More Geek Hat

I finished the stencilling.

Then I made a flag by ironing vliesofix to fabric and cutting out the reversed letters.

Ironed them on, then stitched around them.



Tomorrow I need to enlist Kevin's aid to cut some of the computer bits smaller and drill some holes so I can sew them to the hat.

Mad Hatter Competition

The City of Melville is running a Mad as a Hatter competition in conjunction with the Textile Art Expo at the end of the month.

I have entered two hats. This is the start of Geek Hat.


Base: recycled ladies bowling hat.


Embellishments: stencils and recycled computer parts.

More progress pics to come.

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.

Lots of money for seemingly little effort

My followup appointment with the hand surgeon was for 2.30 pm. He had been on time when I visited last Monday, so I fed the parking meter for 40 minutes, thinking it should be plenty of time.

Wrong. It seemed all his followups were scheduled for the same time, so I had to feed the meter again. The City of Perth obviously does well from the patients of specialists - street parking costs $2.90 hour in West Perth. I got to see him just before the meter ran out a second time. Total parking cost: $4.90. Not happy about that.

Then I was handed the bill for the surgery. Over $1100. I will get some of that back from Medicare and HBF (our health insurance fund) but we will still be quite a lot out of pocket. Fortunately the cost of the day hospital was completely covered by HBF. The anesthetist (whose bill I am yet to receive) fee will also be covered by a combination of Medicare and HBF.

Last Tuesday the surgeon probably operated on a dozen people. He apparently does surgery on 2 or 3 days a week - say 25 operations. Most would be a bit more complex than mine, but would consequently incur larger bills.

I realise that he has had to have had many years of training and that it costs plenty to run a consulting room and associated staff. But he must earn in a week more than our allocated pension pays both of us in a year. Nice work.

And the assessment? My finger is healing really well, with 90% mobility. No pain except if I bump it, so it needs to be protected with a bandaid when I am working. The thumb injection has not as yet had any noticeable effect, so I have another follow up appointment in late January. The City of Perth will make more money from me then.

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.

Brainstorming Fabric Books

I ran a workshop for the Contemporary Quilt Group today on display methods for bits and pieces of textiles - samples, exchanged blocks, journal quilts, ATCs, all the stuff that gets stuffed into a plastic bag and shoved in a cupboard.

While there are lots of different ways the question of displaying textile pieces can be approached I decided to focus on using the structure of a book as a vehicle. (This was the impetus for my Aries book. I had to have a finished sample, and I had had those blocks for 5 years!)

I had lots of books and magazines to help stimulate ideas. I supplied all materials and equipment and obviously thought of almost everything - but one group wanted (not available) plasticine :(

The members were divided into 3 groups and each group was given a couple of sheets of butcher paper on which to write brainstormed ideas. Here are some of the results.

Liz came up with some great ideas.

Then each group was asked to make a model of the display method they had chosen. It is interesting that two groups chose skewers (perhaps influenced by the Aries book?) but their solutions were quite different. The models were made from paper so they had to consider how different the end result would be if fabric were used instead.

This group decided to make an interesting basic structure on which the pieces of textile work could be displayed.


This group used a similar idea, but focused on interesting connections.

The third group decided that there needed to be room for expansion, so additional "pages" could be added.


I think the workshop was very successful and helped spark ideas for the future.

Finished

the Aries book today and I'm pleased with it.

First task today was to stitch on the binding for the cover. This was NOT easy - not only were there two layers of fabric plus wadding plus Timtex, both fabric layers had fusible web on them. The needle kept gunking up, the thread broke often and there were heaps of missed stitches. It was finished eventually, though there were a couple of needle changes, lots of needle cleaning, plenty of unpicking and the occasional swear word. Here the cover is ready to have the holes cut in the spine
and here it is finished.


I painted these skewers to use to hold the pages together

and made machine cord to tie it all together.



Here is the finished book, from the top and the side though still without cord.

I will do that tonight.

Good progress

My finger has not stopped me at all! I still have little feeling in it, but I have no pain, so I spent the day fiddling.

I have almost finished the Aries Challenge book.

I completed the pages early this morning, then free machined the cover piece. I printed an acknowledgement page on fabric with a comic Aries pic I found somewhere years ago. Since I don't know where it came from, I won't show it here. This will be on the inside back cover.


I digitised and stitched out "the ARIES book" on the front cover, attacked it with the soldering iron, then sandwiched it with backing and two pieces of Timtex.


I have attached a binding to the cover piece which needs to be stitched down, then I have to make some buttonholes and it's finished. Should get it done tomorrow easy peasy, even though I have to take an hour or so to help Kevin collect some computers. Not a biggie - I owe him lots for all the running around yesterday after me.

Pointing to the spot

The purple arrow indicates where I got the cortisone jab that will hopefully alleviate the pain in my thumb joint that occurs when I do much handsewing or writing. The other spot is where the cannula was inserted. Quite a bruise building up there.


There is another arrow on this hand, but the dressing hides it. I am supposed to keep this hand elevated so I am typing with only one hand. I had both general and local anasthesia. The local hasn't worn off yet, so there is no pain. No feeling in the finger tip either.