Filet Crochet

Found out what the name of the cotton lace I am using! It is called Filet Crochet.

"Filet crochet is an old technique, which reached elaborate heights in the late nineteenth century. It is still very popular today, particularly in Holland, France and Germany, where it is used to make curtains, table cloths and figurative panels, as well as decorative edging. It consists of a regular square mesh, made from trebles (triples) and chain stitches, and the design is crated by filling in some of the spaces which blocks of stitches." sourced from Creative Needlecraft Handbook by Lucinda Ganderton

Hhhhhmmmm I have never been one for crochet or knitting - I have had a go - but the results were more like knotting! But I am feeling tempted to learn - just did a quick surf at how tos and I think I will have to ask someone to show me - those instructions look way too complicated

Crafty Posts

Thanks to Lauren at Craft Victoria for posting my blog on their site today.

She was interested in this site being a place for documenting the development of my work.

I must say that June Fox has played a big role in all of this - I just adore the way she has set out her blog to capture her idea development. Thanks!

What I like about her site is the layout relates directly to the development of her ideas, then bodies of work from exhibitions and also works in progress.

I also get a kick out of her work as she works in craft based practice, mostly tapestry, then shifts it into animation and film making.

She has a show on the streets of Sydney at the moment for her current residency with First Draft if you are in town you might get to visit her cardboard planetariums.

I have also just discovered someone who first got me hooked into this blogging stuff has just started blogging again. JOY Looking forward to some inspirational reading Loobylu.

The Architecture of Happiness

A little playing last night - between quilting and paper form - a segmented landscape, a desire to be close, or a fear of the wild and isolation. A fear of living without broadband!

Some quotes from The Architecture of Happiness : The secrete Art of Furnishing Your Life by Alain De Botton - that help me think about my ideas for A little ladylike tinkling and smearing

"... our love of home is in turn an acknowledgment of the degree to which our identity is not self-determined we need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical to compensate for a vulnerability we need a refuge to shore up our states of mind because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent side of us."

"... abstract sculptures (to) demonstrate to us the range of thoughts and emotions that every kind of non-representational object can convey... sculptures afford us an opportunity to focus with unaccustomed intensity on the communicative powers of all objects, including our buildings and their furnishings."p.81

"... our reason for liking abstract sculptures, and by extension tables and columns, are not in the end so far removed from our reasons for honoring representational scenes. We call works in both genres beautiful when they succeed in evoking what seems to us the most attractive, significant attributes of human beings and animals." p.84



He identifies maternal tenderness in Barbara Hepworth's work Two Segments and a Sphere.

Made at Home

This was my train ride to Melbourne this week. It is called Home Made.

Inspired by a recent call out by a local collective of midwives who support woman birthing at home for a design to put onto a t-shirt that promotes home birth.

Kds Library Bag

Last week I picked my sewing machine up from being serviced YAY! It now sews like a dream (no more eating my projects!) and I can finish a few things I have started - like Kd's library bag for Kinder.

You can see more of the bags details here

Ok I will post this image (again) as I do love my embroidery work!

A little lady like tinkling & smearing

This is a sample of a beginning of a work I am putting together for a show at Craft Victoria coming up in November.

Using English piercing patchwork technique that my mum used to make me patchwork quilts when I was little.

This body of work carries on from two previous bodies of work - You Make me Feel at Alluvial (unfortunately this gallery has shut & the web site no longer exists) and the other body of work from collaborative project with a group called FOURCAST.

Fabric used is called Horse Hair, generally used for stiffening in men's coats, although the shop I purchased it from said although it is called Horse Hair it is made from Yaks hair from Nepal! (the link to Horse hair is an article about how to make your own horse hair fabric which sounds very freaky to me and much prefer buying off the roll!)

The lace is a cotton based lace - I don't know what it is called - it is something I picked up at Spot Light and wanted to work with it - since then I have been collecting a variety of cotton laces from a second hand store near out home to incorporate between the card board pieces.

I am enjoying working with the lace as previous works have been without lace.

When chatting to Kate Rhodes before her departure from Craft Victoria as curator she called it fru fru! and loved the contrast between the plain and the decorative, as do I.

More writing to be done about A little lady like tinkling and smearing - this is a quote from George Eliot's Middlemarch and I got directed to this from an article by Germaine Greer discussing women's leisure time in our society, entitled "Why Women don't relax".

a heart card

Card making for my new sister to be; an invitation to her hens

Good fun