Leaf Me Alone

The Buderim Surface Design Group issued a challenge for the "Year of the Forest" and this is my interpretation.  Too many of our forest are being cleared, hence the pun in the name 'Leaf Me Alone".
On a piece of my onion dyed silk, I used a fern frond as a stamp to create the design.  First with discharge paste, then with a yellow and then two green dyes. A bit of stitching to add texture plus a touch of gold leaf to finish.  Afterward I realised the gold leaf was a bit too much but what's done is done.

Rainforest Canvas

I've become fascinated with sculpting fungus by felting them.  The treetrunk background is nuno felted,  then embellished by couching the woodiest looking threads and wools that I had, as well as some donated to my cause by a friend.  In some areas I've burnt into the trunk with a soldering iron.  After attaching the felted fungus I felt (tongue in cheek) that it needed some green fernery for interest.

The Pebble Tree

When I acquired a packet of natural silk waste

I thought "What will I do with that!"

But it turned out to be quite interesting how the

silk glued together when it was ironed. It needed

 to be between two pieces of baking paper because the heat makes it sticky.

The background and tree trunk are of the silk fibres and needed to be attached to the backing fabric as the silk only sticks to itself. The embellishments of threads and wooden beads is what is holding it to the backing fabric.

                                                                

The reason for the name "The Pebble Tree"

Gumnuts in Tutus

I enjoyed making my 'Gumnuts on Plastic' so much I just had to do it again as a quilted version with fabric.  The background is just sun dyes on calico.  After the stitchery I padded out the flowers for a 3D look before quilting.  This is what gave me the name "Gumnuts in Tutus" because that's what they look like.  I keep coming back to the old eucalyptus trees.

Gumnuts on Plastic

The Fantastic Plastic challenge was to create something with plastic. Thought I'd convert one of my sketches that was not too complicated because I had concerns that dense machine stitching might cause tearing or weakness in the plastic.  The plastic is painted on the reverse side with greens, greys, reds and pinks and a touch of brown to create a background for the machine stitching. I placed my initial drawing on a piece of butchers paper underneath so that I knew where to paint  the colours. This paint also stopped the plastic from sticking to the machine and slide through smoothly.  The tops of the flowers are quite densely stitched and I found the stitching warped the plastic in some places but that also added to the effect. But the density didn't tear the plastic.   Size 20 inches x 30 inches

Rainforest Jewels

Bought this wonderful piece of fabric, Convergence by Ricky Timms, and it perfectly suited my plan. I was trying to depict flowers and ferns that would be seen on the rainforest floor with the dappled  sunlight filtering through the canopy.  This was the first time I used discharge paste to create the feature design,  so the outcome was always going to be a surprise as far as the colours were concerned.  In a couple of areas I put a second application of discharge paste to lighten it a little bit more.  When quilting, I made use of the fabric pattern to stitch leaves and ferns as a surround.  There's a little extra wadding used to raise the main flowers.  Made in 2009 Size 5ft square. 

Wetlands

It took me about two years after seeing my first Quilt Show to actually try "painting with fabric".  After joining the Caloundra Quilters group, I thought I'd better learn about traditional quilting before getting too adventurous and doing my own thing.  Glad I did.  Wetlands was made in 2007 and is meant to capture a moment of peace and tranquility in the teatree swamps. The easiest part was sketching the birds and using that as a template for the pattern.  Fabric isn't as forgiving as paint.  No painting over or changing the shape or dimensions once the fabric is cut.  If I'd thought more about it at the beginning,  I would have made it a small wall hanging instead of a larger quilt of  5ft x 6ft.  It now hangs in my studio on the only section of wall free of cupboards and shelving.