Busy, busy workshop

Saturday's painted fabric workshop was a great success. The sun shone beautifully for our sun printing, after a week of rain I was beginning to wonder what Saturday would hold, but in true Melbourne style the sun came out and everything was fine.

The ladies made some wonderful paper fabric too from paper napkins and there stamps and printed fabrics where gorgeous.

Joanne and her mountain of torn napkins.

Nicky with her elephants.

Caryn's beautiful rich colours

Sue's old world look.

All heads down.

These are some of the wonderful results of their sun printing and their stamp printing.

These are the gorgeous paper fabrics.

Sorry ladies I didn't get photos of everyone's but they were all fabulous.

I was also very lucky to have one of my felt brooches added to Glass Creek textiles Etsy Treasury.

Thank You, that was very kind.

Full class

The fabric workshop filled up very fast which is great news. I'm going to hold another one early next year for those who missed out. The photo below is one of the things we will be doing in the workshop, it's paper made from fabric and paper serviettes. You can stencil over it with paint, add fabric scraps to it. Hand or machine stitch it and also add beads.

These are the papers after they have dried, they are not as shiny as they look in the photos.

This is a section of one of the sheets. I stitched over the butterfly and created flowers with organza, then cut away the remaining organza to show the paper.

This section has lots of machine stitching with metallic threads.

This has lots of seed beads added.

I also made another mixed media quilt inspired by Beryl Taylor, it's not finished yet, I think it might end up as a page in a journal I've been commissioned to make.

New Journal

This is my latest journal on my Etsy. I completed it a little while ago but have only just got around to photographing some of the pages. I decided to group them so each mosaic shows four double pages.

This is the cover, it has a jewellery pin attached for decoration.

These are some of the pages showing fabrics and papers.

There are lots more pages, this is just a sample. SOLD

I purchased the sari fabrics from my friend Julia she has now added some to her Etsy store. They are fabulous fabrics and Julia puts the colours together so well. They are such great value.

Our drought has definitely broken. On the 31st of October we had more rain in one day than the average total for the whole month. The weather had warmed up too so the garden has gone crazy, it looks like the tropics. That's just a snippet above of the lushness.

Mixed Media

I purchased Beryl Taylor's Mixed Media Art Quilts dvd download from Interweave over the weekend. I love Beryl's work, her fabric paper is divine. I had to have a go and below is my first attempt. I can imagine something like this as a journal cover.

The first two images are the details. The last image is the completed piece.

I also did some more sun printing.

And also some painted and stamped fabric. The last photo shows fabric that was stamped with my latest  foam stamps that I made recently.

I am planning to teach a workshop on Saturday November the 20th at home on decorating fabric using sun printing, dyes, paints and stamping. If you would like details please email me.

New journal

This is a small journal that I was commissioned to make a month ago. When I say small, it's smaller than my usual size in dimensions but still very chunky. I'm in the process of making the cover and them assembling it. These are just a few images of the journal.

Seth, over at his blog The Last Page, has a weekly studio viewing happening and last Sunday Seth very kindly featured an image from my studio, you can see others too if you take a visit.

What's in my store

I've added some new stamps and prints to my Etsy store. The mosaic image is the overall view of what's in there, then the other images are my latest stamps. I'll also be adding a small journal later in the week. Taking photos and processing them for Etsy is very time consuming, but well worthwhile.

And finally I couldn't resist taking a photo of this colourful selection in my kitchen window, the window actually looks down into my studio, but luckily you can't see the mess from here. The orchids are out of our garden, grown in pots under trees.

Sun prints

For some time now I've admired the work being produced by Elizabeth and her students making sun prints. This past weekend when our art group had a get together Julia suggested we give it a go, we weren't quite sure what we were doing so it wasn't a raging success, but then Julia found some instructions on the internet and guess what, I had some of the paints in my never ending stash. On Sunday I spent most of the day in my out door studio (the deck off my indoor studio), making sun prints and carving stamps from foam with my wood burning tool, this is definitely a job to be done outside, I even wear a mask as I'm sure the fumes would be very toxic. Below are the results.

My 'summer studio'.

I used a variety of masks including gum leaves, lace, paper doilies and felt mats.

These are the stamps.

Now back to the journal making.