Archive for the ‘raw edges’ Category

To Fuse Or Sew? That Is The Question

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

This is recent experimentation with fusing my signature wandering fabric strips to black background. (sample size shown c. 6″)

While in the US recently I bought a brand of fusing /bonding material I hadn’t used before, partly because the veisoflex I’d been using didn’t seem to be anywhere around where I was.  So I bought some Steam a Seam 2., its different, and I really like it.  I haven’t done a lot of fusing in the past, but I did think it might be a way to go with the new smaller works I am doing.  These smaller works I posted previously have been sewn, then fused to a backing before being  sewn down onto the base fabric.  One thing I thought was that strips of fabric fused down might be quicker than sewing inserted strips.  Wrong –  really, small strip by small strip it is a bit fiddly, or, if you back a piece of each fabric you’re going to use, even jsut 2″ x 10″, and cut pieces from that, then you have bits left which you need to keep using to get the best value from your materials, right?  And I am pretty nifty with the sewn strips.   So that’s one thing I have to work out.

Below is a pic of strips pieced, ie sewn, into background fabric (a section of  pre-quilted “Ebb&Flow 15″   as it happens) 

 

And this third pic is a side-by side comparison –  sewn on the left, with fused on the right.   The fused piece is a very flat looking surface by comparison.  In a bed quilt there would be too much movement of the quilt for it to be a viable technique, it wouldn’t last.  On the wall though, it would, and for some kind of background it could be just the thing;  though, as I say, hardly ‘quicker.’  This afternoon I have fused sheer to plain as a substitute for stencilling some sand ripples – light ridges vs dark hollows – its very promising indeed and I have been doing some hand stitch over the top of that, and as quilters would say, ‘ the hand’ is fine. I had thought there might be a stickiness or resistance on the needle, but no.  Pics of all that when it’s a bit further along.

2011 SAQA Auction Quilt

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

This 12″ square textile, just completed but as yet untitled,  is my offering for this year’s SAQA Benefit Auction  At this link you can see some of the early submissions to this year’s auction list, and find full details of how you can particpate and acquire a fine small art quilt for your textile or quilt collection  (I suggest mine of course! )

The Auction will run online from September 12th to October 2nd.

This piece fits in with the Timetracks series, and yet I think I may have another title in mind, but am thinking it over.  No rush.

Two New Collectors

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

It’s always a joy when someone wishes to exchange their hard earned money for some of my art. Since I enjoy creating and making textile and fibre art I don’t think of it as ‘work’, even though it is, and as ‘work’ is occasionally frought with difficulty or stress even, between concept and completion.  Today I am hoping that my two newest collectors will have many years of enjoyment with my works in their collections.

This week I was pleased to see my 12″ square in the online 2010 SAQA Benefit Auction was purchased by a collector in the USA, Francie Gross.  I am embarrassed to say I forgot to photograph it before sending it off, but it is in the style of Timetracks 11

  a portion of which is shown here.

It is still up on the auction pages, 2b, at the SAQA online auction which enters its third week this week with the works shown on pages 3a and 3b – just click the link on the page above the pics andyou will go to each in turn.  Perhaps you’ll make a bid for some of the interesting pieces still to come under the hammer in the next few days.

A few weeks ago I sold two works to an international collector, a personal friend, who chose “Timetracks 16” and also this one:

 

It’s not shown in my website, partly because I haven’t ever decided just which category it belongs in, or exactly what name to settle on it.  For a long time it went as ‘Untitled’ which I always think is an artist’s cop out. 

Yet it is an important work, because it took me into the “Desert Tracks” works that followed and will probably be added to over time. It is a work focused on those aspects of the traditional ancestors of modern art quilts that appeal to me and appear repeatedly in my own work – blocks/units, repetition, and hand quilted surface patterning.  The finished edges are applied with a gold metallic fabric, double layered and cut on the cross, left ufinished – also from a time when I was beginning to consider less conventional bound edgings on my work, and burned edges appeared soon after making this one.  It has always looked good in local exhibitions here, and I know it will be well placed in  its new home.

It just occurred to me that someone with some clout in the art world should declare a day each year to be designated “International Art Collectors’ Day”.  I still have the very first painting I bought, nearly 55 years ago with 8s 6d of the 12s pocket money I was given to spend at the annual school fete.  It is a postcard-size watercolour of a landmark mountain range in northern Tasmania where I grew up, and I remember choosing it from a whole table of perhaps 50 or so little watercolured landscapes, probably done by the art teachers at the school, and certainly framed by one of the parents’ framing business – handy use for the their framing offcuts, probably!  It’s still in the original frame – I think I will do it the honour of having it framed in a more modern frame next time I’m back in Aus – I have always loved it.  In addition my parents had several watercolours painted by a cousin of my father’s, John Nixon Gee.  Dad took me along to JN’s house one morning when I was maybe 6, and I remember watching him paint a little while I was there.

Small Works with Leather

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

The learning curve consisted of working out how to do a fitted bed-sheet kind of arrangement with the metallicised under layer of leather. Edges were then turned back and the mighty new stapler used to tack all that in place.

The textured leather (very daggy, really)appears to drape over the under one – enhanced with judiciously placed old gold wax. Black and gold thread was used to stitch lines of large stitches, some of which are crossed over by others.

Each panel is approx 8 in/20cm size.

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Craftmanship issues

Saturday, January 27th, 2007

A recent morning on the quiltart list there was discussion of techniques. The previous writer had issues with fusing of uneven cutting and fraying edges, and I posed the question whether readers could conceive a design in which frayed edges and uneven cut lines, with fusing technique, were appropriate.

Well some of the answers were interesting, but I then realised I had done such a design myself, not too long ago, in which the pieces were either fused (the hand dyed squares in this piece) and or frayed – the gold scrim squares are hand sewn onto the top of the larger squares, and despite beng cut on the cross this stuff does fray easily – witness the fraying doubled over edging that surrounds the quilt.

This small quilt uses a traditional pattern of a square within a square to explore particular techniques, but overall the design isn’t too crash hot in terms of vitality and excitement, and this is probably why I haven’t exhibited it anywhere yet. And yet it is one of those pieces that somehow become important on the way towards new developments.

An earlier version of this post had this and a detailed view but the buttons would not open to show the pics, although they had done so when first posted. This is the best I can do for the moment, however, and maybe I will learn something blindingly obvious to everyone but me on this new blogger program, or need to take another path after a while.

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