chiatanyadesigns.com.au

I’ve just updated my website (www.chiatanyadesigns.com.au) with information about my 3 weekend retreat workshops for 2010. Go to the events page for details.

These workshops are all on bead embellishment. They are techniques-based, and focus on particular techniques which can all be used for jewellery or textile art of many kinds.

Each retreat is for just 6 participants – 4 residential and 2 non-residential participants. So get in early to avoid disappointment.

The first one is in late April, and is for all skill levels. It is called Bead Embellishment Explorations I: Brilliant Basics.

The second one is in late May, and is for intermediate skill levels. It is called Bead Embellishment Explorations II: “Encrustations – 3D and textural effects.

The third one is in late October, and is for intermediate skill levels. It is called Bead Embellishment Explorations III: Beading the Void.

I am teaching 4 of my beading workshops at the Sydney Bead and Gem Show this year – September 25 – 27. The Show is at Olympic Park, Sydney. Check the Bead and Gem Show’s website for booking info: http://www.beadandgemshow.com.au

Friday 25:  10 am – 1 pm  “Spiral Rope Earrings”  Cost: $70 (includes kit)

Friday 25:  1:30 – 4:30 pm  “Spring Bling Beaded Blossom Brooch”  Cost: $65 (includes kit)

Saturday 26:  12 noon – 4 pm   “St Petersburg Chain Bracelet”   Cost: $80 (includes kit)

Sunday 27:  1:30 – 4:30 pm  “Pillow Bead Pendant”   Cost: $70 (includes kit)

I was thrilled when the editor of Australian Beading magazine asked me to create a Masterclass Project using seed beads for the August 2009 issue. The result is the brooch you see in the  photo above – Beaded Treasure Brooch. The August issue is due out in the middle of the month, so check your local newsagent if you’d like to learn how to make your own brooch like this.

The beading techniques I’ve used in this project are bead couching, peyote stitch bezel, picot edging and regular fringing. It’s all stitched onto fabric with heaving interfacing underneath.

These are just a small sample of the bead embellishment techniques that I offer in the various beading workshops that I teach. If you’d like to learn these and many other techniques, you might like to attend my Fiona’s Fivers Retreat, called Bead Embellishment Explorations. Contact me through my website if you’d like to book your place in this retreat, or would like more information.

This is a bit off topic for my blog, but I just have to tell you how excited I am that my treasured Astro Boy collection will be seen on the ABC TV show Collectors this Friday (June 5th, 2009) at 8 pm.

The film crew came to our house in late March to shoot the segment, and I haven’t seen the finished result yet. They were here for about 4 hours, and the edited result will be around 3 minutes long, so goodness knows what they’ll have kept in the finished piece, but I’m really looking forward to checking it out, nevertheless! It is quite possible I may have made a bit of a ninny of myself….but that’s OK. It was such fun to do the segment, and it is always a pleasure to do some show-and-tell with my Astro Boy stuff.

I have loved Astro Boy since I was just 7 years old – and I remember seeing the very first black-and-white cartoon version on TV.  It took just one episode for me to be hooked! There’s something very appealing about a cute boy robot who can save the planet, yet still be emotionally fragile at times.

I like to collect the weird Astro Boy bits and pieces more than the expensive stuff made especially for collecting. My most  treasured Astro Boy possession is my mismatched pair of children’s toilet slippers from Japan….. I suspect I am the only Astro Boy collector who has a pair of these! If you miss the show on telly, or don’t live in Australia, go to the ABC TV’s website (www.abc.net.au) after Friday and you should be able to download the show to check it out. Collectors is one of my favourite TV shows – I look forward to it every week. So you can imagine how thrilled I am to know I’ll be on an episode too.

I taught my two-day “Curvaceous Squares Quilt” workshop again over the weekend – this time in Canberra. The workshop participants were mostly members of Canberra Quilters – a group that I belong to and have great affection for, partly because they have been so supportive of my quilting journey for nearly 7 years.

Two of my workshop samples are  pictured above. Raspberry Lime Splice was featured in Down Under Quilts magazine, issue 128 (January 2009) as a project.

Every time I teach this workshop I marvel at the creativity of my students. My Curvaceous Squares technique is fairly forgiving, in that the piecing and freehand curved cutting don’t have to be perfect to create a successful quilt. But to see how each student comes up with something so special, and has fun doing it too, is one of the greatest gifts a teacher can receive.

I am also really inspired by the clever variations that students come up with in this class. I have been planning to write a book about my technique, and I can see that when I do get down to writing it I will have plenty of wonderful quilts – made by my students – to showcase in the Gallery section and also to demonstrate many possible variations.

So today, I am smiling big time just thinking about how joyful it is to teach something I love so much myself. It is such a pleasure to share my passions with others in this way. Fiona very happy!

 

Here’s a sneak preview of my beading project for the June issue of Australian Beading magazine (due out mid-June).  Kelly (the magazine editor) has given me permission to talk about my projects that will appear in the magazine – thanks Kelly for allowing me to share some of my designs on my blog.

I think the name of my project will be slightly different in the magazine, and they’ll have taken their own photo – which will be better than mine, but you can at least see how the necklace looks.

It is made using square stitch (for those of you who aren’t beaders, that is a traditional off-loom beadweaving technique, using beading needles and thread). I’ve used size 9 and size 11 seed beads (Delicas) in this necklace.

I don’t like to be drab at any time, and especially in winter. So I designed this necklace to be a colour pick-me-up for the cooler months.

This desire for vibrant colour in winter goes back partly to the time I lived in Tokyo (1985-1987), and saw how dark and drab (to my eyes) the fashions were there in winter. I made it my mission back then to wear as many bright colours every day as I could. I got lots of stares, but that happens to all gaijin in Japan anyway, so I just considered myself a sort-of side show while I lived there. It was fun!

Got an email from my friend Erica the other day (check out Erica’s blog here: http://creativedabbling.blogspot.com). She went to a lovely quilt show at Eastwood (in Sydney) last weekend, and what do you think she saw? A gorgeous quilt made from my project “Raspberry Lime Splice Quilt” in the January issue (no. 128) of Down Under Quilts magazine. Wow! Erica had taken some pics at the quilt show, so she emailed a pic of the quilt made from my project – I was so impressed by it.

I don’t know who made the quilt, but Erica said the maker had even acknowledged my project on her quilt label. How fantastic is that?! All quilt designers are thrilled when people who make their designs think to acknowledge the designer too – so whoever you are, not only is your quilt beautiful, but a huge thank you for citing me as the project designer. Very much appreciated.

This is only the second quilt project I’ve had published, though I’ve had many beading/jewellery projects published over the last year or so. It is really heartening to see that someone I don’t even know, and who has not attended one of my workshops, was able to create her own Curvaceous Squares Quilt following my instructions in the magazine.  I wonder if anyone else out there in quilter-land will have a go.

Makes me so happy to think that someone liked my project enough to have a go – and make something that is really beautiful too.  I am smiling big time right now!

Hello all you readers out in blog-land….. Some of my friends have been working hard to convince me to write a blog. I do like to have a chat with friends, so a blog seems like a great idea. But my time on the internet is limited, so at first I didn’t think I could commit to maintaining a blog. I know for sure I won’t be adding to it every day (sorry!), but I hope that  if you’re interested in what I have to say and show you with my photos that you’ll come back and visit again soon. Some photos may appear cropped, but if you click on the image you should get the full photo.

Fiona Hammond

For now, let me introduce myself. My name is Fiona Hammond and I live in rural NSW (Australia). I am happily married, but have no kids. After many years of different careers, most of which I loved at the time, I now work as a designer and tutor in the field of textiles and jewellery.

One of my current passions is beading onto textiles - generally to create contemporary quilts or jewellery. My other life-long passion is teaching, so having the opportunity to share my techniques and designs with students in my workshops is a joyous experience for me.

In the last year or so I’ve also had some very exciting experiences with some of my entries into various exhibitions and competitions. As a member of several associations (quilting, beading and textile arts), I try to create items to put in the various annual exhibitions of these associations. It is a delight to see one’s work being displayed with many other wonderful items in these exhibitions, and the show-and-tell aspect of this certainly appeals to me.

I’ve never expected to actually win anything with my entries, but in recent times I have been most fortunate to receive some awards and prizes too. I have to admit to being a bit ‘girly’ and ‘giggly’ on such occasions - to have one’s works rewarded with a prize or certificate is just soooo exciting! It can take me days to ‘come down’ from a bout of excitement like this.

Turquoise Treasure

Here are two of my recent beaded neckpieces: “Turquoise Treasure” and “Nature’s Treasures”. Each piece took around 150 hours to create, and both involve stitching small seed beads (mainly size 11s in round and cylinder shapes) onto fabric.

I don’t like using the ‘normal’ backing for my pieces – the plain white stiff non-woven material that many beaders use - mainly because you’ll see small white glimpses between the beads in some places where your beads can’t cover the backing completely. Not my scene.

Nature's Treasures

Instead, I figured out that using heavy iron-on interfacing adhered to luscious fabrics like silks and satins really adds to the overall effect of the piece. My technique is more time-consuming, but I feel it is worth it because I like the final finish of my pieces. Instead of using Ultrasuede on the back – which is hard to get in Australia and fearfully expensive when you do find it – I use more fabric and interfacing.

Both pieces have cabochons surrounded by peyote stitch bezels, plus lots of beads stitched down with either beaded backstitch or bead couching. I seem to just be ‘in the zone’ when I create pieces like this – it is rather like meditation.

“Turquoise Treasure” was selected as the Grand Champion Craft Exhibit at this year’s Royal Canberra Show (February 2009), and it also won first prize in the threadwork category of the Beading section at the Sydney Royal Easter Show (April 2009). And I didn’t realise till I went to pick it up this week that it had also received an Award of Excellence – a rosette and a medal – crikey!

Last month, I entered “Nature’s Treasures” in the Goulburn Art Award (run by my local art gallery – Goulburn Regional Art Gallery). I was stunned (but also very excited) when it won joint first place in the 3D category. The two judges were Ben Quilty (who’s won various prizes for his paintings, including the 2009 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, and his portrait of singer Jimmy Barnes was a finalist in this year’s Archibald Prize) and Helen Maxwell, director of the Helen Maxwell Gallery in Canberra.

As if this win was not exciting enough, the prize is an exhibition at Goulburn Regional Art Gallery in December 2010. Of course I will share this exhibition with the other joint winner of the 3D category – Gayle Stockley, whose piece “Burnt Out” is a striking artwork created with burnt tree limbs forming the outline of a house – an eerie statement on the devastating fires in Victoria earlier this year, and Tina Milson who won the 2D category with her photograph “Untitled”. The combination of these three styles of artworks should make for a very exciting and diverse exhibition in 2010.

I am already planning the pieces I’d like to make for this exhibition, so I’ll keep you posted on my progress with these. I’d like to create one or two neckpieces along the lines of my winning piece, but I also plan to create some sculptural pieces using beads and textiles. My brain is already whirling with ideas….now if I can just get a good amount of sleep to refresh me enough to get started….