Nuno Felted Beginners Scarf Class

I know my blog is not in order however its the best I can manage at the moment. Back in September, terrible, Im so behind with my blogging, I ran another nuno felted class. As some of you are aware, I have been obsessed with felting for some years now and many of you have begged me to teach felting items other than jewellery which I have taught for some time.Nuno felting was developed by two American felters based up in a commune in Queensland. As the Queensland is quite warm and not so suited to felted fabrics they developed nuno so the material would be lighter, allowing them to wear garments suitable for that climate. One of these American ladies, was Japanese. Nuno is the Japanese word for fabric. Nuno felting is taking fabric and combining it with wool in a very fine application to create a felted fabric. 


I ran two nuno beginner classes in September and judging by your fantastic feedback and results, I will do more! If you are interested email me on kathy@versacreative.com.au. Ive included some photos which are only of the second classes work as my photos for the first class got accidentally wiped. Sorry guys!

Cloth, St Josephs College, Hunters Hill

For 5 glorious days, I was immersed in multi disperse transfer dyeing taught by the amazing artist, Marie Therese Wisnowski. I can hear you asking whats Cloth? 
It was a 5 day conference organised by Glenys Mann - founder and owner of Fibre Arts Australia . Glenys organizes five-day textile/fiber conferences throughout Australia, which feature highly talented international artists and designers, who share their knowledge and practices.


Other international tutor’s, who shared their valuable knowledge, techniques and informative lectures included: John Garrett (Experimental Fibre Constructions with Alternative and Recycled Materials, USA); Sherrill Kahn (Mixed Media, Collage/Applique and Composition Techniques, USA); Cherilyn Martin (New Dimensions in Surfaces & Stitch, A Journey of Discovery, Netherlands); Cherrilyn Tyler(A Little Bit Of Frippery, UK); Els Van Baarle(Transformation through Wax, Netherlands). 



At our Cloth workshop we created our own fabric by applying paint, textured, printed imagery onto papers with disperse dyes and then we  transferred the prints to polyester and blended synthetic fabrics to create a suite of color and pattern studies via an iron or heat press. Each student from all the classes offered at Cloth participated in an exhibition on the final day.

My experimentation for scarf fabric

Part of my studies to make scarf fabric

Carolines exhibition piece - Marie Therese's class

Diane's exhibition sample- Marie Therese's class

Example from John Garrett's class

Example from Sherrill Kahn's class

Polymer Silkscreen Printing with the Wollondilly Arts Group

On October 22, I was invited to teach polymer silkscreen printing to the Wollondilly Arts Group who are based in the Wollondilly Shire of the Southern Highlands of NSW.This is a not for profit group compromising of artists and crafts people from many disciplines such as painting, ceramics, sculpture, leadlighting and glass art, woodworking, photo media, textiles, paper making, performing arts, printmaking, poetry, writing, bonsai etc. Polymer silkscreening is much like any other form of silkscreening where you make up artwork, expose it to film then print from the film. With polymer we use a special film known as photo Ez film which can also be used to print on paper and fabric. It was a great day with 14 energetic ladies and one gentleman. Only one person in the group had played with polymer before. Here are some of their results.

OMG Its been far too long

I must apologise for being off the air since April. Where has the time gone? I took three months off from teaching and markets which began in June. It was a wonderful time to do some exploration although not long enough to do all I wanted. One of the areas I was itching to immerse myself was that of natural dyeing. To me the guru in this area is our own India Flint, who lives in South Australia and has a Latvian heritage. You can check India out through Google she has a wealth of information on the net. Im lucky enough to be attending one of her workshops down in Melbourne, later this year. I feel like a mad alchemist . Nothing in the garden has been safe from my cutting shears. You name it, Ive tried it. Even drove around for a week with material wrapped around vegetable peelings and floers until it just got too smelly. It was worth that effort though as I created a gorgeous scarf. Heres the picture for that piece.