By sion, on July 31st, 2006%
woot. Colour’s not entirely right on this, stupid flash. It’ll do for the time being tho.
brown multi (one of my very favourite “holy” pieces, not much of it left), blue and green hand dyes, and a bunch of commercial fabrics fussycut & discharged and/or painted. Got to do a bunch of stitching before I add anything else – bobbinwork vines, grasses on the bower, fussing at edges etc – then I’ll be fiddling with the umptyump leaves & flowers I made last weekend, then adding the birds etc. Somewhere in there I have to make a decision about how I’m attaching the side panels I guess, because there’ll be some overlap.
I won’t, however, be doing much of it over the next few days, since I have an inspection on Wed and those steenkin boxes and unwanted furniture are all still out on the balcony … I hate renting.
By sion, on July 26th, 2006%
 Spent a chunk of time at the folks’ place this weekend, helping them with some computer stuff, printing yet more show flyers, etc. Dyed some fabrics (see some of the blues to the right; the greens are still steeping). Frustrated myself rather a lot trying to get the stupid A3 HP to print on silk – it’s apparently the only inkjet in creation which doesn’t have a thickness lever or whatever, and is in any account incapable of taking any media thicker than light cover. Bah! We did get one silk print for mum from her Epson instead (after another exercise in frustrating delay, since dad’s mental about ink costs, so the epson doesn’t get used very often, so of course it was blocked, which meant wasting a lot of ink and a few hours of dad’s time to fix …), but it doesn’t do A3. Oh well.
 Did a bunch more flora for the challenge hanging. Christmas bell blossoms (haven’t done stems etc yet), morning glories (vines will probably be couched bobbin thread), a couple of natives with flowers VERY similar to morning glories (Polymeria calycina, Ipomoea cairica & indica), and marsdenia (vines as per morning glories). The marsdenia (and maybe morning glories) are for the left side, separating the nesty panel from the centre section. It has wee white flowers a bit like jasmine which I’ll probably do either as ribbon embroidery or dimensional silk.
  
Also did some experimenting with silk, a product called Heat ‘n’ Seal, and a soldering iron. At this stage all for what mum’s doing, not sure if I’ll use it. Very chuffed at how the gumleaves turned out, and we did some playing with morning glories and flannel flowers as well. Need to get a photo of the gumleaves now she’s painted them; Dad reckons people will think she cheated & used real ones she’s done such a good job. I also made her a very iridescent dragonfly, mostly because I bolloxed one for myself & then made it all fantasy, from the fused silk and some fused iridescent chiffon & crystal organza for the wings.
By sion, on July 21st, 2006%
I’ve been trying to figure out which box of assorted threads to buy for weeks now. Today I decided the hell with it and bought my three favourite sets, pretty much doubling my Fancyass Threads collection – and since it turned out Connie had a secret hoard of my favourite Fabrico pens, 8 of them as well. I feel rich!
 Tonight I did the other reeds I’d been considering, with the Holy Handdye cattail thingies. Went fairly quickly for a change. Love the thingies, eh about the leaves, but since they’ll be behind other greenery I’m not too concerned.
By sion, on July 20th, 2006%
today’s effort. Approximately ten hours’ work. I was definitely singing the BORED NOW song today heh. Either I was quicker with the critters for some reason, or they’re inherently less tedious to fiddle with for hours at a time, because they certainly didn’t SEEM to take so long.
Neither the two anti-fatigue mats I’m trialling or the funky-ugly rubber shoes I bought the other day are preventing the weird new leg numbness. They help some, but the right leg still goes completely numb if I stand still for more than a few minutes. Doing lots of pacing and boogeying-on-the-spot while I work. It’s a very disconcerting feeling, and bloody annoying. I keep expecting the leg to fail, but it seems to only be some outer layer of muscle (directly under the skin?) that’s affected, not any that actually hold you up. Seeing the doc on Friday, hopefully she’ll have some input (although mum has the same issue and the same doctor, so mebbe not).
anyway, whinge whine blah meh.
Here are the reeds with details, and a trial placement of reeds & orchids with streambed. The reeds may well end up with cattails amongst them, we shall see – I do have a luscious coppery red piece of Holy Hand-dye chosen just in case.
By sion, on July 19th, 2006%
I had some fool idea that the flora would be quicker than the fauna … 4-odd hours later, I’ve got ONE little bunch of reeds assembled, no details on yet. Yeep.
 
By sion, on July 17th, 2006%
as usual, every time I go looking for something I get sidetracked down a multitude of intriguing alleys. I did however stick mostly to my task today thanks to the discovery of plantnet. Ultra cool – you can search for plants by area, and by that I mean you can search by state, region, council region, national park etc, town name (and variable radius) OR lat/long. Plus there are other searches, like all the swamp plants in the region say, or all the lichens, or whatever. Very impressed at how well it works (in fact, I just emailed them to say so).
Anyway, have I ever mentioned how very much I love botanical illustrations? Love, a lot. Looking at these has given me some interesting ideas for … something. Not sure what yet, but probably a series of wallhangings or something. Who knows if it’s got legs, but the pictures in my head are pretty …
I’m hoping that faunanet, which I just now found (naturally, AFTER including a stupid “don’t suppose there’s a fauna equivalent …” query in the email), is as useful …
if not, other tabs I have open include:
By sion, on July 16th, 2006%
okay doonah cover made and on her majesty’s bed, so I’m playing with the wallhanging again before I hit the sack. Draped a piece of flannelette over a corkboard as a temp design “wall” and put the assembled critters etc on it in a rough composition. The board isn’t quite big enough but eh, I wanted to see how they looked together. I’m surprised at how well the bower (bleach-discharged bracken print) looks. I wasn’t at all satisfied with it, and thought I’d have to redo or do a lot of embellishing & stitching to make it work, but it’s fine once it’s in context.
I’ll admit to being rather pleased with it thus far, even if I am having trouble with a stupid magpie.
By sion, on July 15th, 2006%
One of these days I’ll get used to the BUSYBUSYBUSY … whew, relax before I catch up on that other stu … awcrapBUSYBUSYBUSY rhythm of my life I guess, but meantime I’ll continue to grumble about it occasionally. Perhaps the semi-quiet periods – especially the ones where I don’t have the energy or inspiration to do anything remotely useful – are better thought of as fallow times than just wasted opportunities.
It has always seemed odd to me though that when I’ve got my lazy bum kicked into gear and I’m all fired up and organised and trying to be totally focused on a project, umptyump other things crowd around like ants to a picnic demanding their share of the goodies. The other things are rarely things I resent doing or anything, and in fact are often things I enjoy, but they’re still distractions from the prime directive of the moment. 5 weeks or so deadline on this wallhanging, which is fine, but:
- the “should take you an hour or so to do” graphics project I agreed to a fortnight ago turns out on receipt to be rather more complicated and extensive than that (ordinarily no problem, just shitty timing)
- someone who buys my jewellery reasonably often dithered too long about a necklace & missed out, so ordered a replica through C. She’s a beader herself, maybe I should just sell her the special beads? heh
- C’s after me to do more jewellery for the shop, because it’s looking a bit sparse
- because this other stuff is going OI OI OI!, I’m feeling increasingly guilty about the stuff for el’s room that still isn’t finished
- the ex is on his way down for four days, and sounds grumpy and headachey (yay fun), and will probably take a crapzillion photos of our beautiful daughter against the backdrop of waist-high drifts of fabric and the playroom she keeps destructobotting behind me as I try to organise it (c’mon, teeny violin for me!)
Meanwhile, it’s raining for real, actual wet stuff from the sky, so it’s dark and wet and not conducive to painting & discharging fabric, plus it’s all gloomy inside. Upside is that it’s not as cold as it has been lately, go figgah.
 Also meanwhile, I’m kind of at the point where I need to be looking for flowers to put in this wallhanging. I did find a bunch when I was doing the exhibition flyer (at left) so with any luck some of them will prove suitable for applique design.
And I think I’m going to make myself feel better by at least knocking up el’s doonah cover for tonight. Seeya!
By sion, on July 15th, 2006%
this panel will be the left side border. The suggestions of “nests” were discharged with bleach painted onto a bronzey HD with an old nailbrush. The eggs were cut from various scraps of heavy wedding satin (the luscious eggshell-sheen stuff) and fixed in place before painting the shadows & details. From top to bottom they are fairly accurate renderings of: superb fairy wren, kookaburra, sacred kingfisher, mapgie, and willie wagtail eggs. The magpie egg is a bit dark, although not as dark as this pic makes out.
I’m pretty happy with the wrens. The boy isn’t as glittery as he seems – the paint I used for these fabrics has a metallic sheen which flares bizarrely under the flash but is quite subtle in the flesh. I love the girl, she worked perfectly as intended.
By sion, on July 14th, 2006%
To the left is the streambed (unfinished) that will form the right-hand border & provide a home for the frogs …
who have some details now, as does the kingfisher:
and here are the Satin Bowerbirds (female on left, male on right – he’s actually iridescent blue-black):
By sion, on July 13th, 2006%
So the local quilt club’s bi-annual (biennial? every 2 yrs, I can never remember for sure which is which) show is coming up in a couple of months, and naturally there’s a challenge. Since the theme for the show is “Spring in the Valley”, that’s the theme for the challenge as well. Wallhanging, max 20″ X 30″ (any orientation), open techniques.
Painted some fabric the other day, collected a bunch of photos of local wildlife etc, and I’ve just started my fabric collage tonight. Still not sure where I’ll take it, but for now I’m just getting started on critters:
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I’ll get my fabric pens back off mum tomorrow so I can add a little detailing & guidelines for stitching, and then there’ll be more detail added with the sewing machine once the whole thing’s assembled.
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