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julielivingstone

~ It isn't always about getting what you want. Sometimes it's about wanting what you've got.

julielivingstone

Monthly Archives: January 2012

Drawing Class

31 Tuesday Jan 2012

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blog, design, drawing, pictures

Well, yesterday I signed up for a drawing class at TAFE. It’s not pure drawing as such, the name of the unit is ‘Select and apply media and techniques to represent and communicate a concept’ or some such phrase. It actually sounds as if it’s just what I need, since I want to be able to draw my ideas for craft and sewing projects. First class is next Tuesday afternoon, and it it every week for the semester, until June.
Looking forward to it, it will be a challenge for sure, since I’ve never done art classes in any shape or form. I did do Art at high school for about three years, but looking back on it now I cannot for the life of me remember what we did, and I’m pretty confident that drawing didn’t figure in it at all. I do remember being extremely bored with Art classes, and getting out of them as soon as I could to do cookery instead, which I must say has stood me in much better stead over the years! I still regularly make some of the recipes from school, in particular lemon meringue pie which is in frequent demand at family occasions.
I went to the art supply shop after enrolling, although I don’t know what supplies are required, but just bought a small box of pencils and a visual diary. I was astounded by the prices of some materials, I knew they were expensive but not that much! Conjures up images of penniless artists struggling to find money for pastels and paint and canvas. A lot of famous ones did of course, and presumably the less famous ones these days still do, until they get discovered.
No picture from me this time, I need to get all the old ones off my old laptop and onto this one. Instead a blog I found with some lovely pictures from Melbourne – http://victoriaaphotography.wordpress.com

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On returning my focus to writing

19 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by julielivingstone in Uncategorized

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clouds, design, drawing, magazine, photos, writing

Writing group starts up again at the beginning of February, and I realise that I have done very little writing or even thinking about writing lately. Really shows how important something like a group is with regular meetings to keep you motivated. I have done absolutely nothing to try and further my career as a writer over the last couple of months, although to be fair I have done quite a few other things, some of which I have recorded on this blog. One thing is working on the kitchen which is coming together quite nicely, although nowhere near finished.

One of the things I was thinking of doing towards my career was take a drawing class. At first the connection may not be obvious, but there is one! I’ve always been a keen crafter, pretty much anything you can do with a needle and thread I’ve tried, from sewing to knitting to embroidery and all sorts in between. For many of the things I’ve made I have created my own designs rather than using somebody else’s, and one thing I would like to do is to try and sell my designs and ideas. I’m not really interested in making the things and selling them, I’d rather have the designs featured in magazines and so on. Heaven knows there are any number of crafting magazines and websites, and all of them need ideas for projects, so there must be a market. Hence the drawing class, on the basis that if I can produce drawings of the proposed project, it might help to sell it. Photos are good too, but magazines often have line drawings of the steps in making something, and I’d like to try those. I was never much good at drawing at school, so there is no telling how I might go at it now! There are a couple of short courses I could do at local colleges, and also a unit in one course called ‘Develop self as artist’ or something similar, which might be just what I need.  Both the drawing and the writing seem to me to be useful in this venture.

Driving home from work last week I stopped to take some photos of a very striking cloud formation. I also think this is something I should do more of, take photos of fairly random stuff. In the past I’ve mainly only taken photos of things which were important to me, family, house, garden, animals etc., and when I went somewhere particular. For writing though, it might often be useful to have my own photos to illustrate articles etc., so I should try and build up a stock of photos of subjects which might be useful. This particular cloud formation was one of those white fluffy ones which look like so much shaving cream piled up, pure white against a brilliant blue sky. Unfortuntely there were power lines along the side of the road, and even though I scrambled around on the verge a bit I couldn’t get rid of them altogether. If I need to use these pictures I think I can probably crop them out though, or edit them out. Here are a couple of shots where I managed not to get the powerlines, although I think the first has too much foreground vegetation.

Clouds 1

Clouds 1

Looking at the quality of these I think maybe a new camera has to get added to the list of things to do/get!

Clouds 2

Clouds 2

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Quilt completed

02 Monday Jan 2012

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books, butterflies, nature, quilting, reading, recycled, spider

I finished the quilt I have been making for my Dad, which was supposed to be for his 85th birthday at the beginning of December, but didn’t get done in time. I went to see them on the day after Boxing Day, and gave it to him then instead. Of course he was kind enough to be very pleased with it, but I have to admit I was quite pleased with it myself.

I bought the fabrics for the quilt top online, by searching for ‘quilt fabric’ and ‘bugs’, since I wanted nature inspired designs. I ended up buying from two different places, www.eQuilter.com and www.bugfabric.com. The only thing I did wrong was to not pay enough attention to the scale of the design on the fabric. Most sites do tell you how many inches across the motif is, or something similar, and I didn’t look at that and got a couple of patterns which were really a bit too big. Still, in the end they all worked in together. I also have this strong feeling that one shouldn’t be too precious about putting together fabrics for a quilt, after all it is a craft which began as a way of using up scraps left over, and recycling old clothes and linen. The idea of going out to buy completely new fabric, cut it into small pieces and then sew them all back together again is not quite in the true spirit of the thing to my mind.

Anyway, here is the finished article

Dad's quilt

Dad's quilt

It should actually be hanging short side at the top, portrait format rather than landscape. But since I left taking photos of it until the last minute I didn’t have any other easy way of hanging it except on the clothes line. The big butterflies are hand appliqued, the rest is machine pieced and quilted.

A closer look

closer lookI was particularly pleased with the spider web fabric, since when my kids were little one of their favourite books for Grandad to read to them was a book about a spider, called Wolfie, by Janet Chenery and Mark Simont. I found a pdf version here just now, and had a little moment of nostalgia.

On the subject of quilting being a make-do-and-mend type of activity, I have decided to start another quilt using the English patchwork technique. My mother did one many years ago, and I’m going to do likewise. The idea is to use up all the little bits I have left over from years of other projects, at least all the cotton bits. Other quilts, the girls’ clothes, my clothes, clothes made for other people, you get the idea. I’ve started making hexagons and am putting them all in a box to sew together when I start to have enough. Another thing that this technique uses up is junk mail, and advertising material, since a lot of it is printed on slightly heavier than normal paper. It is really satisfying to cut up the little booklet of ‘changed terms and conditions’ which comes with the bank statement, or the flier in the mail from our local politician. Finally a use for all that stuff!

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