Textile Commissions, earthquakes and travel

Its about 4 weeks since I got back to New Zealand from India. Its taken me a while to process everything and also to catch up on various projects which I couldn't work on while I was away.

Since I got back we have had a large earthquake. Our house has suffered a few cracks which weren't there before, and my husband has been working from home as his office is closed until they find new premises. The day after the earthquake we had heavy rain which followed a few weeks of steady rain. the ground was waterlogged and that meant we had water leaking through the back wall of our garage so we spent several hours sweeping water out of the garage and trying to get things dry. A lot of horrible fabric was thrown away that day. It was all stuff which should have been sorted and thrown away years ago.

It was lucky that we don't live near the coast of New Zealand. In what the newspapers called 'the perfect storm' we had a strong earthquake followed by heavy rain at the time of the Supermoon. There was a tsunami then high spring tides because of the supermoon and the heavy rain. No wonder the roads were flooded especially around the coasts and there were land slides, and fallen trees. Its taken a while to get back to normal, although there are still a lot of government and private buildings in Wellington closed due to earthquake damage. One of our friends has been evacuated from their apartment in central wellington and has been unable to get anything out of their home for nearly 2 weeks.

Bitter Harvest 3. This is a wallhanging currently hanging at Pataka. Water has been running down the front  from the cups to make the dye in the blue patches run. It looks quite blurry now.

This small quilt is travelling with the OzQuilt exhibition in Australia.

This life-size model of a weta (a New Zealand grasshopper)has been at the Knitting and Stitching Shows in London, Dublin and Harrogate this year with the BugLife exhibition curated by Ann Kelly.

Its not easy to make money as a textile artist in New Zealand. I am usually working on a lot of different things at once. As well as making quilts I also make their costumes, tech quilt making and surface design, do commissions and complete projects for people.
Before leaving for India I was making costumes for the show The Merry Widow almost up till the day I left. I still have a lot of the costumes in my garage , I brought them home to wash, and I haven't been able to take them back to the costume store because no one knows whether the building is safe. Luckily the costumes were up on a table or they would also be wet.

Most of the time I work from home and it can get a bit lonely. So I also do 'finishing' for a shop. People bring in their completed tapestries and I make them up into cushions. Sometimes I get to make up beautiful needle cases or quilt shop samples.  I get to have some social time with customers and staff at the shop and the bonus is that I get paid.

I have been working on several collage litter bins for a commission and I recently completed a Grandmothers Flower Garden quilt for an elderly lady who is in her 90's.
No sooner had I handed over the first quilt than I got another half finished hexagon quilt which is almost identical to the first one.

The Grandmothers Flower garden quilt top when it arrived

The quilt after I moved some of the rosettes around and turned it into a single bed sized quilt

Lastly, some pictures from India

Gorgeous step well near Jaipur

Woodblock printing at Anokhi Woodblock museum

Elephant near Jaipur

Traffic on the way back to Delhi

View from the hotel window in Delhi. Cows, ice-cream vendors, cars and chaos

Beautiful architecture in the Lodi Gardens, Delhi

Coloured chalk for making rangoli patterns for Diwali

India was inspiring as well as confronting. 2 days after I left, Delhi had some of the worst pollution days ever, caused by Diwali fireworks and farmers burning off stubble in the fields. Then the large bank notes 1000, and 500 rupee notes were withdrawn suddenly over night making it very hard for tourists and locals alike. At the end of my holiday I would have loved to have stayed in India for longer but now I am very glad I left when I did. Maybe I will get a chance to go again when things have settled down.

Textile Commissions, earthquakes and travel

Its about 4 weeks since I got back to New Zealand from India. Its taken me a while to process everything and also to catch up on various projects which I couldn't work on while I was away.

Since I got back we have had a large earthquake. Our house has suffered a few cracks which weren't there before, and my husband has been working from home as his office is closed until they find new premises. The day after the earthquake we had heavy rain which followed a few weeks of steady rain. the ground was waterlogged and that meant we had water leaking through the back wall of our garage so we spent several hours sweeping water out of the garage and trying to get things dry. A lot of horrible fabric was thrown away that day. It was all stuff which should have been sorted and thrown away years ago.

It was lucky that we don't live near the coast of New Zealand. In what the newspapers called 'the perfect storm' we had a strong earthquake followed by heavy rain at the time of the Supermoon. There was a tsunami then high spring tides because of the superman and the heavy rain. No wonder the roads were flooded especially around the coasts and there were land slides, and fallen trees. Its taken a while to get back to normal, although there are still a lot of government and private buildings in Wellington closed due to earthquake damage. One of our friends has been evacuated from their apartment in central wellington and has been unable to get anything out of their home for nearly 2 weeks.

Bitter Harvest 3. This is a wallhanging currently hanging at Pataka. Water has been running down the front  from the cups to make the dye in the blue patches run. It looks quite blurry now.

This small quilt is travelling with the OzQuilt exhibition in Australia.

This life-size model of a weta (a New Zealand grasshopper)has been at the Knitting and Stitching Shows in London, Dublin and Harrogate this year with the BugLife exhibition curated by Ann Kelly.

Its not easy to make money as a textile artist in New Zealand. I am usually working on a lot of different things at once. As well as making quilts I also make their costumes, tech quilt making and surface design, do commissions and complete projects for people.
Before leaving for India I was making costumes for the show The Merry Widow almost up till the day I left. I still have a lot of the costumes in my garage , I brought them home to wash, and I haven't been able to take them back to the costume store because no one knows whether the building is safe. Luckily the costumes were up on a table or they would also be wet.

Most of the time I work from home and it can get a bit lonely. So I also do 'finishing' for a shop. People bring in their completed tapestries and I make them up into cushions. Sometimes I get to make up beautiful needle cases or quilt shop samples.  I get to have some social time with customers and staff at the shop and the bonus is that I get paid.

I have been working on several collage litter bins for a commission and I recently completed a Grandmothers Flower Garden quilt for an elderly lady who is in her 90's.
No sooner had I handed over the first quilt than I got another half finished hexagon quilt which is almost identical to the first one.

The Grandmothers Flower garden quilt top when it arrived

The quilt after I moved some of the rosettes around and turned it into a single bed sized quilt

Lastly, some pictures from India

Gorgeous step well near Jaipur

Woodblock printing at Anokhi Woodblock museum

Elephant near Jaipur

Traffic on the way back to Delhi

View from the hotel window in Delhi. Cows, ice-cream vendors, cars and chaos

Beautiful architecture in the Lodi Gardens, Delhi

Coloured chalk for making rangoli patterns for Diwali

India was inspiring as well as confronting. 2 days after I left, Delhi had some of the worst pollution days ever, caused by Diwali fireworks and farmers burning off stubble in the fields. Then the large bank notes 1000, and 500 rupee notes were withdrawn suddenly over night making it very hard for tourists and locals alike. At the end of my holiday I would have loved to have stayed in India for longer but now I am very glad I left when I did. Maybe I will get a chance to go again when things have settled down.

Summer Art School

I will be teaching an indigo dyeing workshop at the Hutt Art Society rooms in January 2017.

Click below to go to the website

http://media.wix.com/ugd/313b3e_a16c7cebe19e4afe9f3728d0bdc7b8d3.pdf

Thu 12 / Fri 13 January 2017 All levels
9.00 – 4.00
Painting Studio

Students should be able to dye several metres of fabric each and try it a range of different Shibori ( upmarket tie dye) techniques. The weather will be warm so we should be able to lay the fabric out on the grass around the rooms. 

Bandhani / tie dye

Today we did a workshop on Indian tie dye. Mr Jakob showed us how to tie tiny circles, then to make a heart and a star. Colour choices were pink and orange or pink and black. Some fairly loud scarves were completed on very thin loose weave cotton. 

While we were making our masterpieces the rest of the family were continuing the family business by blockprinting previously tied and dyed fabric lengths and pulling the fabric diagonally to pop off the ties.

 

Tieing circles

 

Dyeing pink

 Taking off the ties

 Finished scarves

Bandhani / tie dye

Today we did a workshop on Indian tie dye. Mr Jakob showed us how to tie tiny circles, then to make a heart and a star. Colour choices were pink and orange or pink and black. Some fairly loud scarves were completed on very thin loose weave cotton. 

While we were making our masterpieces the rest of the family were continuing the family business by blockprinting previously tied and dyed fabric lengths and pulling the fabric diagonally to pop off the ties.

 

Tieing circles

 

Dyeing pink

 Taking off the ties

 Finished scarves

Jaipur

We went to a woodblock printing and dyeing workshop today just outside of Jaipur. We printed fabric using a mud mixture which was then sprinkled with sawdust to help dry it. When fully dry it was put in the indigo bath. We also printed with black ink made using natural black ink made from lumps of rusting iron fermented with sugar cake for 8 weeks in a black pot in a hot place. The fabric had to be ore mordanted with myrobolan which is a strong tannin.

 

 

Woodblocks for mudprinting. The recipe for the mix is mud, gum acacia, flour made from spoiled wheat.

 

The indigo vat is 10 ft deep. 

Cow parking

Our hotel is down a side alley full of cows, ice cream vendors trolleys and the milk station. 

 

  

The veggie market, unusually quiet because it's Sunday.

Khan Market

Yesterday I went to khan Market in Delhi. It's where the ex pats shop. It's quite nice and calm. I bought a very simple but nicely made top in Fabindia. From the Fabindia website.

'

Fabindia is India's largest private platform for products that are made from traditional techniques, skills and hand-based processes. At Fabindia we celebrate India, and endeavour to bring all that we love about India to customers around the world.' They also support a school with over 1000 students. http://www.fabindia.com/

Unfortunately I got a warning about watching what I eat and drink. I let my guard down in a restaurant that said they use filtered water. I'm now recovering from a mild bug. Fortunately it's on a day that we aren't travelling. Unfortunately it's the day the rest of the group are going to the Craft Museum. Oh well- another time.

Yesterday I also discovered how cheap books are here. I bought about 5 books all about $8 each including

 

I don't seem to be able to turn it sideways 

Clare

India

I've been wanting to go to Rajasthan for years and when I saw that a tour I had heard about had some spaces, I signed up. I have been in New Delhi for 4 days having a look around by myself and the tour officially starts today but we are just waiting for two more people.

In the last 4 days I have learned about tourist touts, been to a shopping mall with a family from a small village who had never been in an escalator, been to a children's home/educational project for girls, been in some hair raising traffic jams with cars, rickshaws and tuktuks driving all over the place, and bought a few bits which I probably should have paid less for, but were still cheap.

 

 

A cheap form of transport which can be exciting driving. More like bumper cars at the fair.

 

Shopping for bling with the kids.

Now that I have found an app to use with blogger I might be able to update more easily. My 2 favourite apps are no longer available and I hadn't used them for so long i didn't know why they were crashing.

This app is much easier to use.

So today I'm off to the Khan market then tomorrow the tour starts properly.

Catching up with paperwork and future classes

Every now and then I feel overwhelmed with paperwork. I feel like I get less and less made and spend more and more time sending off CV's, sending photos, sending needs lists and arranging dates for classes. Today I am catching up with all that stuff at once rather than spreading it out. So in all likelihood I will send the needs lists for Quilter Lane in Masterton to Christchurch and the needs list for Kapiti Quilters to the lawyer, while the lawyer will get an article on the Aotearoa Quilters show in Rotorua instead of the tax return from my mothers estate.

I have updated my booked classes list (see the right hand side of my blog) to show some new classes. It seems that Sashiko is the new black. Everyone wants Sashiko so I'm teaching it in three places around the Wellington region this year. Some groups may have spaces for non-members. Its a good class to take because you don't have to lug a sewing machine around if you don't want to.

The first class is  Wellington Quilters Solstice Weekend in Karori Arts and Crafts society rooms.
26th June. I also have a machine quilting class (Quilt Doodling) on the 25th. I know there are a few spaces so let me know and I will pass on the details of the organiser. It costs $20 for members and $40 for non-members.

Coastal Quilters has booked a sashiko class for 2nd July

Kapiti Quilters for the 6th of August.

I might have to make more class samples as they need to be in three places at once. In these classes you can stitch by hand or machine depending on what you prefer.

 
In January I've been invited to teach Indigo Dyeing and Shibori at the Lower Hutt Arts Society Summer School.

Indigo dyed fabrics from my class at Quilt Symposium 2015

This should be fun as indigo and warm weather go nicely together. More information and enrolment forms should go up on the website in the next few weeks.

I have also been invited to teach bookmaking at the Embroiderers Great Escape in Auckland from 24-26th of March next year. Since I'm going to be up in Auckland anyway,  I could move on to teach somewhere else in the North and make a bit of a holiday of it in between 'gigs'. Any suggestions? Its still lovely and warm in March for organic indigo dyeing.

Indigo turning from green to blue

Indigo fabrics changing to blue

Ta da!

The New Zealand Quilt Symposium 2017

At last I can let people know that I will be teaching at the next NZ Symposium in Christchurch 

http://quiltsymposium2017.org.nz

I have 5 separate one day classes. 

Hope to see some of you there.

Aotearoa quilters flight challenge

 

I'm In Rotorua where Aotearoa Quilters exhibition , The Great New Zealand Quilt Show is on at the events Centre until tomorrow.

My quilt was accepted as one of 20 quilts in the Flight Challenge exhibition. I thought I would I might talk about how this quilt was made and how accidents change how a quilt ends up.

The green fabric was hand painted and screen printed by me many years ago. This was the last bit left and it wasn't really big enough so is pieced together from scraps. The join is under the point of the tablecloth. The tablecloth was in my airing cupboard so I either found it at an op shop or it's a family heirloom ( oops!)

I took a photo of a willow pattern plate I own, the willow pattern design is hundreds of years old so I felt it would be long out of copyright and therefore ok to use. I reversed the image and had it transferred onto the centre of the tablecloth but didn't get the plate at the right angle so had to cut it out and reapplique it into the middle. Unfortunately that meant that the hole in the centre was bigger than the plate being appliquéd so the doily under the plate hides the gap.

I machine quilted the top before adding the sparrows. I used a feather quilting stencil to mark the pattern for the plate shapes, I'd never tried to follow a drawn pattern using machine quilting before. Usually I just machine quilt freestyle.

I threw bits of lamington ( a New Zealand style of coconut and jelly covered sponge cake) and bread on the driveway and took loads of photos of sparrows using a telephoto lens by hiding in my garage with the roller door nearly closed. It's really hard to take photos of sparrows- they move so fast and having 2 cats probably makes them jittery.

I used the photos to draw sparrows and then made them In fabric and machine embroidered on top before attaching them

To the quilt.

Finally I added watch parts to the sparrows to give them a Steam Punk look. I was challenged to use the watch parts by Debby Williams. I'm

Looking forwarded to seeing what she does with her set.

Anyway that's the story of the steampunk sparrows quilt.