Spring Colour

More pics from last Saturday at Piney Lakes.


The eucalypts are all putting out new shoots. We have our leaf colour in spring rather than autumn.


Most of the bottlebrushes are in bloom. I love this curly one.

I have started on my entries for the Mad as a Hatter competition at the Melville Textile Art Expo. So far, so good.

Blowfly Grass (Briza maxima)

I remember this plant as a child, but I haven't seen it for years. Yesterday we found several big clumps near the artificial lake which is south of Piney Lakes and part of the Sculpture Walk.


The grass gets its name both from the appearance of the mature seed heads and the sound they make when you shake them. We used to love playing with it.

I was surprised to find when I googled that it is of Mediterranean origin, very widespread in Australia and an invasive weed.

Revisiting Piney Lakes

Today's meeting of Designing Women once again focused on the Piney Lakes environment. In the morning we took a walk around the lake with the intention of finding and photographing aspects that we could incorporate into future work - possibly with a 3D emphasis.

The last time we did such a walk we spent our time in the wetlands section and I gathered enough inspiration for a series of work - starting with the layered organza and embroidered silk pieces and culminating in the Windows to the Wetlands piece.

Today we walked up the hill, away from the wetlands. We saw lots of interesting flowers and vegetation and 2 bobtail lizards. The first had a bright yellow head which indicated it was either looking for a mate or had recently mated.


The second one was more uniform in colour.


I took heaps of photos. I really like the shape of this hollow log.


In the afternoon as we were leaving the building I noticed the flowers on this blue gum just by the gate. So here is Friday's Flower on Saturday.

Reverse Applique and WAFTA Naturally

I added some more leaves to the piece of reverse applique and decided to cut the top fabric as close as possible to the stitching. I am quite happy with the final result.

Now I want to translate it into a section of the piece Designing Women has decided to contribute to the exhibition WAFTA is holding in August. I am thinking about two pieces of silk I have tucked away. One is compost dyed, the other is rust dyed.

WAFTA (West Australian Fibre and Textile Association) is an umbrella group for West Australian textile groups. I believe it was originally founded as a group interested in both natural dyeing and weaving, but it has come a long way since. The FibresWest residential forum which is held in Bunbury every three years is fabulous, but the group has decided to try and extend public awareness of its existence and activities through an exhibition.

2009 is the Year of Natural Fibres and the exhibition will reflect this. All pieces entered in the WAFTA exhibition must be at least 80% natural fibre. In addition, the committee has decided to limit colours to muted shades as obtained from plant dyes. Each piece is to be 3.5 metres by .5 metres and will be suspended from the rafters of the exhibition building.

I think WAFTA expects mostly individual pieces, but the Designing Women Group has been affiliated with them for quite a few years, and we have decided to make a group entry. There are 15 DW members interested, so we now have to decide how to proceed.

At present the idea is to make individual panels to be joined to make up the required size. We are having a meeting tomorrow to discuss how to accomplish this. Everyone has to bring their own full scale design on paper (limited to 50cm square) inspired by Piney Lakes where we meet. We also have to bring samples of fabrics and threads we could use.

I am really looking forward to tomorrow to see what everyone has come up with.

Melville Sculpture Walk 2009

We nearly missed seeing this. It closes tomorrow, so we went this morning. Kevin has written about it on his blog too. It was at Piney Lakes, but a different part to where Designing Women meet. This is the little lake around which the sculptures were arranged. No fountain today.

Somehow my photos got lost, so I am using Kevin's. These were my favourites.

Incey Wincey.

The waterlilies on which you could play a tune.


And the fibre lizard up a tree.

Whorl

After thinking about this project for months, I got down to work and finished it in a frenzy. I am very happy with it.

This is the starting point - a photo of the bark on a paperbark (Melaleuca) at Piney Lakes. Piney Lakes is the venue for Designing Women meetings and I wrote about the meeting in May where we ventured further than our meeting room and took lots of photos.


I printed the photograph on cotton and on silk organza. I layered the cotton print with lightweight fusible Pellon and silk and freemotion stitched, using a subtle variegated thread (Victory Vanilla Beans) and a deeper grey.

I bought the shadow box frame at Thingz. It needed some disassembling and reassembling and there was a disaster with hot glue, but eventually it all came together.

The embroidered cotton is the base layer, separated with a spacer from the organza. I will try for a photo tomorrow - by the time it was assembled the sun had set.

Piney Lakes

Designing Women, the textile group I belong to, meet at Piney Lakes Environmental Education Centre on the second Saturday of every month. The building is a wonderful venue, set in a bushland reserve, but we are usually so engrossed in textile stuff that we don't look at our surroundings.

This month was set aside as "Piney Lakes" day. We were to take our cameras and/or sketchbooks on a walk to explore the reserve. Of course it rained. However, there was a break and we ventured out. It was magical - everything was freshly washed so the colours were intense. We did the short walk along the board walk through the wetlands section, being a bit wary of further showers. These are paperbarks (melaleucas) which are the dominant vegetation in the swampy part.


There is a longer walk, called the Sculpture Walk because of the art works along its length, which actually passes the lake. I love this other walk and made myself a promise to do it again soon.

One of our members, Loraine, has done a course as a Piney Lakes guide and she spoke to us about the area while we waited for the rain to stop. I think we all found that this added to our appreciation of what we were seeing.

We are supposed to develop a textile piece based on our impressions. I took 40 photographs and will have a problem finding one to focus on. This is one possibility.