January 2021

Zoom meeting!

It was so lovely to see faces again and have a chance to chat and show work.  We will have another Zoom meeting next month as well.  Hope everyone can make it.

Brigitte was presenting for us this month and she has chosen:

Weaving as a way to create texture

There are many ways to add texture to your textile art: both visual and tactile.  One tactile method is incorporate weaving.  Weaving can be done with strips of fabric, lace, ribbon, Tyvek, raffia, and of course yarn of various thicknesses.  You can work in a single colour and its various tints and shades, a complimentary colour scheme or colours usually associated with a specific culture, eg. Tribal.

Let's try to incorporate some weaving in our project this year.

What you need:

           Various strips of fabric, ribbons, lace, braiding

           Paper backed fusible such as Steam-A-Seam or Wonder Under

           Backing fabric

           Optional: Netting

Cut the backing fabric to the size that you want your finished weaving to be.  I chose several sizes ranging from 8 x 10 to 4 x 6.

Apply paper backed fusible to the background fabric.

Working from left to right, with fusible side facing up, line the fabric strips vertically along the top of the background fabric until covered and pin in place.  These strips act as the warp.

Starting horizontally at the first row, weave a fabric strip over and under to create the first weft row.  Pin in place.

Continue till the background fabric is covered.

Finish by pressing the weave to the background fabric to stabilize and hold everything in place.  Now how about adding some stitching?  I'll challenge you to pick some fancy stitches from your machine to add to your weaving, or if you are a hand stitcher, some fancy embroidery.

This is a plain weave.  By changing the way the weft strips are woven you can create patterning as well.

For example this is  twill weave pattern.

 

Jeanette

Eucalyptus Deglupta is the third (and maybe last) picture in my "colours in the natural world" series. It is also known as the Rainbow Eucalyptus. It is native to the Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

  

It has smooth, orange-tinted bark that sheds in strips, revealing streaks of pale green, red, orange, grey and purplish brown. I took artistic license and added some other colours in my picture. 

Please look it up online. It is really amazing.

Cathy

So weavings....tried working with wool, and it was just too thick to work properly within the accordion book.  So that lead to working with fabric strips and the end result of 'peach weevils', followed by the use of embroidery thread to create rock weavings.

Cath

I had the good luck to find a piece of fabric I had already woven and hadn't used.  I cut out flower petals and then added a black rose bead to the centre of one.  Just have to reuse things when you can!

 

Judith

I tried weaving with fusible ribbons but they were too flimsy to work.  So I cut 1/4 strips and wove those.   

They look good, Judith.  Interesting to see where you go from here.

Elisabeth sent pictures of what has been keeping her busy this winter!

                                                              Christmas cards

                                      Cloth bags for the Community Arts Centre sale

                                             Diving for Cover  - a sun printed fish

                                                    Pages for the accordion book