Janine's Journey - March 22 - Winners are Grinners
Sent: 3/31/2022 6:26:12 PM

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Janine's Journey - March 22 -Winners are Grinners

Hi Subscriber,

Welcome to my latest newsletter.

Where did March go?

I don't seem to have achieved half of what I wanted too, but then I do tend to underestimate how long things will take!!

Maybe it was going away for an extended long weekend which took my main sewing days over a couple of weeks.

I also spent days trying to do an abstract version of an aerial view of the Bungle Bungles. I am not happy with it, so it has been put in the UFO (Unfinished Objects) pile while I ponder what to do next. The best option is probably to throw it in the bin but I hate to admit defeat...

The WA border is now open and we are learning to live with Covid. For most of April we have family visiting from interstate which I am really looking forward to.

"Queen of the Reef" is a winner

I'm very excited and humbled to say "Queen of the Reef" has won the "Best use of Embroidery" award at the Australian Textile Art Awards in Melbourne. If you are new to my newsletter I went through the story of "Queen of the Reef" in the January newsletter which you can view here

The exhibition is on from the 26th March to 10th April at the Embroiderers Guild, 170 Wattletree Road, Malvern

WA Museum Boola Bardip

A couple of years ago the West Australian Quilters Association put together a banner "Spring into Parks" for the Spring Festival at Kings Park (Perth's premier inner city park). 39 quilters contributed 8 inch blocks inspired by the parks of Western Australia.

Turquoise Bay

I contributed two blocks to the project. Turquoise Bay is a beautiful white beach with Turquoise water (who would have thought with a name like that! ) It is an excellent snorkelling beach which is part of the Ningaloo Reef.

The block is a simple collage with some decorative yarn for the white water where the water meets the shore.

The other block I did was the Swamp Bottlebrush which grows in the South West around Walpole.

It was one of my first attempts at thread painting a flower. I thought it would be easy but was never really happy with the depth in it. It is interesting to look back at early work and think how you would do it differently now.

Swamp Bottlebrush

The banner has been displayed at several parks and festivals and is currently at the the Museum of WA Boola Bardip until April 29th. It is in the Woodside Gallery which is off the main entrance. My Flowering Gum Cushion which won Best Machine Embroidery at the Perth Royal Show last year is also part of the display at the left hand side.

"Turning Turtle" Award

As I mentioned in an earlier newsletter we sail a Mirror Dinghy. This year for our State Championships we had very windy conditions with lots of capsizes. We all go out for dinner in the evenings as a group and it was suggested we needed an award for the most capsizes.

This month we had the next big regatta which most people attend so I decided to quickly throw together the "Turning Turtle" award.

In dinghy sailing terms, turning turtle is when you capsize so the boat is fully inverted with the mast painting down. I started with just having the turtle but it looked very plain so I had to add some coral. The mirror has very distinctive red sails so I decided to stick with the class colours and make the coral red. To finish I added the Mirror class logo to the top.

It is starting to look like I have a thing for Turtles!!

Creating "Hidden Gem" and "Dalmanyi"

I am continuing to make pieces inspired by our trip to the Kimberley. This months pieces are two different views of one of the gorges on the Gibb River Road. Bell Gorge (called Dalmanyi, in the local aboriginal language) has a lovely waterfall cascading over the sandstone rocks.

We were there at the end of the dry season so there wasn't a lot of water in the waterfall but it was nice all the same. It is about a 1km walk from the carpark and you have to cross the creek above the falls then walk down the steep path to the pool below which is perfect for a refreshing swim especially when the temperature is about 40 degrees (above 100 F).

As usual I started by sun dying the sky to give the lovely vibrant blue which is typical of Western Australia. Next was the fabric collage to give the basic design. For the rocks I only wanted to do a minimum amount of thread painting so I chose fabrics which had some variation in colour to suggest all the cracks and shadows. I did use fabric for the main horizontal lines in the rocks. For the waterfall on this one I thread painted all the rocks behind it before I added the water. The first layer of water was a very light lilac and then I went over it with an off white. Using both colours gave it extra depth and I didn't want to do too much stitching to give it a light and airy feel and show the spray.

The reflection and water in the pool was always going to be very important for the success of this piece. The shallow water on the outside is quite brown in colour and the deeper water is much bluer with the reflection of the falls. With just the fabric collage I had a very distinct transition between the two so I had to do a lot of thread painting to blend the two. This involved stitching a range of khaki colours into the blue section and a range of blue stitching into the khaki section. If possible I like to use a variegated thread for this which gives me subtle changes of colour without constantly changing threads. Eventually the two areas merge into one and you can't tell where one fabric finishes and the next one starts.

For the other view of Bell Gorge I followed the same procedure except I tried adding some grey fabric for the waterfall. I have now decided this was a harder way of doing it as I had to stitch the rocks onto the grey fabric to show them peeking through the water otherwise it looked very solid and unnatural.

Well that is enough from me for now, I really must get back to the sewing machine. I'm starting to panic with so much still to be done and my exhibition rapidly approaching.

Thank you for taking the time to read my Newsletter, I hope you enjoyed it and found it informative. If you have any queries I would love to hear from you.

Kind Regards

Janine