Archive for the ‘gold metallic’ Category

Sample Making Satisfaction

Friday, November 13th, 2020

I have in mind something about 2m wide by about 95cm high, which is largish for me, and with the hand stitching that’s on my mind just now, I’ve been thinking of how to apply large areas of colour – well there’s paint of course …

I’m always inclined to set personal challenges to somehow use stuff already in the house, much of which I bought years ago on some whim or faded intention.  A few years ago I bought several metres of slightly dusty white cheesecloth in an old downtown store – I’ve asked myself a few times since what on earth I was thinking.  The other day from somewhere came the idea that I could paint or spray it, and thought it would go well with what I have in mind (see previous post)  I just happened to have a new can of gold spray paint, it was a nice day, so I cut off 3m x ~50cm, took it outside, and emptied the whole can on it.  Outside, with the fabric folded over so spray passing through the holes would get picked up as it moved through, with re-folding periodically, I regard that as a successful move… though I forgot about an aprin so njow have a new painting shirt, and managed to get some drips on my foot amazingly missing my sandle, and a few drops on the ceramic patio tiles, which didn’t cause any angst anywhere.

Gold gauze and a sandy coloured waxed string machine appliqued with invisible nylon thread to secure the edge, which was then hand stitched with one of my many gold threads.

I suppose I fiddled around for at least an hour, ironing the gauze, and trying several ways to stitch it down, none of which I was happy with until this combo,  so it ticks all the boxes –

  • I can invisible machine applique large sections of this gold gauze, and the edge will not fray and become unstable as I stitch and handle the rest of the piece
  • The effect of this gold gauze is earthy, not brassy – very pleasing.
  • In addition to the horizontal strips I at first tagged it for, I now know I can use it for other shapes that would fray even more on handling if not fo my technical breakthrough.
  • I have a lot of this colour gold thread, but as it’s just the edge being oversewn, it will be much more economical with the feature thread than the oversewn strips on Pandemic Pattern (which did fray, and that was a chosen option, so AOK)

 

 

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.

Meandering With Leather and Stitch …

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007

Using the barge cement I brought back from the USA with me I have found the hold of the leather onto the fabric is just so much better – I still may do a few holding stitches in some places but the hold is good – thanks Katy K for that tip. Checking one of the other glues I already have here I discovered I had not been applying it properly – like rubber cement you need to apply it to each surface, wait a little, and press the surfaces together. Katy then recommended laying into it with a rubber mallet, and so that’s what I have been doing – it works. Barge cement at least is supposed to strengthen with a little more time, and I am assured it will remain supple, so rolling it or further working it should not be difficult because of the glue hardening.
OK – so now, here are the beginnings of a new piece I am now working on, and the first of several more things I have in mind to be inspired by some work I did about 20 years ago – see “Sleepless in Perth WA” blogged in april this year, see archive for that month. I am still in love with this metallic gold leather, of which the leather man had a bit more on his stall last sunday. The background fabric looks black – I really tried with the fill lighting but what worked on the one seemed to effect to other at the same time – the pics were taken at different times of the day, different lighting etc, so this is the best I could do – but its a really nice medium grey with just a touch of greenish hue, rather like hail-laden clouds about to burst. As for a name for this 1.5m x 075m wall quilt, I have no idea, but something will come to mind while I am making it. The blocks, seen more clearly as outlined with gold machine quilting, are about 10cm sq.

On the quiltart list a week or so back someone asked how to deal with older work – she was clearing up her cupboards and work area, finding lots of much older work some of which she’d forgotten about, and taking inventory, all that. I think she has now been persuaded that her current collectors would be a bit upset if she sold stuff off cheaply just because it is old. Cutting up and recycling bits into new works, rather like an artist sometimes paints over an old canvas, never seems to be an option to m, but I do know some who have done it. I also think it is a good idea to go back and revisit your work occasionally – and pieces look quite different in the flesh than on slides. I certainly have a slide record of my first solo exhibition in 1987. All the pieces were carefully photographed against a blonde brick wall!!! which I now know to be a total no-no, but I had little idea then other than I needed to keep a record of what I had done. However, the sharp details and excellent colour are superb – the photographer’s day job out in that isoloated Western Australian country/mining town was staff photographer for the largest mining company out there – no doubt his work was excellent for company records, reports and promotional material – he’d just never done any textile/needlework pics before. I still have several of the stitched works exhibited at that time, and they occasionally they see the light of day. For various reasons, it often rather surprises me to see what I did back then.

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Anatomy of a Commission – Quilted, Trimmed

Saturday, March 17th, 2007

The quilting is all done, which took a bit of fiddling around – the pearlescent thread would not work without incessant breaking, perhaps it is old thread – but despite all the known remedies I applied, it was just not going to work, so, further sampling revealed a fine soft gold thread would work up nicely here, and so that is what I did, about 1/2 inch separated gently undulating, parallel, lines of machine quilting on this soft gold over the whole quilt.

All this took time in addition to the actual quilting, but the result is always worth the effort of fiddling with samples. This pic shows the work trimmed to 24in. x 36in. and ready for the binding….. which proved not to be the cut and dried issue I felt it was a few days ago.

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