2024 Classes

I'm a textile artist based in Wellington New Zealand and I teach a range of dyeing, printing, quilting and bookmaking classes. The first classes for the year are usually the indigo dyeing classes as they are much more fun if we can hold them outside!

This is a list of my current bookings

Indigo Dyeing and shibori - Tawa College, Tawa, Wellington. There are still spaces in this class.

Saturday 9th March 10-4pm.

Karori Art and Craft Rooms, Karori, Wellington.

Printing on Fabric - 24th February 10-4pm

 This class can be booked online here.

Inspired by Boro (quilts/patches) - 25th May

Crazy Piecing - 30th June

Sashiko - 27th July

Quilt As You Go bags/placemats/table runners. - 10th November

Hutt Art Society Rooms, Lower Hutt

Indigo Dyeing and Shibori - 3rd March 10-4 (Class Full - waiting list available)

Komebukuro Bag - 2 classes - 7th April 1-4pm, 12th May 1-4pm.

Inspired by Boro (jacket). 4 sessions - 16th June 10-4pm,  (Class Full, waiting list available)

21 July, 4 august, 25 August, 1-4pm.

New Zealand Quilt Symposium

I have been invited to teach at the New Zealand Quilt Symposium 2024. This is to be held in Cambridge in the North Island of New Zealand. 

The classes are not confirmed yet but I hope to be able to tell people soon.

Indigo Dyeing classes in Wellington, New Zealand

Here are some photos of students work from some of my indigo dyeing workshops. These are great classes and mostly held outside so there is great ventilation! In the next two months I have three workshops booked. I only run these classes in the warmer months so book in now if you are interested as it will be a whole year before they are offered again.

If you are interested in enrolling please click on the links.

Saturday 25th February 9-3pm. Tawa College, Tawa, Wellington.

This class will focus on shibori using multicoloured fibre reactive dyes as well as indigo.

https://www.tawacomed.co.nz/Course,Indigo-dyeing-Shibori...

Saturday 18th March 10-4pm

Shibori using indigo at Hutt Art Society Rooms, Lower Hutt.

https://www.huttart.co.nz/copy-of-classes-3

Saturday 25 March

This is a class run by Kapiti Quilters. If you are interested in joining them and you are not a member the price is $60 ( it’s subsidised for members). If you are interested in this class let me know and I can give you the coordinator’s contact details.

A few things I've made in 2017 so far.

I used to say that I was a quilter, then i started saying I'm a textile artist. Now I do a whole variety of different things that have to do with textiles. It would be impossible to make a living in New Zealand as a textile artist so like many people I do a whole variety of different things to earn a living. These are just a few things that I have made this year so far.

Over the last two weeks I have been making seagull costumes for a theatre group. They will be performing  during the Capital E arts festival in Wellington. Its been a time of experimentation but also great fun. Thank you to Anna Maea Chitara for making the beaks.

I finished the seagulls yesterday so today I started work on a quilt commission. In this case its a Grandmothers Flower Garden quilt which I was given to finish. I did a similar job last year with an almost identical quilt. This one is for a man who inherited it from his Great Aunt. It is King bed sized was almost finished except for about 10 rosettes in one corner. I removed a row down one side and moved those into the corner. Next I will add borders and send it off to a commercial quilter to quilt, then I will add the binding.

Earlier this year I taught an indigo dyeing/shibori workshop for The Hutt Arts Society. Here are some of the dyed pieces that the students produced. Luckily it was a nice warm day although very windy which made it hard to work outside. Its been like that all summer really in the Wellington region.

The start of the year is also when all my classes seem to need class samples at once. These are for simple 'quilt as you go' classes at Nancys Stitch Studio in Wellington.

Shopping bag class sample for Nancys Stitch studio

Table runner using fabric I won  in a charity raffle  at Monterey Quilters

detail of quilt as you go table runner

I have also made a lot of piped cushions this year. I turn people's tapestries into cushions one day a week at Nancys Stitch Studio in Wellington. Its great to spend time in the shop, its a nice change from working at home alone.

Here are a couple more oddities made this year, I've made 3 of these giant wetas so far.

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. 

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!

Hong Kong trip

I have spent the last week booking a trip to Hong Kong for 10 days over Boxing Day- New Year. Aren't airpoints great! I'm going to the World Shibori Symposium in Hong Kong from 28th Dec to 3rd Jan. The tickets were easy, it was finding accomodation at that time of year that was difficult. Who would have thought that backpacker hostels would put their prices up by 80% over New Year's night and the 1st of Jan! It isn't as if it is Chinese New Year or anything.

Last year I spent a lot of time learning how to dye wool and playing with wool shrinkage and shibori on merino knit fabrics. Then I had this year off for the costume course but now I seem to be going back to wool. I'm nearly ready to combine the two.

Yesterday I finished the capes for the pre-school circus class. The first two I made had a certain wizardish look about them. I discovered that screenprinted random stars makes a cape look like it is for a wizard and that circus has organised stars instead. They are stars in rows. Not something I had ever thought of before.

Screenprinting

I am not very good at this blogging, I forget to update it for weeks at a time.

Over the last few weeks I have taught 2 screenprinting classes. One was for the public and one for digital design students who had the designs all ready to go and just needed to get them onto a t-shirt. One was very low-tech, the kind of process I use at home where I don't have access to all the fancy equipment. One was high-tech in that we used the vacuum table and special exposure unit.
Both classes were great fun but I was shattered at the end! I didn't even take any photos.
 Over the 8 days I managed to coat about 20 screens with the photo emulsion and help students coat about 20 more, and help about 15 students with their designs which required at least 3 colours per print. Pretty full on.

I have also been making scarves for a shibori exhibition at Barometer Gallery ,13 Gurner St., Paddington, NSW. The exhibition will be opened by Yoshiko Wada who wrote the bible for shibori artists 'Shibori: The art of Shaped resist"

SCARF
- contemporary shaped resist dyed scarves/shawls

Barometer Gallery will open on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday each week from the 8th September to the 3rd October, 10am to 6pm.

Here is a detail of one of my scarves that will be on the sale table. We each have one major piece and up to 5 for sale. This is the first time I have entered a shibori exhibition. It feels funny not entering a quilt which needs a hanging sleeve etc. I don't even know how they display them.

This scarf is made of 100% merino wool jersey and has been clamped and bound and dyed about 6 times in acid dyes. Dyeing wool is also something new for me and I have been experimenting with both acid and fibreactive wool dyes. They react differently to Procion dyes on cotton and I am just learning how they work.

About the 11th of April _ Japan

I

I arranged to meet Haruko Watanabe from Gallery Tsumugi today. A few months ago I ordered a catalogue for the Boro exhibition at the Amuse Gallery in Tokyo, from Haruko. When I ordered the book she said, "if you are in Tokyo, come and see my shop/gallery', I don't suppose many people actually do visit! We had a happy afternoon looking at all the Boro items and fabrics. Haruko had been to an auction the day before so had some lovely hemp pieces, I love the stiffness of the hemp fabric and she also had a samurai outfit in brown, similar to this...

 

A bit impractical for fighting in though

, ceremonial only! I bought some small pieces of fabric from Haruko, mostly just examples of different types of Shibori and some pieces of paste resist fabric just to have for samples to show students. Photo to follow.

The same day, my son and I saw the start of a Cosplay convention. Bus loads of teenage girls were turning up in downtown Yokohama with Wheelie suitcases, dissapearing into a building and coming out dressed up in Cosplay outfits. Most were busy taking photos of their friends in the gardens.

Day 20 experiments

Today I continued using indigo. This time I used an Indigo kit from Jacquard. It uses pre-reduced indigo so is easier to use than the stuff I used last week (color run remover and washing soda). The colour produced was much darker and was the colour I wanted. The whole process ended up messier though. Each piece of fabric needs to be laid out flat or hung up to allow the colour to develop. I highly recommend the kit but also suggest that Indigo dyeing would be better to done outside on the grass. Unfortunately, by the time I decided this, I had already dyed quite a lot of the surfaces blue and spent some time scrubbing them down at the end of the day.

I have a lot of fabric to wash out and get dry. At the moment it is all in a bucket.

The kit was easy to use, is available in New Zealand and the results are very good. There is still enough indigo left in the vat for me to continue next week (I hope). The disadvantage with this system is that it only uses warm water so you get less 'crinkle' in silk. The previous method I used, used very warm water so the silk pieces are left with 3D shapes from the ties. See photo above, these are pieces from the hot water method we used last week.

Here are some of the much darker pieces from today's session with the Jacquard kit. I will post more tomorrow when I have rinsed all the pieces out.

Itajime Papers

Here are some photos of the papers I dyed on Wednesday (day 18), which are currently strung around the room at Whitireia. They are taking a long time to dry and are very fragile at the moment. The paper is Chinese calligraphy paper. It absorbs the dye very well and is strong when it is dry.

Artists Res Day 16

On Friday I  bound a series of scarf lengths which I dyed in Indigo and left over the weekend to dry so that they would retain the shape of the ties. Today I removed the ties but all the photos are on the other camera and the scarves got left at Whitireia in my little office. I will add the rest of the photos as soon as I can. In the meantime, the 2 photos immediately above show one of the scarves knotted and then the scarf opened out. This one was a bit of a cop out as I got lazy and just decided to kot t instead of binding it as that was taking so long.