Plenty of dirt on this patch

I do love sewing - although right now I am just not focused on getting things completed.  More kinda like I am plodding over old ground and scrambling for some rainbow rays to hit me and light my way.

This work below is a shot of work in progress for Dirty Denim.  Again using English Paper Piecing - usually I use Horse Hair - but for Dirty Denim I am using reclaimed denim! So many tones to play with.

 

This will be a large quilt stuffed with dried grasses (rather than a man made quilt lining) - and where I am wanting to go now is to use a previous drawing from a sampler pattern and transpose it into a large wall piece using the larger squares.

Perhaps I have a rainbow now - top of the season winter weather here - not a rainbow in sight.  Kinda like it is  spring already.

Observation of Design Elements

I have to admit making jewellery is a new adventure for me and Places and Pieces is just the push I needed to try out this addictive form of making.

This post is a tutorial about using observation of design in landscape to create a body of work. It is aimed at year 11 students and is to be delivered as a hand out to complement class discussion.

In future posts I will provide tutorials on making paper jewllery using two techniques!

Selecting line, colour, tone, texture, shape, sound and form to create new jewellery that reflects place in a geographic, cultural and personal sense.



This is a native ground cover I discovered one day on my regular walk. I have been walking along this industrial path next to a factory and train line for nearly a year and never spotted this brave hardy plant before. It was a joy to discover in an area so dominated by industrial activity.
I was taken by the sweet, round petite shape of the leaves, the bending, yet reaching form of the braches and the mono, flat and blending tones of the bush. Picking a stork I popped it in some water and took some sketches. My drawing is dominated by line and shape.



As I worked drawing I reflected upon another artist’s work that I recently viewed, by David Neale. As I drew I thought about ways I could replicate these elements in 3D



I thought about using:
- small stones
- clay
- paper
- fabric and leather


I thought about these materials because they are familiar to me and I have a great deal of confidence and pleasure in using them.


The resulting works from my drawing and playing I will post in the coming days.

Introducing the Enlightenment Project

This year I am working as an artist on a variety of Central Victorian Projects, including the THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT, with the Kyneton Museum and Macedon Ranges Shire Council

On Sunday I made my first visit to the museum and was taken by their amazing collecting of objects and also textiles. (not to mention the wonderful staff who I will really enjoy working with) This post documents the very beginning of my research and relationship with this venue.




The Enlightenment project is about creating interpretive material to tell stories triggered by the museum site of the old bank building and significant collections and objects it holds.

I was fortunate to be approached by another local artist Tara Gilbee to work on this project,.

Through collaboration between Kyneton Museum and the artist the Enlightenment Project 2009/2010 aims to;
• use multi-media to provide a more lively engagement with the museum site and its collections, rather than simply static artifact displays
• make Kyneton Museum collection and stories more accessible to the community
• increase Kynton Museums engagement with its local community

I think the staff at the Museum are doing a pretty good job engaging the local community - the day I attended the museum was very busy with lots of people of varying ages coming and also an exhibition taking place as well as a garden party. The collection is well displayed, with a variety of existing interpretation materials for adults and also children.

The first object that stole my heart was this lamp shade. I was taken by its whimsical shape and daring nature.

This shape has completely made me smitten and I can see it coming into another body of work I am creating at the moment for the City of Bendigo Art in the Conservatory Project - but more about this later.

My role is to create textile shelters and surfaces. I am hopeful that this form and method of construction might some how feed into this process. My sister gave me a book on making lamp shades from wire - I wonder if I still have it or did I pitch it in the move to our new home?

I am booking in more time to go through their catalogue cards for textiles, however I was fortunate to view their signature quilt, made back in 1905. This quilt is huge, perhaps 2m by 3m white thread on white linen with hand made lace. Completely breath taking, and I am looking forward to researching all the stitches used in this work. Stitching words, can seem to be very easy, but it isn't and I have always struggled with choice of stitch.

The signature quilt was made by the women on Kyneton as a fund raiser for children in India. Local families purchased squares of the quilt, then the women donated their time to make the work.

I think this method of representation, piecing of fabric together to make a whole is also something I would like to draw from as well. Interestingly the local milk bar facilitated the donating of money and documenting people's names to be embroidered.


A blind took my fancy too for its pattern and use of mono tone and shape through light play.






I liked also the picnic rugs and blankets in the cabinet about Picnics at Hanging Rock. I believe the final work will be exhibited outdoors in the evening - kinda nice idea of people sitting on textiles as well and also reflecting in the mystery around famous picnics at Hanging Rock.

The Handmade gift giving challenge 2010

Waste.

As a mother I can't seem to stop creating it.

One way I thought, and a way also to enhance my skills as a maker, is to attempt to give all handmade gifts this year.

After a disasterious Christmas due to a extreme sporting (!) injury I simply didn't get half of the presents made that I would have really liked to have made. There are some bloggers out there who have really drilled into me the need for planning and scheduling. Especially when you are a working mother.

Some resources out there to help me get going include:

• Balancing Everything: the Daily Stuff that Needs Doing
• Planning with Kids explains why her Christmas Planning spreadsheet is completely essential

So I wonder - does more planning mean less waste?

Any howse in the fever of January making New Years promises last forever I have been planning gift making and some how achieving my modest goals.  (although making a few minor short cuts here and there)

Baby gifts for Ariya

These gifts pattern and instructions starting points are from Bend the Rules Sewing, which is a fab book and I have called upon often.  Resulting in large library fines.

The handmade

A little lady like tinkling and smearing started forming itself as an idea from Germaine Greer's article Why Women Don't Relax about women and leisure time and her comments about the uselessness of stitching as a leisure pursuit and or as an art form.

"useless, pointless, unproductive, repetitive work: beadwork, shellwork, tatting, making cut-paper patterns and silhouettes, japanning, plus what George Eliot called "a little ladylike tinkling and smearing".

Don't get me wrong I am a fan of Germaine - I listened recently to an interview between her and Margaret Thosby on Classical ABC (unfortunately the interview is no longer online) and I had no idea she is in her mid 70s - I especially enjoyed her thoughts upon the future of our society and that children must be at the heart of this. Inspirational and a woman who isn't afraid of being heard and saying such straight forward things about our society - but few do.

Here is a link to another article that Germaine got her pen stuck into stitching also being an irrelevant art form!

"...why any woman would set about to make a portable artwork, a picture, out of bits of old fabric? What could be the point of such an exercise in futility? The work of art
is supposed to defy time but fabric is bound to fade and rot, even when it is kept in between layers of tissue paper and shut away from sight. There's nothing new in this kind of heroic pointlessness; women have frittered their lives away stitching things for which there is no demand."

ouch

Germaine got me all worked up about stitching being an irrelevant activity to undertake in one's life. I do agree that I dont have a hell of a lot of lesisure time but the time I do have I stitch because I love it and it fits in around my family - no smelly spills or waiting for layers to dry and it isnt expensive and if I stuff it up I can unstitch it.

Also when I sew I fell connected to other women - women at home caring for a family. Although I am alone and isolated in this house I know that this activity has been shared by other women for generations.

So how does this all fit in with the notion of the handmade landscape?

Unfortunately this video has arrived on its side - for a better viewing visit here. It is a bit of a treat - an extraordinary hand made feat - a rail way bridge. You can go riding along this old bridge - it is at Skipton near Ballarat.

A web site dedicatated to the cultural landscapes of central Victoria states

Landscapes both shape and reflect the lives of their inhabitants.

As does Alain de Botton

where we are heavily influences who we can be

So how does all this relate to stitching?

My stitch work is representational in its presentation and also its process.

Stephen Gallagher wrote about my last exhibition when I started touching on this subject


Born in the Central Victorian town of Dingee, Marwood now lives in Eaglehawk. She draws deep upon her present environment and that of her upbringing. The impact of the human's assault upon the environment, the constant carving up and division of the open flat grass plains with vast straight stretches of lonely road systems are reflected in the subtle pattern of the fabric's grain in ‘Paddock Division'. Comprised of small horse hair canvas panels joined with a loose basic stitch, its subtle blue thread exposes the making process. The panels expand like the subdivisions of land—intersected with a network of roads, visual paths, along which we alone travel. ‘Paddock Division' takes on the practicality of the decision making process—rigid, black and white, left or right.

I am wanting to get close to the solider settlement landscape I grew up upon - this was a thriving community now going under due to drought. I want to get close to the people that shaped this landscape and also how their decision making is still carrying through in our actions and activities today - and I guess now that I don't live in this landscape my actions are my stitching.

The Pillow Book

In the last few weeks I have been enjoying reading the Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon.

I was inspired to read this book by a beautiful knitted text pillow work at a blog called Six and a Half Stitches.

The Pillow Book was written approximately one thousand years ago - by Sei Shonagon who was a lady in waiting at the Court of the House of the Japanese Empress.

Her writing is lovely to read - it is a journal of writing using lists with headings such as: Outstandingly Splendid things;
Rare Things;
A Lover's Visit

She writes of day to day life an her reflections upon it - One comment that did catch my eye is to be found under: Hateful Things

A gentleman who travels alone in his carriage to see a procession or some other spectacle. What sort of man is he? Evan though he may not be a person of the greatest quality, surely he should have taken along a few of the many young men who are anxious to see the sights. But no, there he is by himself, with a proud look on his face keeping all his impressions to himself.

Alison of Six and a Half Stitches writes that Sei Shonagon is often referred to as the first blogger, because she wrote everything in diary format. I guess bloggers would be found in Sei's Journal under Outstandingly Splendid Things - as blogging is completly unlike attending a procession by yourself - rather it is a sharing and joining in!

Thanks Alison.

The image above is called Needle work by Japanese artist Kitaga Utamaro, (1753 - 1806).

In a little book I have about his work it is written: The beauty of the group rather than the individual is stressed in the(se) work(s).

The Hedonism Handbook

"You are not a to-do list, series of responsibilities or a roster of achievements. Your life consists of much more than that, and your foremost responsibility is to yourself (unless of course you have very small children, in which case your nirvana may be temporarily compromised.)"

The Hedonism Handbook: Mastering the Lost Arts of Leisure and Pleasure by Michael Flocker


A showing coming up at TROCADERO Art Space next year is embroidered works of my to do list

here is a bit of my proposal for Mummy Packaging

what

Bowls – dessert, soup, breakfast – wrapped in fabric with my daily list of what I need to do to keep my life running as a mother (two children under five), associate producer with Next Wave, coordinator of Allan’s Walk and also an artist, embroidered onto the fabric stretched over the mouth of each bowl.

365 bowls (once for each day of the year) will be covered, embroidered then stacked in the space. Viewers will be invited to touch and rearrange the bowls and their stacks.

The stacks will be unstable and unpredictable – bowls may smash. The stacks are like my life as a mother kinda just keeping balanced.