Conquering the Sketchbook

I am petrified of drawing or painting in any form...and have now decided to try and conquer this fear. Yesterday while waiting for my daughter to finish her cricket lesson (Yes, my daughter plays cricket.....), I took pencil crayons and tried a bit of scribbling....... My starting point was the colours of the fabric I have recently hand dyed - 3 primary colours - red, blue and yellow, and 3 secondary colours - purple, green and orange.

The first photo is a design of a quilt I want to make...simple but effective.

I love curved flowing lines - they remind me of my Burmese cat's whiskers......

Green Fabric and Words for 2011

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the Trip Round the World quilt I am doing as a raffle quilt...Well, it is still not finished. I was preparing to pin the 3 layers together so I can quilt it when I discovered that the backing fabric is too small. So....back to the shop we went and bought a wonderful green and yellow fabric. This photo below does not do justice to the fabric.......

The moral of this story is "Patience" and "Perseverance". It is very easy to get frustrated and impatient because things are not happening as fast as I'd like them to.

More fabric dyeing

Fabric dyeing is rapidly becoming a fascination of mine. Here are some photos of the results.

In this photo the fabric is waiting in front of the washing machine to be washed.

This is a photo of my second attempt - the colours are much better than the first attempt.

The next exercise I had to attempt was to dye pieces of fabric using 2 complementary colours ie Red and Green, Blue and Orange, and Yellow and Purple. I also learnt that the stronger the Soda Ash solution, the brighter the colours. These dyed fabrics are much brighter than the first 2 attempts at dyeing single colours.

This is a photo of the Red and Green fabric. I am battling to mix the dye to make a green other than olive green. It is getting a bit frustrating......

This purple and yellow fabric is quite bright - I wonder where I can use this fabric.....


This orange and blue fabric is also quite bright. You can see the neutral colours appearing where the 2 colours have mixed.

In this last photo I used up all the left over dye..... These fabrics are almost too pretty to use.

My kids and I also dyed some t-shirts. They are still being washed and photographed. My son David has helped a lot with the rinsing out and ironing of the fabric.

Trip Round the World - version 4

One of my favorite quilt patterns is the "Trip Round the World" pattern. I am making one for my Mom as a raffle quilt for her church. Just for fun, I put together the top and bottom. All I need to do now is pin and quilt the 3 layers together. To pin the layers of the quilt together I need to iron the clean washing - or I can just move it. The washing is on the table that I use to pin quilts together........

The first photo is of the quilt top and the 2nd photo is of the backing.

More Fabric Landscapes - A trade

A very good friend of mine lives in Germany, and I would love Ann Johnston's book " Color by Accident: Low-Water Immersion Dyeing" so..... As Amazon won't post books to South Africa, I have to make another plan.....I'll leave you to guess the trade......meanwhile a photo of my latest Shweshwe landscape

Forays into Fabric Dyeing

In past posts I have spoken of the City and Guilds quilting course I am doing (far too slowly at this stage.....). Well, the next step is to learn to dye my own fabrics. What an adventure and huge learning curve.  I am supposed to be doing Low Water Immersion Dying. That's not what came out :LOL  The colours are too solid. I am pretty impressed with the colours of the dyed fabric though.... (The yellows have come out a bit brown in the photo - I'll take more photos when it stops raining and the sun is out - it could take days :LOL)

So.... round number 2 is "on the boil". This is great fun. The internet is also a wonderful place - what did we do without it? It's so easy to research what went wrong and how to fix it.

Dancing the Happy Dance

I received wonderful news last week - an art gallery in Durban has offered to exhibit some of my fabric landscapes and fabric postcards as part of the 8th Annual Affordable Art Show at the Artspace Gallery in Durban.. I am so excited that I can' find the words to describe it. In a funny kind of way, this is a nice counter to feeling my work is not quite good enough!

Here are some photos of the work that is being exhibited:

Market Day

Saturday morning is market day where we stay...... I took my camera along this morning.....

Look at the wonderful hats from Tibet - it is definitely on the list of purchases.It is made from flour sacks or rice sacks - not sure which one.

The remaining photos are works of art from my favorite Zimbabwean artists - everything from a painting to welded metal African animals.... The African Warthog is definitely on the list of purchases.......

Shweshwe Landscape Series

It would seem I have stumbled on a series.... It would seem that I am developing a passion for making Shweshwe landscapes....You can use exactly the same fabrics in 100's of different ways... No two landscapes are the same. This is the Third in the series....

Shweshwe landscapes

The end of the school year has sneaked  up on us and it's time to make gifts for the teachers who have given so much of their time and energy educating our children. What gifts shall we give? Fortunately, it is fairly simple to whip up a couple of fabric landscapes. I might have mentioned before that the manufacturers of Shweshwe fabric introduced a new range of bright almost luminous colours this year. It's a stunning range. I LOVE working with it and have made the following 2 fabric landscapes as gifts for 2 of the teachers - they are similar but slightly different:

Children's Creativity

My daughter has a wonderful art teacher at school this year. She is really nurturing the kids' talent. This week the school put on a major art exhibition this week where at least 1 piece of art for every child was exhibited. The first photo is of the entrance to the exhibition. Isn't it beautiful?

 

The next photo is of my daughter's painting of her new electric guitar. She does Art Club every week and is blossoming.

Fabric Postcard

The other day a wonderful postcard arrived totally unexpectedly in the post....... On the back it says "Dear Leigh. Lets hope you are now "on the up" like this hot air balloon". It was a wonderful surprise. Thanks Miriam.

The Happy Things Project

I read the following article by Lynn Krawczyk:
http://fibraartysta.blogspot.com/2010/10/return-of-happy-things-project.html

What a wonderful idea - I have been inspired. It's so good to focus on the positive, happy things in our lives. It is so easy to become bogged down and trapped by the daily grind of life.

I am going to go out and document the positive happy things in my life. The only difference is that I am going to post once a week (time constraints). So.... 

Southern African Artisits

Due to a operation which decompressed my Thoracic Outlet, I am a bit hamstrung at the moment so I thought I'd show photos of some of the work of the artists from Zimbabwe. They live in South Africa, earning a living by selling their paintings.They sell them at the markets and next to the road sometimes. I think their work is amazing. We have now bought 2 paintings from them. If we had more hanging space in our home, I'd buy more. The blue painting was my daughter's choice to hang in her room. She loves anything that is blue.

The above painting is by an artist called Nyika and the one below is by an artist called Lazlie. (I am not sure how in focus this photo is.....)

Basic experiments with colour

One of the things I am doing is play with colour and mixing primary colours to create secondary colours. It is daunting and challenging but so rewarding....


Here are some photos of my attempts at mixing secondary colours together to allow the neutral colours to form..BTW - the aim of all of these exercises is to learn to dye my own fabric. I am so looking forward to it. I don't want to try without doing all the exercises though.

This is a photo of the red and green complimentary colours:













Blue and Orange is next:

and lastly..... Purple and Yellow

As you can see, my attempts are still rather amateurish. Its a case of the old adage, "Practise makes perfect"

Wow - September already and an essay

I had to prepare a short essay entitled "The influence of the African Landscape on the colours of African hand dyed fabrics." I find this topic fascinating and thought that I would share a snippet of my research.....

There are two major environmental influences on the use of colours that African hand dyers use to dye their fabrics with – the strong African sun and the colours that can be found in nature.
Sally Scott, a top South African quilt artist has the following to say: “My love of the landscape developed as a child, brought up in rural Zimbabwe. Since moving to the Eastern Cape, I have set out to capture the atmosphere of this province…. [I am] fascinated by the variety of vegetation and the fresh quality of light.

The strong, often harsh, African sun has a major impact on the colours that fabrics are dyed. Glenda from Amafu Fabrics (www.amafu.co.za) explains the influence of the African sun on colour: “I tend to work (her own hand dyed fabrics) in very strong colours but not necessarily bright colours and I think this is where the influence of Africa comes in. Part of this is to do with the very strong sunlight we have here and anything that is pastel tends to die.” The image below shows some of Glenda’s hand dyed fabrics:

This photo also shows the other environmental influence on hand dyed fabric – that of the natural dyes available from the earth – browns, ochre, red and black. Interestingly enough, although nature is full of green, it does not supply any natural green dyes.  For example: the colour of the Kalahari Desert sand is red-brown which stains the fabric when you get it on your clothing. The earliest fabric dyers would have used this sand to dye their fabric this particular colour.

Indigo dyed fabric is very popular in Africa. The world’s only source of natural blue

dye comes from the Indigo plant which is mainly found in West Africa, China and Japan. Indigo plants supply hues ranging from the palest sky blue to the deepest midnight blue. Combined with other dyes, indigo dye also makes greens, most purples and non-corrosive blacks.

 A popular South African fabric, called SheShwe is dyed using Indigo Dye. The photo below shows an example of Indigo dyed SheShwe fabric.

Odette Tolksdorf, another top South African quilt artist talks about the fact that her “art quilts have often been influenced by the multi-layered African environment.” Her work uses “rich and expressive colour”.

Bibliography
1.    www.amafu.co.za
2.    www.sallyscott.co.za
3.    www.odettetolksdorf.co.za
4.    http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3120/is_1_76/ai_n29065451/
5.    Google Images
6.    Ndebele by Margaret Courtney-Clarke
 

Landscapes, Dog shows and Trees

A short while ago I traveled to Bloemfontein (a city more or less in the middle of South Africa) to attend 5 dog shows. For those of you that know me, I do competition obedience with one of my Giant Schnauzers. We traveled over Oliviershoek Pass, through Golden Gate, hugging the border with South Africa and Lesotho and onto Bloemfontein (translated as "Flower Fountain"). On the way we passed the Woodstock Dam. Here it is photographed from the top of Oliviershoek Pass.

It is winter in South Africa so most of the trees have lost their leaves. I really liked the shape of this tree. It was photographed at the school where the dog shows were held.

As an aside, it was so cold on Monday 9 August 2010, that I had to borrow a jacket for Alex. This is a photo of her in her borrowed bright pink jacket.

Life long dream

I'd love to publish a book with my quilts in. It's a dream that "won't go away". I have an acclaimed author friend who will write an accompanying story to each quilt. Sounds like an amazing concept to me..... why is life so hectic? will I ever get down to it?

Landscape Photos

As many of you will know, I am passionate about Landscape photography and quilting landscapes. A couple of Sunday mornings ago, I took the Schnauzers, and camera, for a walk. The sun was at the right angle and the reflection of the dead tree is the water is "perfect". I wonder what this will look like as a landscape quilt.....

Images of Sport Quilt Show

Saturday 10 July was d-day. Our quilts were to be exhibited in a local hall. It's quite exciting for a newbie quilter to have a quilt exhibited. It's also wonderful to see how other people interpreted the same theme. I took photos of most of the quilts. So....without further ado...some photos....

The first one is by Judy Zingel titled "Sport Africa". I LOVE the bright African colours.


















My quilt called "We Three" is a bit more subdued. There is a story behind the name. For those that don't know, I have 13 year old triplets, 2 boys and a girl. They always spoke about themselves as "We Three" when they were younger. This quilt is made up of photos of the kids doing their various sports.... I am really proud of them. Btw, it's my daughter that plays cricket....:LOL

There were lots of other quilts but I am not sure of the "ethics" involving posting photos of other people's quilts. I'd rather not tread on any toes.