Winging it

Yes, I was winging it. These are the pics that should have come out on one or two of my previous blogs. Here we have a mix of the then Victorian Tapestry Workshop yarns, a lovely paisley printed material that emanates colour but (sadly) without the design - I do love paisley. Plus there is more bulky soumak - I used six strands of two-ply as I wanted the ridges for more texture.

The Silken Cocoon

Finally this image appears. This is the larvae stage of the Golden Sun Moth. It lives underground in a 'silken' cocoon and it feed on the roots of the Wallaby Grass. Here I've used soumak stitching for the roots. The material used for the ground is a silk rayon which I used in a dress I made for myself in the 1970s . . . what goes around!

And some more

Five more pics of my work - at last you can see that I have been producing!

More pics

Having just been successful in uploading one more picture, I'll try some more.

On the home stretch

I have now finished 15 of my 16 tapestries in this series. Whew! It's been a big year and a half, with lots of other things on the go as well. Five of these latest tapestries have been cut from the loom, but not yet 'finished'. At the moment I am contemplating a different method of mounting them.

Putting them on ready-made canvasses that I have painted with the tapestry design, doesn't feel satisfactory. I like the look of a properly mounted work and attaching them by velcro gives them an amateur finish in my opinion.

I am planning to mount each one on a black background and frame them separately. It will mean they can be hung together as originally envisaged - or hung in any order or shape for abstract viewing, so I won't necessarily have lost anything.

I now plan to have a go at adding photographs. It may or may not work. I haven't dealt with my ultra-sophisticated security system which bans uploading of my own photos onto a site of my choice.

Halfway there

Well, thanks to Trend Micro Internet Security Pro, this page is not considered safe enough to upload any more pictures. I am going to have to reconsider this blog now. I was about to announce that I am halfway there, having completed my eighth tapestry in this series of sixteen.
I will continue weaving, but I will not be able to show anyone the results of my work unless I can somehow persuade TMISP to accept my pictures.
Maybe when I press Save Now, all this will disappear too.

On-going

This is really weird. I wrote this post two days ago, but when I added the pictures they were far too big and there seemed to be no way to replace them with the same pics but smaller, so eventually I am re-doing the whole entry. The post immediately before, 'And another one', should be read AFTER this, but that's computers.

I seem to be charging ahead. From my last effort (way back in 2009), I have woven three more tapestries (though none of them are finished-off or mounted yet) and I'm nearly finished my fourth (NB this is 'And another one'). Maybe it's the weather . . .

I am really enjoying mixing strips of material with thread in these tapestries. The texture is amazing and it always surprises me what the material looks like when it's scrunched up through being woven and beaten down. I weave the thread across it every few passes, which helps secure the material - and keeps the colours on track. I am weaving the same materials here as I did in my second tapestry, but the accompanying colours give it a slightly different hue.

In my 'den' tapestry (No 2 in the sequence) I didn't have the colour material I wanted, so, impatient to start, I decided to mix threads all the way through - the only contrasting texture is the moth's mohair 'feeler'.

I have been remiss and not spent much time searching out these little moths in the patch of grassland at the Dunkeld Arboretum, as I'd planned, so I still haven't seen one of these tiny creatures, even though December-January is their flying-mating time.

A noteworthy happening: I have just been shortlisted for the inaugural Kate Derum Award by the Victorian Tapestry Workshop. Wow! I am so excited. The award is for tapestry weavers who graduated in the three years 2006-2009. I go down for the formal opening - and announcement of the winner - on February 10.

Three of my works from the Lifeblood Series - Grampians, Nigretta and Sandford - will be exhibited, together with work from the other finalists at the VTW through February.

No exhibition at Off the Rails Gallery this month (it was closed for New Year) or February, when a Draw Club takes over the station.