I''m the guest speaker at an upcoming exhibition

I've been invited by the 2012 Certificate IV students from Marden Senior College to open their upcoming art exhibition called 'Creative Fusion'. 

Below is the invite along with a little blurb about the exhibition. 

      Creative Fusion (Marden Senior College)

     Painting & Textile Art Works by Marden Senior College Graduates

      2 - 26 April 2013

Address: Phone: Fax:

558 Magill Rd, Magill (Corner Pepper St & Magill Rd) (08) 8364 6154 (08) 8332 3164

Email: Open Hours:

pepperstreet@burnside.sa.gov.au Tuesday to Saturday 12 noon - 5pm Find us on Facebook

Eastern Silk store

I made a short stop today into a shop I really like. It is called Eastern Silk and they have a great range of all sorts of items. They sell Pashminas, gorgeous silk fabric by the roll, embroidered braids, bed spreads, jewellery, etc. I've posted their webpage image below along with a few photos from their store.

http://www.easternsilk.com.au/

Some of the gorgeous hand embroidered pillows they sell

Stunning braids covered in gorgeous pearls and crystal like beads.

Very funky leather ottoman

Just a few of the many rolls of silk for sale

Work going into Pepper Street Exhibition

I found out about a month ago that a piece of my textiles work has been accepted for an exhibition at Pepper Street Gallery (South Australia) titled 'backyard'. My work is based on the circular shapes found in my dad's backyard wood heap. The work is used as the header here on my blog and is also on my business card.

Handmade Paper Art and Textiles Flickr Group

I recently set up a group on Flickr called 'Handmade Paper Art and Textiles. The aim of the group is for people who use handmade paper in their artwork to post photos of their work. Photos of just handmade paper sheets are not excepted. The photos have to show how you use handmade paper in your art and textiles.

Below is an image of the first page of photos from the flickr group. If you would like to add photos to the group, you will need to hold a flickr account. Flickr is a great website for artists to promote their work and it is a simple site to use. You can upload 6 photos a week to the group.

Here is the address for the flickr group        http://www.flickr.com/groups/handmade_paper_art_textiles/

                              Please feel free to go and check out the groups work.

Oh how I love hand embroidery

I cannot even begin to tell you how much I love hand embroidery. I find it so relaxing and therapeutic. I love the fact that I can sit and stitch while my husband is watching tv and I don't get told off for making too much noise with the sewing machine. (not that my sewing machine is meant to venture outside of my studio- sometimes it just happens magically.

Below are just a few of my hand embroidery images I wanted to share with you.

Gorgeous embroidery threads

Oh how I love my embroidery threads. I just bought a new box for storing them and then enjoyed the job of colour coding them. My last thread box was one I bought at a fabric store and it was approximately $15.00 for a smaller one than what is now pictured. This new one is a tackle box that came from a fishing shop and it cost me about $6.00. This one also has moveable partitions, unlike my old one.

I dream of owning lots and lots of boxes like this. Maybe 1 box for each colour. Oh how i love my embroidery threads. Did I already say that???

Southern Textiles Conference- Carol Wilkes

Carol Wilkes from Queensland is one of the tutors at the Southern Textiles Conference. She works in a range of areas including wearable art and wall based textiles pieces. She is a fantastic teacher (I did one of her workshops a few years ago) and manages to pack so much information into a short period of time. She shares all her trade secrets and so wiling to help students in anyway possible. Gorgeous person.

Below are examples of her work, these ones are mainly comprised of machine made cording.

Outline stitch applique

Well this weeks applique class was learning about outline stitch. Traditionally it is meant to be Broderie Perse which uses motives that are stitched onto a background. My example is a very contemporary take on the idea.

New work on Flirckr

Whilst cleaning up my studio, I also photographed some work I had hanging around. Its work I made at the end of last year but had never got around to photographing before.

This piece is hand stitched paper (the bottom right corner) onto a black fabric backing. It is stretched around canvas frame.

The 3 pieces above are part of a set. They are all hand stitched paper stretched over canvas frames. I need to photograph them all hanging together so it makes sense how they work together. I think that will have to wait for another day.

Fabric Chair

Here is yet another sample for my next teaching unit. I made this chair out of newspaper as you can see below and then covered it with strips of flannelette fabric. The stitching you can see, I used in places to hold the fabric strips in place and then also as decoration.  Oh yes, you can also see my little helper Millie in one of the photos.

My published work

Well after my work being accepted some time ago for a Fibre Design book it is now on the TAFTA website. If you click on the link below my work comes on the first 2 pages- Sarah Smith.

http://www.tafta.org.au/design_book/Surface%20Design/Surface%20Design%20FINAL_edited_resized.pdf

I also have my own flickr site with some of my work on it. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/barefeetsarah/sets/

sketchbook covers

I've been stuck writing reports and finishing up school stuff for the last few weeks so my posts have been minimal. About the only thing I got organised is the covers on my sketchbooks. I've made them so that I can interchange them between books.

This first cover is just shapes that I put on with fusible  

   webbing and then did some hand embroidery.

This second cover has a section of random patchwork type 

 fabric on it.

 This last cover is a whole heap of small pieces of my dyed 

 fabric. They've all been hand stitched together to make the 

 cover. I couldn't tell which was the front and back easily, 

so I then put a piece of ribbon on the front.

My work accepted for publishing in a book

I was so excited to receive an email the other day saying that my work had been accepted for publication in an Australian textile fibre book. To my dismay, I read on to find out that the digital standard of the other work submitted was of very poor quality. As a result, the book will not be published.

I am disappointed, but not surprised by the fact that a lot of the images were low quality. Unfortunately I think this is somewhat to do with the age and lack of technological knowledge that a lot of our textiles artists lack. I don’t want to sound like some young little know it all brat, but I am constantly observing textiles artist’s/students in my work place and so feel I am in a position to comment on this matter. My observations often worry me in regards to the mostly middle age and older students we continually attract. We are always trying to find younger students at my school to do our textiles courses, but students under the age of 40 are in very small numbers.

I think we need to look at ways of encouraging younger students into the textiles area and also improving the technological skills of the older students. As a teacher I'm going to put some real thought into how we can go about achieving these goals. Any suggestions???

Here are the photos of my work that was accepted. 

This red piece was based on my fathers wood pile I remember from when I was a child. I used to love the way he would stack all the logs in perfect order. The piece has numerous hand dyed fabrics that were cut to shape and then free machine and bobbin stitched place. 

This piece is reverse applique based on how I love lying under trees looking up into the branches.