worn them! Aren't they so girly? The lace is silver, which was hard to photograph well.

I also made a little bag. Helen from Fibrecircle gave each of us a kit of fabric and some instructions. I suspect a sinister plan on her part to be rid of some of her stash, an idea I have stored away myself! It's a cute little bag, with a ring closure.

I've been busy all the time this year, sometimes creatively and much more on administration for the new ATASDA travelling suitcase exhibition, which is now on the road. My friend Maz and I decorated one of the suitcases this time, and here it is drying on the floor.

The design was inspired by a desert flower called Apteranthes europaea, common in Morocco, and other parts of North Africa. It used to be known as Caralluma europaea, so the suitcase is called Cara for short. Both suitcases are now on the road and can be booked on marrakesh@atasda.org.au.

I've also made two postcards and I'm currently painting a couple more, played with transfer printing, done some shaving cream marbling, painted quite a lot of fabric in different ways, dyed fabric and done some serigraphy monotypes, also known as deconstructed screen printing or breakdown screen printing. Most of that is over on the Fibrecircle blog, and you'll have to wait for the rest!

A long time between drinks!

Anyone checking my blog would think I've been entirely uncreative since August. Not entirely so - I've been managing the Fibrecircle blog, the SCQuilters blog and a whole lot of other stuff, mostly for ATASDA, but I have managed to squeeze in tiny bits of creative stuff into my life as well.

Of course, I did a stack of knitting. I have two cardigans ready to block for sewing together, but they don't look terribly exciting as they are, so photos will have to wait. I don't know why I put off blocking - maybe because sewing knitting together is my least favourite job in all the world? One is my blue cardigan, knitted from Bendigo Highland yarn, which I just love. The other is my "arty cardy". Whenever I do anything for ATASDA, someone seems to tell me, "dress arty". I delight in making textile art, and I delight in making my own garments, but, no disrespect to others who feel differently, I just don't "dress arty". Fancy dress is torture for me, and while I can see that looking the part is important if you're out there selling work, it just isn't me. So I have made myself a striped knitted jacket for "arty" occasions. By my arty friends' standards, it's tame but it will have to be enough for me. Yes, there will be photos... though probably not showing me wearing it.

What else? Oh yes, the Forest piece I was talking about last time. I showed what the painted cloth looked like once I'd drawn and painted and generally played with it. It needed some contrast fabric for the bag so, naturally, I painted some. I mixed some grey-browns on my palette and slapped them onto cream quilters' muslin, deliberately making it streaky. I added in a few strokes of black, while everything was still wet, to add some depth. Once it was dry, I drew lines on it to make it look somewhat like bark. Here's a detail shot of how it looked:

You need the detail shot because it's hard to see the textured pattern in a photo of the whole piece. I used the bark fabric to make the top and handles of the bag, with the forest fabric as the body.

I wanted to keep the forest fabric whole, but I also think no bag is compete without an outside pocket. So I made a welt pocket with a zipper for the top of the outside pocket - it's there but it's hardly visible.

Here's the finished bag:

It has everything a bag should have. Four inside pockets with elasticised tops, for keys, wallet, phone, etc. That essential outside pocket. Long enough straps that I can sling it over my shoulder easily. It has one tiny drawback - that it doesn't take an A5 sketchbook as comfortably as I'd like, though it does fit in. My current bag is just that bit bigger, and I've got spoilt. This one is probably better for my back, since I'm not tempted to toss in the kitchen sink...

I also did some more block printing and stamping. I love making stamps and I love playing around with them. I made a couple of new stamps recently and have played around with them, to see how they work with my other stamps.

These ones are from designs I've drawn in my sketchbooks over the years, which I've now drawn (sorry) together into my Lost Treasures book. The upper one is from a sketch I made at the Arts of Islam  exhibition at the NSW Art Gallery a few years back; the lower one from a sketch at another exhibition at the Gallery, of Chinese art. See how it pays to take a sketchbook with you?

I did some sample prints:

You can see a few of my stamps from back in May crept in to make secondary patterns. I was experimenting for another project I was working on, for Fibrecircle, on the theme Geometric. It hasn't quite worked out the way I planned, but so far it looks like this:

Basically, it's a little pot, using the stamps as decorative motifs. It was going to be a dice pot for my daughter, who's a keen gamer, but I haven't quite worked out a satisfactory lid for it yet - one that will keep the dice firmly inside between games. But it's a cute prototype.

The block printing was basically adding another layer to some of my paint rags. I had one that I'd used for playing with resists that looked very dark:

I stamped over it using white Permaset Supercover, which, as you'd guess, is very opaque printing ink. I used several of my stamps, plus a piece of window screen to give a gentle overall texture.

It  may not look brilliant in  the photo but the white has really give it some wow factor. I'm thinking it may be a journal cover when it grows up.

The other fun thing I've done lately is some breakdown printing. It's a fascinating process, in which you paint thickened dyes in patterns onto a screen, allow it to dry and then print using the same medium. The medium gradually breaks down the dried dye paint on the screen, with thicker areas acting as a resist. It yields these beautiful complex prints, related to one another but not quite the same.

I don't think I'm anywhere near done exploring this technique yet.

I've also made these quilt blocks:

and these:

(actually I've made 26 of these ones now), so I've not been entirely idle, have I?