Wowbook 4

 Wowbook 4 was published in June 2019 and I did a few of the workshops that were in it. I love how many different techniques and ideas there are in the WOW books.  You can find them at wowbook.d4daisy.com . I think they are good value when you also join the members area for that book as there are always extra workshops (usually 4 or 5) there.

This aerial piece was inspired by a Maggie Grey workshop. I went in a different direction when my original piece was not working out. When my husband and I flew across Australia last year we had sunny weather so could actually see the landscape below for a change. I was amazed by all the different coloured lakes we could see in South Western Australia. 

This concertina book was a workshop by Amanda Hislop. There was a lot of printing on different papers using several methods. It was then compiled into a picture that could be machine stitched. 

You can see the detail of the stitching on the reverse.

This piece is my version of the Kathleen Laurel Sage workshop using plastic. Everything was painted on plastic then cut out and stitched to a fabric background. I used some prints I made for the background. I took 2 photos because the shiny plastic reflections hid some of the detail. 

These two were made using prints of photos as demonstrated by Sandra Meech's workshop. The black and white version was extended beyond the paper onto a fabric background to make it bigger. Neither landscape is real but pieces of images put together to make a picture.

 This was a workshop by Wendy Dolan. It was designed to show you how to use a building or other object to design a piece. I chose to use photos I took of the Natural History Museum in London for my inspiration. The flowers are a stained glass window there, the odd sized bricks and wrought iron designs are from the exterior and gates. I enjoyed this workshop a lot as design is one of my main focuses in art.

My next piece was meant to be done with Solarfast dyes but it was winter when I tried this and they didn't really work so I took a shortcut and printed the fabrics using my computer. I used photos of my house and garden for all the images and printed them in blue to resemble the same effect you would get with the dye. I will be trying this again in summer using the dyes again. Fingers crossed it works...

Keeping busy last year.

 It has been a lot longer since I last blogged than I thought it would be. I enjoyed my trip to the UK and saw a lot of art while in London. Sadly I think it will be a long time before I get to travel overseas again. I also did two other trips with my husband within Australia and a lot of textile workshops with international artists. 

 I made these two 15 x 15cm pieces for a fundraising auction at Fibres West. One was an experiment of painting on metal mesh and the other was a doodle design with transferred photos of leaves.

I painted watercolour ground on the metal then used watercolour paints for the flower and leaves. I machine stitched on the metal shim border and added a hanging chain.

First was a residential week long textile art course with Alysn Midgelow-Marsden at Fibres West where we experimented with metal fabric.This was an exercise we did.

I have since used the samples we created, as well as some extra experiments I did when I got home, to make these book covers. 

 

The local embroiderers guild had a conference to celebrate their 75th birthday and I did 2 workshops with Kathryn Harmer Fox 

 

 

Our textile group organised another weekend workshop with Alison Holt. My piece was very small but I intend to do some bigger ones now that I understand the techniques.

 My textile group did a challenge for our display at the craft fair where the theme was "Words". This could be interpreted in many ways. Here are my three pieces. 

 It was a busy year. I will share more in my next post which will be shortly.