Textile arts, coffee and piano staircase

Click on picture to see enlarged.
from w,
Yesterday I took the train up to Melbourne and tram to mingle with the thousands of keen fabric craftsmen and women and it was really crowded at the Exhibition Buildings. Some of the quilts were stunning, but again I query the commercialisation of this craft as surely it used to be about recycling the oddments in the household, not buying brand new cloth. Many of the techniques were new to me but the results were amazing. Some people were taking photos although there was one notice not to put your pictures on the internet of certain ones which were part of a postcard series. Okay. I like the ones that had a story which was more interesting than beautiful decoration and enormous about of time commitment. Here are a few pictures. One recycled old lace doylies. Now that is a good way to use Grandma's needlecraft work!The exhibit from India involved Hemant demonstrating the printing of woodblocks by hand, inking in three colours to make pictures of an elephant. Having to hit the woodblock very hard each time. Some of the fabrics on sale looked lovely but I didn't buy any even though they were part of Fair Trade which means ethical pay conditions etc. for the workers.

On the way home, back at Southern Cross railway station, I saw the musical staircase and jumped up and down on the 'notes'. One girl came up to me and said, 'If you are frightened of the stairs, why don't you use the escalator?' I laughed at that as I really was trying to play 'Frere Jacque'!. Some girls with a guitar were trying to play a tune and the designer of the musical staircase sat up the top with a computer. This project was inspired no doubt from a similar thing in Sweden.By the time I got home to Geelong I was footsore and weary - Melbourne city pavements and traipsing around an exhibition ain't what they used to be!

At the Oriental Stall

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One of the sketches I made at the Quilt Expo was at one of the stalls where I was interested in the shapes of the objects, not hat I knew what they all were for - except what looked like bag handles and bolts of cloth. I thought black and red would be the most suitable colours.

Designing a quilt

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Playing around with photo-edit a bit with my drawings and a pic of gingko leaves to make a quilt design - but only in the ether, not for real. Perhaps click to look at the details. Some pics are doubled up, I know! And there's no real unity - this is just a random selection thrown together by Picasa's collage click.

(written later-Saturday evening)

Things I noticed at the exhibition. 'A girl never has too much fabric.' 'Dyed and gone to heaven'. One banner called 'Lost for Words' was about Alzheimer's and the artist even embroidered the broken script of her father. A banner/quilt that attracted a lot of attention was of mushrooms and a mouse with exquisite stitching and three-dimensional areas on the toadstools. 'Australian Bounty' was a delightful quilt on a black background with Australian animals, birds, and insects with colours graded from warm to cool.

A problem with many of the items, to me anyway, was the use of too many colours which seemed to fight against one another. Those with a limited palette seemed to work best. These craftswomen are so smart, so careful, so dedicated, yet I felt that many of the actual designs needed more thought as you don't really have make a realistic scene with stitching because the medium has other possibilities especially for fantasy. References to the real world - okay - but there's more! But overall it was a joy to walk around the exhibition to celebrate the amazing craftwork that women have been able to do with fabrics and thread.

I went to the animal fair...oops

from w
I went to the Quilt Expo in Melbourne this afternoon and what glorious colours filled the rooms, but there were so, so many people there crowding about, buying from the stalls, peering this way and that, intently studying the details of the stitching. Every second woman seemed to have a mobile phone and they were busily taking photos...but a stallholder told me in all seriousness that taking photos was banned and such people should be thrown out! Well, it's an expo and in the public so what do they expect when it's heaven for so many women. I guess the problem is copyright on designs and now any Tomasina, Delia or Arieta can use someone else's ideas. I'll write more about the quilts/banners that I really liked later on.

I did some quick black and white sketches. Click on picture to enlarge. They were actually only small, A5 in size in my little sketchbook. I really would like to do some larger paintings - perhaps flat shapes, art nouveau style using a couple of the sketches.

Observations at a Quilt Exhibition

from w

I thoroughly enjoyed a visit to the Quilt Exhibition in Melbourne yesterday - amazing energy, patience, beauty. I particularly was interested in the Stitch like an Egyptian section where dozens of people watched a man handsew pieces of cloth. His method was applique and he used a huge pair of shears and stitched quickly. I'm sure he would have repetitive strain by now. The Egyptian wall hangings were extremely beautiful, mostly symmetrical and abstractions based on leaves and flowers but there were also pictorial hangings of people which I thought unusual because Muslims usually do not approve of the depiction of people. Apparently these men become stitchers when aged about nine and it is their occupation for many many years. An attendant told me that the profits at the expo in one day would equal the profits for one year back in Cairo. And there were many red stickers and the prices modest.

I haven't made patchwork quilts for years - and mine were made using left-over scraps or op-shop materials so I was amazed at the sophistication these days - the sewing machines that can doing anything (!) and that thousands of already cut cloth and kits marketed. I thought it was a hobby using scraps!

I copied a quote from William Morris 1882 which I thought useful: Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.