Textile Art Festival in Brisbane

The Festival was great. I bought some bits and pieces.

These are all wool except for the one on the right which is silk.

These are sari ribbons, sari silk twist and chiffon.

These are the various material pieces I bought. I love the 5 design pieces on the right, it was hard just to pick these. The 2 smaller woven pieces beside these at the top are upholstery samples. The green piece below these is hand dyed and the Stitched brown piece is also hand dyed. It was from Lisa Walton's stall. She had lots of wonderful hand dyed fabrics. She sells these on her website Dyed and Gone to Heaven.

I went to a few of the talks - Dale Rollerson from the Thread Studio talking about her Textile Art Explorations, one on Shrink Magic and I went to the talk by Marion Gorr about Overseas Textiles.

Marion runs a Silk business and spoke about her suppliers of Silk in China. She showed slides of these. Also they have set up a craft centre for the women of the Vikasana Institute in South India. They have done workshops with the women and give them the waste silk which they use to make dolls. She had a selection of the dolls there. They are going to be returning later this year to give more workshops. The dolls are lovely and they each have the makers name on a label on the back. They had a computer link up with the women in India showing them making the dolls and we were able to ask questions.

This is a photo of some of the dolls. You can see these and other items on the Beautiful Silks website. You can also go here to purchase the dolls online. You can learn more about the Doll making project here.

I did a class with Dale on Ratty Tatty Papers. There wasn't enough time to make a little book as they didn't supply enough irons for us to all use. But we did get to play with making silk paper and using starburst sprays to get different effects. It was also good to be able to see Dale's samples and books she has made, up close.

All the Art Quilts and the other displays were wonderful to see (Recycle Reuse, Collections, State of the Art and Bernina USA Fashion show and Creative Challenge). It is always amazing to see what people can come up with.

I forgot my camera, but here are some blogs with posts and photos of the festival.

Lisa Walton - Dyed and Gone to Heaven. Lisa shows a photo of her quilt "Solar Flare" on her blog. This was really beautiful to see up close. The beading doesn't really show up well in this photo though. Lisa has sold this quilt to a Lady who is going to display it in her Healing Centre. How wonderful - I'm sure this piece will be helping out in the healing process for all those who come in contact with it.

Robin's Ramblings

Also another post by Robin which shows photos of some of the amazing quilts.

Dale Rollerson - Down Under Dale

Textile Art Festival in Brisbane

I'm going to the Textile Arts Festival in Brisbane tomorrow. It's going to be great. I've put my name down to do a Make and Take Class with Dale from The Thread Studio. I'm really excited to be seeing Dale and her products in person as I'm so used to just ordering from her website it will be strange seeing all the products there in real life. There are lots of talks I would like to see but I'll have to wait and see when I'm there to see how much time I'll have.

This Talk sounds excellent:

2.30pm: Marion Gorr, Beautiful Silks, Stand 44. Marion travels to meet all her suppliers to ensure their policies of non child labour and good working conditions are satisfied. In 2008 Beautiful Silks built a simple craft centre for the women of the Vikasana Institute South India. She will share her experience in sourcing and creating ethical textiles, and explain waste-to-wealth products. Also she'll share experiences of the team's recent foray into creating women's micro credit groups and direct selling websites for the poorest textile workers. This talk is accompanied by projected images and real examples of the results her recent travels to source textiles in India and China.Join Marion for this fascinating insight and – depending on the Indian-Australian communication network on the day – a live link up with textile workers in India. This is a once-only event on Saturday – don’t miss it!

I hope to catch this talk. There was a class on at the same time that sounded really interesting - Arm Knitting. The class description says that you will knit a scarf in 20 minutes. This has me intreged. So I'm tossing up over the two but I don't want to miss the talk. Maybe I'll go to the talk and just go and see the class sample at the stall.

I'll try to remember to take some photos to put on here. I know I'm going to be very tempted to buy lots of things. I would like to get some batik fabrics if they have any there. I also can't wait to see the Art Quilts on display.