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.

Shisha Embroidery

This is one of the pieces I've been working on. I still need to put a border around it and maybe some more beading and a design on the border. I'm thinking of also mounting it on a canvas. I showed this background in the post that I did on Indian Inspiration. I haven't named it yet, I'll wait till its finished.

I love the look of Shisha Embroidery. There is a good tutorial on the Joyful Abode blog.

These are some books on Shisha Embroidery that I have.

This is a great book. It is quite detailed. It shows 10 different methods of doing Shisha as well as lots of design ideas. It is packed full of photos - the only disappointment is that they aren't all in colour.

Nearly half of this book is made up of Transfer patterns to be used for Shisha Embroidery. This initially put me off this book as I don't really like using patterns but these are good as a starting point and useful to inspire your own designs. In the introduction it links Shisha Embroidery to Mumtaz Mahal, whose husband the Moghul Emperor Shah Jahan, built the Taj Mahal. It states that she, "Is credited by some with having originated the idea and techniques for Shisha embroidery." There is an interesting section on Regional Styles of Shisha Embroidery. It also has diagrams on how to do Shisha and other stitches. This book doesn't have alot of photos. Once again most of the photos are in black and white. This is a shame as the patterns and embroideries are so colourful, it would be good to see them in their full splendour.

I love the picture on the front of this book. Surjeet Husain, who wrote this book, was born in India and intially learnt embroidery from her Aunt. She is now a Lecturer in Textiles in London and teaches the art of Indian and English embroidery. The book has sections on General Information, Stitches, A Project - a Bushkiri Bag and Design inspiration. It has some good designs at the back and shows how you can develop a pattern. Surjeet has two other workbooks on Indian styles of Embroidery.

Some links that show Shisha Embroidery are:

Shisha Embroidery Flickr Group

Stitch Magazine Article

Shisha Google Images

Jane Austen Meets Bridget Jones

"Lost In Austen"

This DVD was one of my Mothers Day presents. It was on TV a while ago and I only got to watch one episode. When I was off work from my operation, I got to curl up on the lounge and watch this all in one go. I really loved it. It's really well done.

If you're a Jane Austen and Bridget Jones fan you have to see this, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Crazy Weather

We've had stong winds and heavy rain for the last 2 days in the whole region. There has been lots of flooding north of us and into Queensland, the worst some areas have had in 35 years. Schools have been closed yesterday and today. They were asking people yesterday to not travel on the roads if they didn't have too as there were trees coming down and power lines.

There is some flooding in our city so far, but the river is rising and they expect it to peak today at 10.4 metres at noon. It goes over the levee bank at 10.6 metres. They are asking everyone in the CBD to evacuate by 10.00am today. The Sun is trying to shine, so we may be lucky and not get any more rain. It still could be a major flood as there was alot of rain overnight in the whole catchment area. My work is in the CBD near the river, but it is raised up. I don't think it will be open today. I haven't had to work the last few days so I was able to stay at home and off the roads. My husband works over the other side of the river so I'm hoping that he will only just be moving things at work this morning and then coming home.

Lucky that 2/3rds of the city is up on a huge hill. We live up there too so no flooding for us thank goodness.

I've been doing some more stitching. I'll have something to show soon. I'm working on a UFO and also working on the Orange Indian piece from my Indian inspiration post.

Guatemalan Textiles

I love fabric and embroidery from other countries. I have been reading Rayela's Fiber Focus blog and came across her posts on Guatamala. There are some posts on there from Erin, who has an Etsy shop called La Chapina. She sells wonderful packs of Scrap sampler Huipil patches. I ordered one as I wanted to have some interesting pieces to use in my stash.


They came with a cute little worry doll.

They are all so colourful and interesting. I'm going to incorporate them into different pieces that I do.



I went on Dalene's blog - Art4sol today and saw that she has also purchased a pack of these and she has done a post on this today. I hope Darlene doesn't mind that I've also done a post. It's abit like show and tell - I wanted to show mine too. Darlene does some really lovely work, so it will be interesting to see what she uses these for.



I wanted to find out some more about Guatamalan Textiles so I got these two books out of the Library while I was waiting for the pack to arrive.

This book is one of the books in the Fabric Folios series (a great series). Its full of vibrant photos of Guatemalan Textile pieces with explanations of the techniques. The introduction presents interesting background information on materials used, principal techniques, patterns and symbolism plus more. This is a large hardcovered book. Its a beautiful book that covers Textiles from the areas of Vietnam, Laos and Thailand; Orissa, Rajasthan and Gujarat; Mexico and Guatemala; Panama; Romania and Benin. It is full of lots of "Eye Candy". There are many photos of traditional costumes, people and beautiful fabrics. It is written as a Textile Tour of the world where you are transported to each country as she writes about her travels, details about people she meets and her experiences with lots of background information included. It will be hard parting with this one!

Textile Online Workshop - Holey Moley Club with Dale Rollerson

Dale from the Thread Studio is running a 12 month online workshop. To find out more details go to her blog Holey Moley Club. It is a 12 month class starting on the 5th July. There are 6 lessons, with one class ever 2 months. This is a great idea as 6 week classes tend to come and go too quickly. This way you have so much more time to create and interact. Sounds like she has lots of interesting activities/challenges planned for the time in between the classes too. It sounds very tempting.

New Online Community for Art Quilters

Just a short post. Quilting Arts Magazine have a new Online Community up and running. It looks quite good. Go here to sign up.

Have a good weekend!