Michelle's Blog

Houston Quilt Festival

2012-01-20T19:50:00.000-08:00

What a busy couple of days and an invitation from Houston Quilt Fevtival to submit 2 quilts for a special section. I am thinking what will I put in. There is not theme. I am honored to just be invited. Here goes.

Cloth paper scissors finalist

2012-01-02T18:24:00.000-08:00

I was so excited when I received my cloth paper scissors in the mail. On page 35 was my Paris Memories and a short bio. I didn't know which piece was going to be photographed so it was great to see it in there. I can't wait to get started on my next project. I have done my sketches for the environment exhibition and now the kids are the focus with holidays and school soon. We are having a few days away so I will take my pencils and paper. Oh, and can't forget the camera.

Workshop Day

2011-10-13T00:46:00.000-07:00

Samples of Ice dyed fabrics

Ice Dyeing

We had a great day. Cecily,Di,Margaret and myself had some fun getting into a few different things. We started off with some sun dyeing and Cecily was in the theme for the weed exhibition. Our Textile group has an exhibition next year for weeds.

Margarets Ice dyed fabric

So with some beautiful colours and really interesting designs we played with some resists- rice flour, mashed potato and flour. Before lunch we did some ice dyeing with cubes and I was amazed at the slow rate the ice melted with the heavy plastic over it. I am still rinsing mine off. The afternoon saw us making metal papers for college and art quilts. They were still damp when we finished and yet to have the ink on top. They looked great. The ice dyeing steps are in the latest Quilting Art Mag. Thanks Girls for a great day.

Resist and painted

fabric

Artisan of the Year Finalist 2012

2011-09-10T16:23:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone, How exciting!!! I have been chosen as one of 5 finalists in the Cloth Paper Scissors Artisan of the Year 2012. I am shocked and honoured to be in it. Now to get my pieces to the States to be judged for the final. The 3 pieces are Paris Memories, Lilly Pond and Poppies. They are on other blogs

Mermaid Beauty

2011-08-25T02:41:00.000-07:00

I have been creating my Mermaid for a long time and I think she should go on the blog even though she isn't finished. She is hand painted on bleached calico. Quilted by Esther Strelan on her long arm quilter. I have embellished the tail with large aqua sequins and the fin is small aqua sequins. Beads in her hair and beading on the wrist. I have a long way to go but its a start. She is 2 1/2 meters long and 1.50wide.

Mixed Media Project

2011-08-11T00:41:00.000-07:00

Hi All,
I am adding some of the photos of the mixed media projects that are part of the next workshop in August/September. Please email me if you want to be part of them.
Paris Memories. Lilly Pond. Beautiful Poppies.

Gatton Weekend

2011-08-04T03:35:00.000-07:00

On 16th and 17th July I held a Flower Garden workshop out at Gatton. What a great weekend. I met some wonderful ladies and the first day we started getting our backgrounds dyed. This workshop always surprises me with the beautiful array of colours and they all turn out different from each other. On our second day we started with practice on our free machining. I really enjoyed this workshop. I have some photos to share. Special thanks to all the girls from Gatton.

Textile Day

2011-05-24T03:29:00.000-07:00

We had an interesting day with gelitine plate printing. We started with thick paint on the plate and using paper to take off a layer or two to get to a beautiful mix of paint and using decals we printed 3 or 4 prints to get a series of images. From the photos you can see the stages in the progression of prints. Some beautiful images from all. We had a fun time doing these.

Sunshine Beach High

2011-05-10T03:11:00.000-07:00

Year 11 Bag Photo's

Well Done

I can't believe its starting to get cool in the evenings. Its gone so fast. I haven't got my winter gear out yet.

I have dyed some beautiful rainbows and wanted to share what I've been doing. The packs of fat 1/8's are great in the all sorts of projects but I've put them into an embroidery applique and they look fantastic.

I have the photos from the Sunshine Beach year 11's and they are great. I'm am so proud of them having a go at some of the techiniques. We did fabric painting on the first day and the girls then used these technique to design their fabric and on the second day I showed them surface design, free machining, crayons, stamping and stencilling etc. These are some of their finished bags. Beautiful.

summer 2011

2011-04-07T17:48:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone, I have started off this year in hibernation at home with my own projects and have had the usual things going on with all my kids and the cat Rusty has been to the vet with a broken knee. How this happened we don't know. I think he fell off the verandah. He is hopping around the house and sleeping on Kyle's bed to recover. Simba (dog)had to get into the action as well and she went to the vet with sore eyes. I taught year 11 Home Ec girls 2 lessons on dying and embellishment. What a great bunch of girls. They have a lot of talent and I loved their finished dyed fabric. I am looking forward to seeing their finished bags. I hope to have some photos soon from Ms Fitz. I'm currently working on a machine embroidery piece with the use of the Go Cutter from work and it is magic to cut out all your applique shapes. So I'm having fun with something different. I'm also working on a mixed media piece Paris. New classes for this year are in process at Kimz Sewing and Patchwork on the Sunshine Coast please send me an email or contact Kimz. Fabric Painting and dying and mixed media are coming up soon. Michelle

Beautiful Poppy Projects

2010-10-05T03:23:00.000-07:00

I want to share some of the beautiful work done by some of my students in this workshop. The larger poppy was done by Alwyn Bowyer, orange poppies by Esther Strelan. Esther's will be updated when finished.

The smaller poppies are by Margaret Coombs and this is not finished. Margaret has had some painting experience and this piece will be updated when finished.

Beaftiful Poppies

2010-09-21T02:08:00.000-07:00

The Beautiful Poppies workshops are going really well with a lot of enthusiasm from everyone who is joining in. Using a combination of mixed media to achieve this look, we start with building up layers with texture medium, fabric decoupage to apply serviettes and rice papers to a painted background. Once I have achieved the image I use free machining to give texture and interest to the piece. I am amazed at the variation and watching the creativity come from each student. Using different serviettes and backgrounds give these pieces individuality.
This is a great workshop to try different mediums and techniques.

TWISTIE DYING

2010-07-02T03:07:00.000-07:00

Our last dyeing day was an experimental day with a new product -Drimarene dye. These dyes are designed to use less water when rinsing and when mixed with not deteriorate or loose colour intensitity. On the same day we also used sun dyes with twisted fabric to create beautiful colours. We tried fabric around large rope with string to hold it then applied paint/dye and left it until the colours had migrated. We then used pvc pipe and roushed the fabric on the pipe. Other techniques were with marbles and rubber bands. I was amazed with the range of different effects and everyone's was unique.

Flower Garden

2010-06-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

I recently held a workshop - Flower Garden- photo on right. The students dyed there backgrounds and then free machining the design into the background and then using ink tense pencils and water soluble crayons to colour the flowers. Some students used different colours and some changed their designs which I encourage in my workshops to bring out that creativity that is in all of us.

I then went back into the background with more free machining to embellish the ferns and give more texture to the overall finish. Hot fix crystals add a beautiful finish.

The closer photo here on the right is Linn Dixon's finished version with beautiful magical effects. I love the way the colours have blended in the background. Lyn added mushrooms and a Honey eater at the top.

Autum

2010-04-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

My latest workshops have produced some lovely work. I conducted a colour wheel workshop in March, as I feel it is very important to go back over colour every now and again. Colour is so much fun to work with. We started off with 9 4 x 6in blocks and picked out colours we wanted to work with. There was a challenge to use a colour you found you didn't like or use much and experiment with. We then looked at contrasts across the wheel and embellished the blocks to add other colours that are next to each other. This photo was done by one of my students Margaret who really enjoyed doing this piece. It is a beautiful addition to her work room.

In April we worked with photoshop and learnt a little more on software to help us along with useing photos in our quilts.

Summer

2010-02-18T22:32:00.000-08:00

The past few months I have been experimenting with Ink tense Pencils on Fabric and getting some amazing results. The use of textile medium gives greater control and ability to blend well together with water soluble crayons. In these workshops I encourage individual creativity and one of my students took her piece in a fantasy direction with pastels colours adding fairies and bugs. It was really lovely. I'm currently running workshops to teach this technique in S.E Queensland. Information and photos are on my website on dates.

Over the Christmas Holidays I had a young sewers class where the children painted their fabric and made different things. Two of the boys(with help from Granma) made a great library bags, another boy painted and stencilled his shirt. One of the girls painted her fabric and made a great cushion embellished with buttons. The other girl used puff paint, stencilling, and free hand painting to create her piece. I really enjoy working with the young ones and we had lots of fun.

I look forward to our next break and having some more fun the the kids.

Spring

2009-08-31T03:00:00.000-07:00

Hi,

It is really exciting to be able to add this to my website. I have always been interested in fabrics since a very young age. Sitting on the floor with my nan and all her scraps. I used to watch her sew on the treadle machine and loved things I could create with my bits and pieces.

I have always done some sort of craft and have always been a sewer. I have been painting fabrics for about 10 years and was taught by an amazing artist Lisa Nutter. She held classes which involved painting on large whole fabrics approx. 2 meters x 1 meter. I loved the way it really challenged me to go outside my very small art pieces. Think outside the square so to speak. I ventured out on my own and painted fabrics for children's clothes. I also painted large whole cloths and eventually evolved to fabrics for patchwork and quilting. I attend some of the local shows and sell my fabrics in some of the quilt shops in the area.

Currently I am running workshops around the South East Queensland area. I always run beginners workshops with Dala Paints and mediums. It is amazing what you can achieve with just one product. I also run workshops for intermediate students who want to get assistance with a dyed project. I am currently running another workshop Floral Garden using a dyed background and ink tense pencils and crayons.

Dala Paints are a sun colour paints, they are very fluid and transparent and act like a dye. The sun colour means they have a pigment that reacts with the sun and you can get wonderful texture and unusual colours. They react well with salt and create beautiful texture and Bali type effects. They are intermixable with each other and with some of the mediums create amazing versatility.