"Fire and Water"

This year's exhibition and sale by the North Shore Craft Group, Sydney, of which I am a member, is taking place next week. As well as having a selection of handbags and wearable accessories in the display as usual, I have 2 pieces in the exhibition entitled this year "Fire and Water".

I decided to interpret the title separately and to have one piece inspired by fire and one by water, but both using the same textile techniques and the same size (framed about 30" by 12")

The first is "Bushfire" inspired by the terrible bushfires in Victoria at the beginning of last year.

It's also my little tribute to Jan Beaney's technique as the piece is made from extensive hand stitching over scraps of dyed scrim, silk and wool tops then integrated using machine stitching and the embellisher. A small area is detailed below:

The second is "Ocean Pools", using a similar technique but more translucent, with digitally printed silk organza in the background, less wool tops, and separately prepared lace pieces added on top of the work at the end. I've also used painted fusible web and distressed sheers in there too.

The photo below shows the lace ripples in more detail:

Dress embellishment

I did a little more work on the embellishment of my 3D item for the diploma, by manipulating and stitching the motifs into flower-like arrangements on the bodice. I made motifs out of the various sheers, pink, red and green and also simply out of thread (although the lace ones are not really apparent from the photos - believe me they are there!). The sheers had varying translucency that helped give depth to the layers.
In the process of making the motifs, after dissolving away the Solvy layer I dried some over bottle caps so that they remained curled and gave more dimension to the flimsy material.

The tendrils are made from overlocked thread lengths and dyed gauze strips cut and edged on the bias to give the curl. Within the motif arrangments, the tendrils could be threaded through the holes in some of the shapes which was an interesting plantlike effect.

The motifs continue on the back at the end of the strap. I didn't feel the need to add more to the strap itself as with more coverage the strap began to take over!