December 2020

Yellow!

Judith is presenting Yellow this month.  She was going to start with a Joltz,  handing out a yellow post-it note and having you write down all the names for yellow you can in 30 seconds and then sharing.

Here is a bit of help.

Yellow is a primary colour but why is it the first seen by the human eye?

Apparently it is that the sensitivity of our eyes is at its peak when it perceives the wavelengths that we see as yellow.  Some say that it evolved as a way to help discern the fruit from the leaves on a tree.

So: This is why taxis are yellow, pencils are yellow, post-it notes and the original highlighter are yellow, caution signs are yellow and the first emoji, the smiley face, is yellow!

Cultural Uses and Beliefs

In China, the colour yellow was reserved for emperors, with less pure shades being given to royal relatives.

Ancient Muslims used it for less royal reasons; they tagged Jews and Christians with yellow badges.

In 13th Century England the Jews wore yellow patches.

1930s Nazi's tagged Jews with yellow stars.

Currently in Afghanistan the Taliban tags Hindu's.

Lamas of high levels wear yellow hats.

Zen equates yellow with wealth, health, knowledge and wisdom.

Aboriginals of Australia considered yellow to be important because it symbolized the sun and the creator.

Yellow is the colour of illness, especially jaundice.

In ancient Greece, blonds were prostitutes and bleached their hair.

Yellow rooms can increase focus for many.  Too much yellow causes stress.

Consider these uses:

Yellow-bellied, mellow yellow, yellow journalism, yellow peril (associated with the influx of Chinese immigrants), the golden ages, golden girls, golden handshakes, gold medals.   Some are positive and many are not, reflecting the many and various opinions about the colour.  

Oscar Wilde was imprisoned because he was seen carrying a Yellow pamphlet, seen to be a sign of dissidence, pornography and avant-garde thinking.  Yellow was the colour of those thinkers going against the norms of the day.

Dyes

Yellow dye that didn't discolour of fade was hard to come by.  The two early pigments, orpiment and gamboge were both very poisonous.  Naples yellow was sulphurous, India yellow was made (some say) from cow urine.  Lead-tin yellow, used from 1300-1750, suddenly went out of favour and wasn't rediscovered until the 1940s, with the help of modern chemistry.

And so, think of yellow differently when you see it next!  Enjoy!

PS

And (drum roll, please) Pantone's colour of the year is Illuminating Yellow and Ultimate Gray.

Cathy

Thank you for the yellow presentation.  Such a great colour to study on these grey days!

My first picture is my yellow pages created using the confetti technique incorporating many hand dyed fabric with free motion writing.

The yellow spectrum includes paint chips with great names.  My favourite is Fuzzy Duckling.

What is yours?

November 2020

 A snow day cancelled our meeting at Gallery Vertigo.  Winter is here.

We will continue to create but more from our homes.  We are looking into ways to stay in touch through online group chats.  Stay tuned as we try to sort this out.

Show and Tell

Joyce sent in three lovely pictures of what she has been playing with.

Rust dyeing

And another one based on Cathy's presentation of Colour Your World 

And finally rubbings that Joyce dyed at home.   

Christine has used some of her hand dyed fabric and the embroidery stitches on her machine for her work inspired by the Rainbow Mountain in China.

Cathy sent in pictures of her works of art, she has been very productive!  She is doing two pages for each technique so the accordion book will have a front and a back side. 

Starting with her interpretation of Colour My World. 

Cathy then did a paint pour on canvas and did not like the result.  She removed the canvas from the frame and cut out two pages.  She will spray shellac on the art so the paint does not flake.

The rubbings were a lot of fun and since we did not have our meeting Cathy tea dyed hers at home with rooibos for one and turmeric ginger tea for the other.

Next we have sun prints on coffee dyed fabric and some great results from the rust dyeing.

Cathy says she was inspired by the gallery X and O challenge.  In the middle of the night she thought about her world coin collection and thought they would work well for rubbings.  They were done with all the blue and orange crayons purchased at Staples.  She has done 12 blocks!

Cathy is interested in feedback on what people are choosing as a base for their pages if they are doing an accordion book.  She has quarter inch foam board but thinks that might be too thick for 12 to 15 pages.

Jeanette says she loved Cathy's idea of mounting pieces on little canvasses so ran out and bought a pack at Scattered Goods.

After thinking about Colour My World she remembered the awesome colours she had seen at the Aberdeen Columns.  If you haven't heard of them then you are in for a treat!  To find the columns you drive south into the forest behind Lavington, follow several logging roads and eventually, if you are very observant, you will find a tiny sign dangling off a tree indicating the trail head.  The columns are  only a 5 minute black fly infested walk from there.  She has included the photograph of the actual columns as well.

Jeanette has decided to fill the 4 canvasses with mini quilts showing colours found in the natural world that you wouldn't expect to see and are a pleasant surprise when you do come upon them.  She chose the red sandy beaches of PEI for her second piece.  Did you know they actually dye T-shirts with the sand?  These are available to be bought throughout PEI.

Thanks for the inspiration Cathy!

Cathy has done more!

Creating a fabric accordion book is all new to me. I did a two page mock up book so that I could experiment with different options. Have chosen to go with Pellon stabilizer as a base and did Fagoting stitch to join each of the pages. This allows for additional pages to be added at whim. Once the front and back art pages are completed, and quilted onto batting, they are clipped onto the Pellon and machine stitched. Tried finishing the edges with ribbon or decorative stitching but preferred the raw edge effect. a closure is made with a handmade button and wool.

It will be so interesting to see the variations in all the other members creations.

Thank you for all your input, instructions and encouragement.

Front pages

Back pages

Cath

I considered what to do for Colour Your World and thought about how some countries are well known for their colours.  Some times the colours relate to areas like the magical blue/green of Kalamalka Lake,  or the architechture of sunny Greece.  The national colours are often on the flags of the countries.  When I think of Canada the red and white of our flag always comes to mind.

Since I am using folded flowers instead of a book page here are my Canada flower and a bonus poinsettia for the holiday season.

We met at Gallery Vertigo, October

 The rain kept us from meeting in Coldstream and doing rubbings as we had planned.  Gallery Vertigo offered us their space to hold our meeting.  Thank you, Brigitte.

Cathy had a wonderful presentation on Colour My World.  As she told us about brilliantly named cites all over the world as we coloured on our maps.  The thought of blue cities, or yellow cities or rainbow landforms makes us want to travel again soon!  

                                                              

   

Here are the links she used to find her information: 

Wikipedia

Sensationalcolor.com

World life expectancy.com

Travellittleknownplaces.com

Geotarget.com

World Economic Forum

Mysa

hotstelworld.com

ScienceLive

We were delighted to have Joyce back with us and she had done some rust dyeing on her own.  She brought along a pretty little piece with hand stitching giving a great texture.

Linda brought her rust fabric as well and her paint pour box.  A four sided art work.

Elisabeth brought her first abstract work to show us.  It just needs to be stretched over canvas.  She also showed us her rusting, wrapped around re-bar and some nails.  It could turn into a lovely scarf.

Cathy not only gave a great presentation but she had 3 samples from past meetings.

She continues with her 4" square canvas', they are going to make a striking presentation.  Another paint pour, this one round.  Do I have it upside down?  Rust dyed and hand stitched, pounded flowers.  And sun printing with coffee soaked fabric.  Very subtle but beautiful leaf prints.

Brigitte showed us work from a Sorrento retreat with Catherine Nicholls.  As she has been working with masks for a few years she tried her hand at stitching a resist in the shape of a mask before dyeing with indigo.  Great result!  

There is also some lovely hand work presented, Boro stitching and Sashiko stitching.  

Christine has finished her Symmetry piece from last season and it is such a bright cheerful work!  Trapunto on the butterflies really show them off.  She also showed us her paint pour butterfly or is it a moth?

Judith has finished her paint pour "The Igniter", inspired by the Christie Mountain Fire in Penticton this summer.

Cath had done two Japanese Folded Fabric Flowers with her rust and some indigo dyed fabric.  A possible bouquet of flowers for this year?

Jeanette has done some research into our next idea of rubbings.  She made some on her sidewalk and then dyed them.  It was too wet to do any at the meeting so we will continue on our own and see what we can come up with.  Oil pastels were used for the rubbing.

Jeanette brought along some Quilting Arts issues that have information on Rit dyeing and some interesting links.

Interesting information on dyes though out history. 

We finished up by talking about what you will make with this year's exploration of Colour. We had talked about making a concertina book.  If you are going to do that you will have to consider consistent size of your samples and idea's for construction.  The possibilities are endless!