Tuesday 31 January 2012

January 2012 - a busy holiday time

 In December I signed up for an International Postcard Swap.   Of course I decided to combine fabric and drawing ... here are a few I have made a start on.   I have tea dyed some cotton fabric, then I ironed it onto freezer paper which stabilises the fabric enough to draw on with a Pigma pen.   Next I will do all the quilting stitches on the fabric and batting layer (remember to remove the freezer paper before putting the batting onto the back of the fabric).
 Over the holidays I did a bit of spinning ... here I am spinning a laceweight - fibre is Bond (sheep) which I purchased from The Thylacine here in Tasmania - she does some beautiful dying.

 This same fibre is now becoming a very long scarf/wrap ... still not sure how much longer I want it to be, currently about 2metres.  I just love how soft this is and how the colours blended in, all soft and greeny/greys.
 This is some of the fibre I have spun during January.
Top Left - from Fibrefanatic Designs  yellow/chartreause Merino
Top Right - from Ewe Give Me The Knits  this is Mandie's Licorice Allsorts fibre which I have plied with a black Merino to give it this more licorice look.
Middle Right is the Blackwood (Green) Bond from The Thylacine,
Very Bottom is my very own Merino/Silk/Cat Fur blend - some spun and some still in the Batt stage that I have carded together.  It is very nice too!
 That big lot of lemony/chartreause has become this gorgeous shawl, a nice weight for winter, and it is big so comes down past my elbows when I wear it.
 A close up.
 I made another little neck warmer scarf.   The first one I made of these went to one of my sisters ... I decided I still wanted one, so made another - it crochets up really fast - less than five hours I think.This one still needs to be blocked as the edges are curling up.
 Currently on the wheel,  this beautiful blue Falkland fibre ... I have spun this very fine - probably the finest I have spun a whole lot of top.   I get about 40 - 50 wraps per inch.   Can't you just see this in a very fine lacy wrap - the colour is beautiful.  This is also from The Thyalcine.
On my spinning wheel at the moment - the last 100g of this lovely fibre.

So you can see that I have been doing quite a bit of spinning and crocheting this month.   I am also trying to teach myself how to knit (continental style) - but am giving myself the whole year to do that because I want to knit socks - woolen socks are the best!

I have also been drawing more in my big Journal for 2012 and will post some of that next week perhaps.

Happy Tangling for now ... Jane x

Tuesday 10 January 2012

Zentangle Inspired Quilting ... on DVD

 It is here .... I was very excited to receive this in the mail ... my DVD from Quilters Companion.   The magazine/DVD will be out this month.

I have a limited number of DVD's for sale - so let me know if you want one.   I will be able to post out at the end of January if you want one sent to you.

The DVD goes for almost an hour and a half !
EDIT:  DVD's are now listed on my web site Jane Monk Studio.
 I have also been back at the drawing board.  This time I have started a new "Journal" for 2012 and decided to go with the big A3 size Moleskein book with the beautiful Watercolour paper.
(297 x 420cm in metric or 11.69 x 16.54 inches for you Imperial users) 
This one uses my surname as the stringline - you can see it has gotten a bit lost in the tangling ... but a very cool way to draw a string line if you are lost for ideas!




Iam incredibly happy with this effort.  I still have to add shading ... so far this one has taken 22 hours


And I had to start another one last night -    3.5 hours of work to get to this stage.    This is my own modification to a number of fonts ... I really just go with the flow of how the letters feel.  They are all hand drawn, so are not going to be perfectly even - but I like it like that.

I will post this one in a few weeks time.

Happy New Year everyone ... Jane x