Some time ago I posted info about my upcoming beading workshops to be held at my property in rural NSW.
I have since found out that the dates for the first weekend workshop are actually the ANZAC Day long weekend, so I have shifted the dates for Bead Embellishment Explorations 1: Brilliant Basics to Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd May, 2010.
See the Events page of my website for more details.
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Maharajah's Fantasy Bloom
I have been working really hard over the last month to complete my latest artwork: “Maharajah’s Fantasy Bloom”. It is my contribution to the ATASDA travelling suitcase exhibition called Maharajah’s Garden, and even the suitcase has a name: Safron! Isn’t that fabulous.
ATASDA (Australian Textile Art and Surface Design Association) hasn’t had a travelling suitcase exhibition for a little while, and this is the first time I’ve made an artwork to include in one of these exhibitions, so I am very excited about it.
My piece took approximately 200 hours to complete, though this does include a small amount of time “wasted” on starting the process… Initially my design was for a needle-felted shape (as seen in the actual work pictured above) that was to be attached to a velvet background. But the needle-felted shape stretched a little too much to fit the maximum size constraints (60 cm x 40 cm) so I had to quickly change my procedure…
I just changed the focus of the needle-felted piece – instead of having a needle-felted shape on a velvet background, I cut my design shape from the velvet, and made a large piece of needle-felted “fabric” to use as my background. The needle felting was done on a large sheet of Solvy (water-soluble stabiliser) which was washed out when the “fabric” was complete.
Once I had attached the velvet shape to the needle-felted background fabric, I attached heavy iron-on interfacing to the back of the felt, and then started beading around the velvet shape. This is the part that took the longest (beading is not a speed sport, after all..), but in the end I was happy with the result.
In the above detail photos, you can see the effect of the needle-felted background a little better. Needle felting (using a needle-felting machine – mine is a Janome) is fabulous fun. It is probably nearly as time-consuming as regular wet felting, but I love how you can build up interesting colour changes in any part of the needle felting that you desire.
I like to add my wool roving in small amounts, often just tiny wisps of wool, to build up the colours and add subtle colour shifts in different areas of the work. It takes time, but it is also a bit like magic, the way it all comes together. If you haven’t yet tried using a needle-felting machine, I can heartily recommend you have a go. They are so much fun!
I used just one bead embellishment technique on this piece: bead couching. I like to couch my beads very thoroughly to give them a really flat and smooth finish within the design. Some beaders will couch their line of beads only every 3-6 beads, but I couch in every space between beads along the whole line. Of course this takes longer, but I much prefer the result.
The Maharajah’s Garden travelling suitcase is available for groups, schools, guilds, or other interested people within Australia. Just go to the ATASDA website (http://www.atasda.org.au) to find out more. The cost is not high – mainly just postage of the suitcase on to its next destination after it leaves you. It even comes with a set of wonderful bunting flags to hang up around your display area to really add extra wow-factor to your display of the artworks from the suitcase.And every contributing artist has created an A3 sheet giving some information about their artwork, including instructions for one of the techniques they have used in their artwork. This makes the whole travelling suitcase a really wonderful resource for schools, or people interested in learning more about textile arts.
The travelling suitcase is available from late March 2010, and will be available to travel for two years. Book it now to make sure you don’t miss out. I’m sure you won’t be sorry!
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