So slack

I haven't posted for nearly a week. No excuse either.

We went to the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition yesterday morning. There were some very interesting pieces. Kevin has a series of photos on the family blog.

I loved the wagyl made of knitted wire that twined through a group of trees and was particularly taken with the seashells made of felt. They were nestled amongst the rocks of the groyne and fit beautifully into the landscape. I don't know who made them because the kiosk that sold the catalogues wasn't open. We also didn't get to see the sculptures inside the Surf Club, as that didn't open till 9am either, so I don't know what else we missed.

I've been tagged

Erica has tagged me so I guess I need to respond.

These are the rules...
1. When tagged, place the name of the person and URL on your blog.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write 7 things about yourself.
4. Name 7 of your favorite bloggers.
5. Send e-mail letting those bloggers know they have been tagged.

Here are 7 things about me:

1. I am a champion procrastinator. Almost anything will serve as an excuse for not getting down to whatever I need to do - uni essay (fortunately long in the past), exhibition item, workshop sample . . . Cleaning the toilet, sweeping up leaves, doing the probably unnecessary washing are all excuses not to buckle down.

2. With a deadline looming I become more creative. Whatever ideas I had tend to be discarded or modified and a new concept demands attention. Unfortunately these ideas are often too complex to carry out in the available time!

3. My favourite time waster is reading, though the computer comes a close second.

4. I am still going to water aerobics and trying to do 10000 steps a day. Not too successful with the steps.

5. I love cats, but have not yet found one to take the place of Squeek who died at 17 and a half years of age a couple of years ago.

6. I am currently spending a lot of time on the Melville Community Textile Art Project. The deadline is March 28th - see item 2 above. Fortunately I am just an assistant: Juliet and Iris have to come up with the ideas.

7. I have just unearthed a quilt top that resulted from an internet swap in 1996 (or 1995 - I think I still have the details somewhere). I will put on some borders and display it at the Scquilters' Retreat in May. Could be the oldest UFO!

I am supposed to tag 7 other people. I mostly lurk on other people's blogs so I hope I will be forgiven for tagging Annie, Andrea, Brenda, Dijanne, Linda, Maureen and Pam .

This post has taken me ages - I hope I don't get tagged again any time soon!!

Progress

on the panels for the Melville project. I needed to hand sew a backing patch to three of the pieces on the blue panel to stop the Wagyl print showing through. I finished that, then pinned the fabric I cut out yesterday to the two panels. Juliet is going to bring some of the invisible thread the project has been using to the DW Group meeting tomorrow.

I finished just in time to shower ready for the annual gathering of female teachers and ex-teachers from John Curtin College of the Arts (formerly John Curtin Senior High School) for International Women's Day. It was as enjoyable as ever to catch up with ex-colleagues. It is noticeable that more and more of them are joining the ranks of us retirees - I hope that Maria will keep it going even when she retires - or find someone else to carry on.

Working . .

The background fabric piece for the fan is finished. I cut out a window of paper to look at it and I think it's really good. Monoprinting the organza overlay hasn't worked so well so I will have another go. I have starting the stitching for the top layer and so far all is well.

I finished writing the instructions for the workshop project on Saturday and went to OfficeWorks to photocopy them and the workshop notes. Also did some photocopying of images to try a technique in the latest Cloth Paper Scissors magazine of using transfer dye to transfer photocopies to fabric. Don't know when I 'll get around to that!

Then I went to Juliet's to pick up two of the project panels and the fabric she has dyed for the Wagyl pieces. She found some plastic webbing and it has worked so well as a resist for Genesis dyes. The fabric is a polyester so it can be cut with a soldering iron so the edges are sealed and don't fray.


When I came home I got right into it. I cleaned the outdoor glass table which gets really dusty, Kevin found me a large piece of particle board for protection and I was away. It was a bit fiddly pinning the pattern to the fabric to ensure it wouldn't slip, but the cutting was a piece of cake. Now I have to stitch the cut pieces to the back of each panel with invisible thread.

I can see a bit of multitasking happening over the weekend.

Getting down to it

I have discarded all my previous exercises for the Fanning Creativity exhibition to be held in July in Brisbane.

Today I did several different monoprints on some silk dupion and silk organza. It's starting to look good. Tomorrow I will do some more. This will be the background.

I have drafted the design that I intend to free motion embroider as an overlay.

I was panicking that the deadline (end of February) had passed so I emailed Janet de Boer. A very gracious response - no problems, deadline whenever.

I have established my own deadline: the fans will be in the mail next week.

Workshop Sample

On Saturday I am doing a workshop for the DW Group about using computer printed images on fabric. I was asked to develop a project, rather than just having people make samples.

I have done several demonstrations/lectures on the techniques before, but this is the first one where people will be using their own images to print on fabric. We will be using both transfer sheets and prepepared fabric sheets.

The logistics are a bit scary. I will have 2 laptops with printers attached, but I am not sure that I can let people loose on them without supervision. I have tried to minimise fiddle time by asking for images to be emailed to me so I can adjust them ready to print. Only a third of the group has done this. I also asked for images to be sent by snail mail so I had time to scan and modify. No-one has taken up this offer.

I really hope that lots of people don't turn up with stuff on Saturday that needs to be scanned and modified. Printing is easy (though always keep your fingers crossed). So is modifying images, but that takes a bit more time. I have some of my own images ready to go just in case.

Anyway, this is the sample I have prepared. It's a basic shopping bag, but a bit more upmarket than the generic green bags. I took the photo in Mauritius in 2005.

4D Embroidery Software on a Mac

We bought a new MacBook before I went to New Zealand in September last year. The justification was to make it easy to connect to wireless hot spots to access the Internet. It had proved too difficult to set up my PC laptop for wireless. Once we got back the MacBook was rather on the shelf.

However it has an Intel duo core processor which means it can run both Mac and Windows programs. Fine. But you have to decide how you are going to do this. There are various programs, some free and some expensive. I asked a question on an Internet mailing list and got a heap of replies from people who are using Macs to run the 4D embroidery program.

As a result we installed Parallels and I then installed the 4D Embroidery Pro programs. Success. Everything works fine, except 4D Sketch which requires a graphics tablet. The tablet that came with the 3D Sketch program only has a Windows driver. I did a lot of googling and couldn't even find the model for the tablet on the Wacom pages, so I emailed customer service and got a really prompt reply (Well done, Wacom!)

I downloaded the suggested driver but couldn't get the tablet to work on either the Mac or Windows side. Our own computer guru thought that the problem could be that the tablet just wasn't designed to work with Macs. Maybe a new tablet that WAS? I rang the major Apple reseller and the guy there was gloomy about the prospect of it all coming together.

Today I went to another, closer retailer and bought a new graphics pad. I was assured that if I couldn't get it to work I could take it back.

It has taken about three hours in all, and quite a bit of a work around, but now the tablet works with the program. I have written myself notes so I can replicate the accomplishment!

Stamping Update

I did another set of stamping samples for the project. The present thinking is that stamping heat activated disperse dyes directly onto the panels is fraught with danger, so I did some to try behind the panels.

I used a black dye and the same stamp, but tried to get a more consistent application. I really didn't like the paper when I had finished - it was very patchy and the stamp edges far too definite. However, I ironed it onto the organza. Maybe my heat press doesn't get hot enough (though it was hot enough to burn my arm when I was trying to position the paper and fabric). It took more than a minute and a half to get a distinct print. I also found it hard to manoeuvre the A3 size litho paper and the half metre of organza. I made two prints with the press, then grabbed my homemade ironing board which is a bit bigger than A3 and heated up the old non-steam iron. It took less than 30 seconds to print the rest of the half metre with the iron set on cotton.

So I did the second piece and took the bits around to Juliet's. The prints were less patchy when placed behind the panels, and back to back even better. BUT the total effect was to dull the area where the Wagyl is to be, rather than make it a feature.

Back to the drawing board. Iris called in and the consensus was that the stamped fabric just wasn't going to work. So then we spent nearly an hour playing with various combinations of printed and plain fabric but nothing appealed to all of us. The girls are going to have a think and I have the weekend off to do something else.

I am playing on the computer with a series of photos for possible printing on fabric for a piece for Stitched and Bound. Also came up with an idea for Quilt West. Need to spread out my black and white fabrics for that one. As usual I will be pushing to meet the deadlines.

Comments and Spam

I've been hijacked.

I hardly ever get any comments though I know people are reading the blog, so it was a surprise to see comments on my last three postings. The first one (from Linda) was real. The rest of the comments are all spam.

If you are a legitimate reader please don't click on the links in the comments - they will take you to a dodgy software site which starts loading a so-called spyware protection program without your permission. Ask me how I know! We use a Mac so it was relatively easy to get rid of it, but I suspect a Windows machine might be more vulnerable.

I tried to find a way to report the spammers to Blogger and sent some objectionable content notices. I don't know if anything will come of that. If it keeps up I will disable "allow comments" - reluctantly, because I do like getting feedback, even rare as it is!

Innovative Stitches

I have been invited to join this Embroidery Guild group, so I went along to the meeting today.

It was fun. The theme was 1969 and we were asked to bring ephemera that related to that time. I found a photo of me holding Helen, who was born in November 1969. I remember the dress I am wearing in the photo - gold polka dots on white with a gold colour collar and front facing. Isn't the collar amazing?

I also found a copy of a Time magazine from 1969 that we had saved.


It was very interesting to read it. The air travel revolution was obviously just starting - there are 7 full page ads for various airlines.

This is one of them - so politically incorrect nearly 40 years later. Quote: "we know when you'd like ....... your cigarette lit ....."

But also surprisingly, there is only one ad for cigarettes - Peter Stuyvesant in full colour on the back cover.

Another interesting aspect is that the magazine has very little advertising - at least in relation to today's publications. There are 55 pages in a 84 page publication without any ads at all. Possibly another 10 pages have ads on part of the page only. I think I should get a current issue and compare. Could be very interesting.

We were asked to make a doll that reflected us in 1969. I think mine will be pregnant!