Finalist for Goulburn Regional Art Gallery Award

Nest, 2012, Constructed textiles. 16 x 13 x 7.5 cm
Photography by Art Atelier

Ive been selected as a finalist for the 2012 Goulburn Regional Art Awards.
Squee!
Winners will be announced at the opening on Thursday 22 November.
Fingers crossed
x

Creative Uses for Tea Towels

A friend of mine bought one of my Knit print tea towels at the June Handmade Markets with the intention of using it as upholstery fabric. She has just sent me some 'before' and 'after' images of her ottoman:

Before (above)

After (above)

She says "This little ottoman has got a new life now and all because of your beautiful screen printed fabric!! I think it looks wonderful with your nice stitches pattern on it. Thank you very much Kate!"

Other people have told me that they buy my screen printed tea towels and frame them, and others have bought the tea towels with the intention of turning them into cushion covers.

I think they are all such fabulous ideas - and it's lovely to see my designs inspiring creativity in others x

Interwoven Exhibition at Gaffa Gallery, Sydney

My work has been selected to be part of Interwoven, an annual exhibition curated and coordinated by the Design Institute of Australia.

I drove up to Sydney on Wednesday to set up my works for the show. I was allocated a small room which had three walls - I decided to transform the space into a Lounge Room using my fabrics, as curtains, upholstery fabric, cushions, lampshade and as wall art.

Three of my designs are featured: Gingko; Knit; and Cloud stitch.

To make the fabric lengths look more like curtains I hung an old stained glass window between one pair (above).

And a small painting of the view from my kitchen window between the other.

I also commissioned an Creatif Upholstery to transform an old chair I found using some of my knit fabric - he did a fabulous job! The lovely Jane from Honi and Lemon, also transformed some of my Gingko fabric into a lampshade (you can see it in the top photo - more pictures of this to come, I promise!)

The exhibition is on at the Gaffa Gallery in Sydney from 16 - 27 June 2011.

Gaffa Gallery is in a beautiful heritage listed building in the CBD and is spread over three floors. There is a small cafe on the ground floor - delicious aromas of ground coffee spill out onto the street and waft through the space - along with a divine gift store also on the ground floor. It is definitely worth a visit!

Ill be going back for the 'Meet the Makers' on Saturday 25 June 2011. Maybe Ill see you there x

Designs for Repeat Repeat Exhibition

I have been invited by Megalo Print Studio to be part of Repeat Repeat, an exhibition of screen printed fabric lengths in June 2011.

This is a fantastic opportunity for me to explore some ideas which have been floating around for some time - as well as creating some fabrics for my house.

Idea # 1 is a continuation of an idea which was originally exhibited as a water colour in London - enlarged knitting.

I am particularly interested in the patterns which occur in the negative spaces....

So I started printing using different hues of blue and green. It started to remind me of the zillij mosaics found in Morocco.

Not convinced about the blues, I then tried a bold single colour....

Fun! I can imagine Red Knit as curtains - now I want to print this design in lots of bold colours: pink, orange, green ....... and imagine it as the upholstery for chair - groovy! I've found an old chair which would be perfect for this.... stay tuned to see the next installment

x

Making a Windsor Stool at Sturt

This year I decided to do a week long woodworking course at Sturt in Mittagong as part of their Summer School series. Sturt is renown for its wood, weaving and ceramic courses and many well known artists have taught at the school, or undertaken residencies. Not only is Sturt a place to learn wonderful things, it also is set in very beautiful surroundings and has a wonderful coffee shop and gallery.

Ive always wanted to do a woodworking course and I thought making a windsor stool would be a good sized project to undertake. The teacher was Howard Archbold of Rare Chairs, who makes Windsor Chairs using traditional tools and techniques. No power tools are used in the creation of his furniture. He kept saying the loudest thing you could hear in his workshop in the Hunter Valley was the sound of the waterfall. Sounds idyllic!

So anyway, I had a fast introduction to a number of hand tools I had never seen before and learnt new terms all which sounded positively medieval!

The first thing we did was to cut and shape the seat of the stool from camphor laurel wood. Although I am quite adept at cutting using a regular hand saw, we used a HUGE old fashioned one, and needless to say my circle was a little wonky. Using a spokeshave (you can see it in the above picture) we smoothed and rounded the edge of the seat. We then hollowed the seat top using a rounded scorping tool originally used to make oak barrels. This process pretty much took a whole day to complete.

My perfectly round seat (above). It took me two attempts!

Next we split wood for the legs. We used a green wood called rubinia (or black locust). Green wood is used because when the legs are tapped into the seat, the moisture difference between the legs and the seat differs ensuring when the wood dries, a tight fit occurs. This was how stools and chairs were made centuries ago, without the aid of nails or superglue.

As you can see the legs are pretty rough, so we had to roughly shape them into round poles on the old fashioned vices which work on the principle of using your body weight to hold the wood in the vice. (above)

Taking a break in the picturesqe Sturt Gardens.

The pole lathes which I thought were for turning poles, is actually made from poles. It is a very clever invention and goes back thousands of years to the ancient Egyptians. A piece of rope is attached to a pedal (very similar to the old pedal sewing machines) which is then wrapped around the wood to be shaped, and the pole (or sapling) at the top assists with the movement of the wood. Its a great way to learn how to shape on the lathe because if the chisel gets stuck in the wood, it simply stops turning.

Concentrating hard!

My almost finished legs.

Next was figuring out the style of the stretcher to space the legs. I chose a three legged stool and the T style.

Next step was to drill the holes for the legs. This was quite a tricky part of the assemblage - the legs had to be at an angle, but I wasnt allowed to get the wobbles whilst drilling the holes (my head is used to stabilise the drill).

My finished stool! The seat has the most beautiful grain so I decided just to polish the top.

The legs are still green and will take about 3 months to dry out. When they do, it turns into a delicious warm brown. I have lightly limed the legs.

Phew! What a week. I had a fab time and I learnt heaps, met lots of lovely people and best of all walked away with my very own piece of furniture. I have a feeling Im going to be making a lot more stools and who knows, I may even take the challenge and make a Windsor Chair next!

x

Completed projects

I have just finished knitting a lacy blanket for my Kiwi friends as a wedding gift using a beautiful 4 ply New Zealand Romney wool. You can see it covering the chair in my lounge room picture. Also featuring in this picture is my 'Fang' pouffe - a project that I started last year which included learning how to re-upholstering the ottoman using traditional materials and techniques, and covered with one of my screen printed fabrics. The image is inspired by my Mum's puppy Fang.