Janine's Journey - January 2024 - An aha moment!
Sent: 1/31/2024 1:09:13 AM

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Janine's Journey - January 2024 - An aha moment!

Hi Subscriber,

The new year has started rather slowly and I haven't achieved as much this month as I had hoped. The first week of January, Pete wanted to make the most of his holidays so we were busy kayaking, diving and went to the tennis. To be perfectly honest I was quite pleased when he went back to work and I had the place to myself!

Then again for the Australia Day long weekend we went down south diving.

Although these photos don't do it justice I like the idea of an artwork of the Busselton jetty with the piles covered in brightly coloured soft and hard coral. Watch this space..

So what have I actually been up to this month....

Aha moment for Woolly Penguins

I have never been 100% happy with Woolly Penguin. I made it to enter the Wool Quilt prize so it had to be made from wool. The wool fabric I had for the background was the best I had but not ideal. Since it didn't get in, it has been sitting there, annoying me and I didn't know what to do with it.

I even started needle felting some blue over the sky to see if that would help! What was I thinking when the answer was staring me in the face!!

The aha moment....you don't like the background so change the background. Simple!

Out came the scissors and I cut out the penguins.

I was much more comfortable creating my usual sun dyed background. I went for something similar to the King Penguin portrait I did last year

An all over quilt and the background was ready for the penguins...

Sundye drying with all the creases

New background quilted

Then it was just a matter of sewing down the penguins and the finished result is much lighter and brighter.

In a Spin

If you remember from last month I was struggling with the star trails overpowering everything and I contemplated extending the star trails down over the whole thing and leaving it at that.

In the end I decided to head to the shops again to see if I could find a better organza/tulle as black didn't work. In my mind I was looking for a purple but instead I came home with a chocolate brown with blobs of sparkle. It pays to keep an open mind.

Finally some progress...

I used some hologram thread (for added sparkle) to sew it down following the lines of the circles.

In the end I opted for the grey Boab and stitched that over the tulle.

It stood out and didn't get lost in the background - yay!

Now all it needed was some bushes in the foreground and the binding.

So as a recap "In a spin" was originally going to be made from all eco dyed fabric. The background is black walnut but it wasn't dark enough so I added some sun dyes and the all eco dyed idea went out the window.

The star trails are Mola or reverse applique, in which the background fabric is cut away to reveal the improv piece below. Each cut away was zigzagged around the edge.

The stars were covered with tulle and the Boab raw edge appliqued on top. Finally a bit of thread painting on the bushes in the foreground to tie it all together.

Voila.. the finished "In a spin"

Sorting out the studio

I got my pigeon holes for my fat quarters!!!

I'm really happy with them, 15 holes wide and 3 high so plenty of space (well enough anyway - It is amazing how big your stash is !!)

I buy most of my fabric as fat quarters which is a small square, that way I can have lots of choice for my collages.

The first step was sorting it all out. I used Joan Wolfrom's colour tool to sort it into the 24 pure colours. I have kept my solids, and neutrals (greys, browns) separate.

It is interesting to see which colours I have lots of and which very little.

Who would have thought that I have most of blue and aqua blue (my favourite colours) so much so that they both have 2 holes each!

My News Years Resolution of being more active on social media was a complete failure. I ended up posting a big fat nothing! Will have to see how next month goes but I want to do something for the Australian Textile Art Awards and one of their conditions of entry is that no part of it can have been shown on social media.

Guess that is about it for now. I have some entries I need to get done this week and I just love writing those artist statements. Somehow stating the obvious is not enough and you need to come up with something deep and meaningful to make it real art!!

Take care

Janine