At Last Artist in residence

So I have promised pics of the whole thing and I have included some of the process as well. There are a lot of photos but it took a week and a lot happened.

 As you can see we worked on 2 large 5x2.2m long hangings. The sheer scale of this thing blew me away every day. It was so exciting to see it coming together. The team spirit was palpable and it was such a thrill to see the excitement on the little faces as each new part of the process was revealed. This is a real community project as my parent helpers and the staff were quite instrumental in it's success. The sheer numbers meant we could move this sometimes 100kg beast around and finish it off.

And here are the shots of the finished article. It gets some words about where it is of and the year in the blank spaces at the bottom. The year 6 kids did the local wildflowers along the bottom edge. They will hang beside each other in the hall. Tomorrow they will be presented finished to the school. The local paper is even coming for such an auspicious event!!
The whole exercise has been great in thinking big and outside the square and anything is possible!!

sneak peek

Here is a photo of one of the panels before felting. The rest is felted now after a mammoth day of rolling two enormous felts with about 100 litres of water in them. You definitely need a school to produce this work. So many hands and arms needed to roll this thing. You can see why the Mongolians use horses.
I will post the pics of the whole thing when it is dry.

What has 360 legs?

A School!!
I have been conspicuously quiet here as I have been working very hard on a really interesting project with a local school here. The P&C at the school have funded an artist in residence program and I have been invited to come and felt with the children. Wow what an undertaking and so far we a going great guns. They have all made prefelts and noodles and learned a whole lot about wool, felt and living as an artist. The next step is to put it all together.
We are making a huge wall hanging depicting a local waterfall area and the total size when finished will be approx 7m x 2m !!!!!!!! Just have a think about how big that is before shrinkage!!! 
I will post some pics soon but I have to get back to the dyepots and create some more colour for the work to come.
Stay tuned!

Hunter Gatheress tribe

 

These are two pieces I have been working on using some of the ideas from the Julian Roberts workshop. Working in felt is a completely different kettle of fish to plain fabric. There is the shrinkage to deal with, the drape is completely different and really it is a completely different beast altogether. The advantage though is that I can add on my offcuts to increase the length and it will look like one piece of fabric, no seams.

Can you believe this gorgeous setting is my friend's back yard!!!.  She happened to have a couple of stunning models just lying around for me too!! 

The head warmer is a corespun crocheted on my finger because I couldn't find the right sized knitting needles. There is always a way.

All in a tailspin

Can there be too many tails in a tailspin yarn? I dyed some locks for an order and it was not the right colour, too bright so I thought I should try to tailspin them. I think I got a bit carried away but they are kinda cool.

I'm a comin

So in June/July this year I will be off to visit some fantastic people I've met on this wonderful thing called the internet. I have put some contact details to the right for the countries I will be in but if there is none contact me on my email and I will put you in touch. The co-ordinators will fill you in on the details.I will be pretty much doing a different thing in each venue so why not do all of them???? HA!
Sorry UK it fell through this time but next time I will make sure we leave enough time to organise everything.

I am adding some shots of some handspun Yarns I did with Pluckyfluff last weekend. She is an inspirational teacher who took us along to produce some fantastic yarns.

Alien pod

This pod shape has bee calling to me for a while. I like the positive and negative spaces in the holes. My dear nearly 18 yr old helped me photoshop as the background was a bit dodgy. I quite like it now.

A dress top and a top.

 

My friend will hate these photos but I think she looks lovely. These were a couple of pieces I made for the Tamworth gig as I wanted to show  some example and everything had sold recently

Mosaics from Tamworth

It has been my recent privilege to teach a group of women from Tamworth, North NSW. With all the hospitality of country towns everywhere I was welcomed  and looked after and steeped in the company of talented crafty women. Many of them had as much to teach me and this is the added bonus of teaching them.  
I thought I got a photo of everyone's work but I seemed to have missed Jan's beautiful Autumnal throw, you'll just have to imagine.

Never say die

Take a look at this recent jacket I made. Yuck!!!! It just sat strange and it did not matter who I put it on it wouldn't work.

Enter a pair of scissors stage left and  put one arm over the head cut off the sleeves reattach one and rejoin all the bits, add a matching arm warmer and voila!!

felt 500

Many many many months ago I sent of some images of my work to Lark Books. Apparently they wanted to publish a book as part of their 500 series, 500 felt objects. I poured over photos and picked five I thought might have some merit. Nearly 12 months later I get a letter. Curiouser and curiouser.
I am very excited to announce that there will be 3 of my images in the book!! It should be available from September. I think this is a must to add to the pile as I have heard from others there is some really amazing work in there .

Sub cut 101

So here is Julian at the workshop in Canberra. It was a whirlwind day and a whirlwind tour for him. Here he is cutting live and modeling a garment he made insanely quickly.

Below is my dress which needs some work. I possibly should have saved my gorgeous silk till I had practiced it a bit, but oh well. I will tweak and tweak till I'm happy. I have some ideas of how to transpose this to felt. It will not have the same drape as a woven fabric but interesting nonetheless
The second dress is one I made once I got home. Sorry bit hard to model and take snaps at the same time. I probably should have moved the windex and the washing basket too!!

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Passion for cloth

I have pulled out the boilers again and dyeing 7m of twill silk for a workshop with Julian Roberts I am going to on Monday.

I am clearing a spot for my new veggie patch and have to get rid of some old root stock of passionfruit vine in the process. Remembering India said you can get green from passionfruit I stuffed a whole lot into the pot and cooked away. The dye was a subtle light green in just the copper and I dyed 1/2 the fabric for about 1/2 an hour first then I pulled it out and put some leaves in it. I put eucalypt leaves in the other half of the fabric and here are the results below. I really like the green with the other and I can't wait to see how this dress works out.

Home of the big Guitar

Australia ( for the uninitiated) is fond of a big icon. We have the big banana, big pineapple, big prawn and the list goes on. I will be traveling soon to the land of the big Guitar. Yes TAMWORTH. Northern Tablelands NSW!

I will be conducting a workshop in mosaic wearables, wraps, jackets, skirts, whatever takes your fancy! We will be dyeing, making felt, cutting it up and making felt all over again!

There are only a couple of spots left so if you are going to be in Tamworth for 18th, 19th, 20th March and don't want to miss this get in contact from the email to the right. 

So what have I been doing?

Summer cleaning!!!!
I missed the spring clean as it was a busy time. For me the Christmas break is the only decent block of time I get to really effect some changes in the house. Something gets hold of me and the cleaning and de-cluttering begins. I get a ruthless glint in my eye and the expulsion of all deemed unnecessary is underway.

I did not quite need the truck pictured above but it felt good to bring some order to the chaos of the home. Sometimes with everyone working it never seems to be the right time to deal with things. I even did some gardening, though there is  a long way to go there! For me this is also a cleaning out and preparation for the mind. Having the chaos around was effecting my work. Does anyone else suffer from this?? I need to be able to go down to my studio knowing that the house is not in greater need of my time.

In other words it is a load off.

A little balance is restored if only for a while. Now back to work!