NEW BOOK! by Fibrefusion - Contemporary Textile Art Group

Seed heads from Belstead gardens

This is so exciting! The textile group Fibrefusion that I belong to, has just had its 5th book published! The book ‘Muslin, a Stitched Exploration of Loose Weave Fabrics’ is an inspirational workbook using the lovely fabric Muslin throughout the book. The book can be seen and purchased from Fibrefusions website. On the website you'll as well find our 4 previously published books.
In celebration of our new book, Fibrefusion will be exhibiting from the 10th September to the 15th October at Art Van Go There amongst others, you’ll be able to see the samples and finished work shown in the book.


Belstead weekend: Muslin samples galore

Muslin, calico, scrim is such a fantastic, but also quite often an overlooked medium, which is why we chose it as the subject for our book. This past year we have had total fun working, exploring and stretching the boundaries for what can be done with Muslin and scrim. The result was an amazing amount of colourful, stunning samples many of which can be seen in our book. A big THANK YOU goes to Pauline Verrinder Fibrefusions mentor, who has done a huge, wonderful job in writing the text, keeping us honest and pulling it all together.


Belstead weekend: Fibrefusion girls at work.

In August the 16 group members met for a working weekend at Belstead house (link). We partly worked on the tying the last bits up for the book and exhibition at Art Van Go and partly on a new body of design work for upcoming exhibitions. We had a superb time and the weather was beautiful.

Belstead: Beautiful wall design

'Textiles In Focus', Cambridge. A great day out!

 

If you like fiber art, textiles, embroidery, craft..., and if you are in the area, then I can suggest a wonderful inspirational day/weekend out for you.
From Friday the 19th to Sunday the 21st of February 'Textiles in Focus' will for the 9th year running be at Cottenham Village College, just north of Cambridge, England. Please go to the website for the total program, opening hours and more.
Pauline Verrinder , who is an international exhibiting textile artist and tutor, has once again been working hard behind the scene organizing this event. I know that she has been very busy, as she is my mentor in two of the textile groups that I belong to: Fibrefusion and Advanced Textile Workshop.

What can you expect to find at 'Textiles In Focus'? Two main textile exhibitions by MESCH and Threadsx4 as well as several displays from other textile groups, a great selection of 2 hour workshops running all three days (do check for availability as they are very popular), lots of great vendors and this years guest speaker is Isobel Hall, who will be speaking on "mixed media and stitch". Isobel Hall's work is beautiful and she has published wonderful textile/embroidery books.
My textile group 'Advanced Textile Workshop' will be having a display of hangings based on 'memories'. We had a look all the hangings at last weeks meeting. Beautiful work! Fibrefusion will not be having a display, as we are very busy getting ready for our big exhibition at the National Exhibition Center (NEC) Birmingham end March. But you will be able to find us anyway, as we will be selling our very popular hands-on creative/free style machine embroidery books. The books can be bought on Fibrefusions web site as well.

 

My Painted Quilt

I have painted my quilt with a thin layer of tinted emulsion/latex paint! And I am really pleased with the result. The transferred pictures are now more integrated in the surface. They blend instead of sitting on the surface. I'd didn't "invent" the adding of emulsion paint to quilt surfaces. My former tutor and now mentor for my "Out Of The Fold" textile group, Anette Morgan is the one who introduced me to it. Anette Morgan, an international exhibiting textile/quilt/fiber artist, quilt judge, City and Guilds diploma teacher. She has had several articles published in "Quilting Arts" and "Cloth Paper Scissor" magazines, as well as being an author of several books on contemporary quilting and applique. Now that's a busy lady :-)
I have now started working on my next step of the quilt. I'm going to sew my repeated design shape onto gauze. My aim is to create depth with this almost invisible layer. It really does work in my head.... :-)now I need to try it on my small sample quilts.
I'm glad they didn't ask me at the pharmacy why I needed 10 yards of gauze! Sometimes it is difficult to explain in few words. A friend of mine has recently been visiting lots of hardware store in the quest to find builders scrim/cotton plaster scrim. I didn't envy her the job explaining all the men behind the counters, why she wanted this specific scrim and why she couldn't make do with the modern plastic version. But really, the plaster scrim dyes beautiful. It kind of collapses into a soft cord which is perfect for couching. In the end she did manage to get us two big roll which was great.

My Wensday Textile Group

I belong to three textile groups, all great and very different. Today was "Sindano". Sindano translate into "needle" in Swahili. We are 15 ladies, age between late 40 to late 70, that have been together, as a group for several years. We all got to know each other, when we were attending a course in creative hand embroidery. Our tutor decided, after I had been with her for +3 years, that she needed more time to develop her own fantastic work, so she moved on. We ladies had so much fun, so we kept meeting. In the beginning for pub lunches. Later we decided that we might as well get some work done, and we hired a village hall/community center in a local village. We meet once a month and we alternate between own sewing/working days, teaching each other a technique or having a "proper" workshop with a paid tutor.
Of the three groups that I belong to, this is the most social group, but having said that, we are working towards an exhibition end November 2009. We exhibited in 2007, and it was such a success, that we were invited back to the same place, which was a great compliment. We all bring different craft backgrounds to the group, which is a great strenght and very inspiring. There are quilters (traditional and contemporary), weavers, spinner, dyers, knitters and embroiderers (traditional and contemporary). We bounce a lot of info and tips of each other. There is always someone that can give a helping hand when stuck. Its a lot of fun and always a great day out.