Apologies and thanks

Hi everyone.

First, please accept my apologies for for being so late with responding to everyone's latest pieces. It's been a difficult time for my family for the past few months and I've not been able to keep up with all my commitments as I would have liked. 

Sorry too for causing confusion with posting my contribution à whole month too soon! You can probably tell, my head has not been in the best place and mixing up the months on the advanced posting led to the error. 😉

Thank you so much for the kind words of support and condolence I received. It means a lot to me and my family and is very much appreciated.

I trust you will all have a very happy Christmas, wherever you may be! 

Love Claire 

X

An introduction and a thank you

I am surprised at how challenging I have found making this introduction to be. It has made me stop and think long and hard about who am I in the creative sense, what it is I do, where I see my creative journey taking me and what are my motivations for accepting the invitation to join your group - 12 By the Dozen.

The fact that I am posting as 'creativitylifestyle' gives me a starting point. I had forgotten I had set up with that name years ago. Seeing it now feels strangely reassuring. It tells me that, despite living a life characterised by change, there is one constant and that is, my working towards a lifestyle that is informed by creativity in some form or another. It is no surprise that I had forgotten 'creativitylifestyle' as I am forever having new ideas, trying to set some structure and direction to my life and then, well, getting distracted and, inevitably, heading off in another direction. This is reflected in the creative interests I have had - painting, pastels, weaving, painting on fabric, embroidery, bags, boro, clothing, quilting, applique, bojagi. Each time I learn something new I think, 'This is it! This is what I was put on this earth to do!' But then something else comes along. I'm not sorry about this because there is a benefit to not settling on one thing - learning different techniques and building up a good supply of all the necessary notions, equipment and fabric!

Other than a bit of sewing and art at school, I hadn't been really creative until I went to uni in my 30s and ended up doing my master's thesis in Social Anthropology focusing on a quilting group in Auckland. I was moved to do this because I had witnessed the transformative role that quilting had played in my mother's life. Spending a year with the group, I became a quilter myself for a time. That then lead to trying other arts and crafts, some mentioned above.

I live on the Gold Coast, Australia but I am selling my apartment and likely moving over the border to Lismore in northern NSW. This is a smaller town and has a very strong creative community that I am looking forward to becoming part of just as I am looking forward to becoming part of the 12 By the Dozen online community. I saw your works of textile art at the NZ Quilt Symposium in October and was very impressed and now, well, somewhat nervous about accepting your invitation. It is so easy to compare ourselves to others and feel that we fall short but I will resist doing that and instead, embrace the opportunity, look forward to being inspired by creative others and have some parameters to work within to force my creative self to flourish.

I can't promise that my work will be the most joyful - I am feeling overwhelmed by the decimation of our natural environment in Australia as a result of the drought, fires and 'development'. I love taking photos of flora and fauna with the intention of painting the image and then translating it into a textile form. I do this to celebrate nature but I now also want to use my art to draw attention to the ways in which we are affecting its beauty, abundance and ultimately, its survival. Let's see what I come up with.

I have set up a Facebook page and Instagram where I am, slowly but surely, recording work I have done both past and present. You can find me @artcraftsamanda.

Well, that is probably more than enough! It just remains for me to say a big thank you to Rosemary for putting my name forward and to the group for inviting me to join. I am looking forward to meeting you all in this forum and would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2020!

Amanda

Happy Birthday 12 By The Dozen!

If our blog is correct we are 10 years old!   A group of us met at Houston Quilt Festival and one evening at 'show and tell' back at the hotel we decided to form the group.  Our first theme, based on Words, was Connections and the reveal day was in February 2010.  Haven't we come a long way?!  And what fun.

Happy Birthday everyone - old and new members!  🎂

And I am delighted to welcome a new member - Amanda Doyle who lives in Australia.  Amanda will be introducing herself  as soon as she is connected to the blog.

Hilary

Poppies Galore

So sorry this is late but here goes.

Back this summer there were several wonderful fields of bright red poppies in our area.  This one was a few miles away and I took several photos - climbing over gates and fences and getting thoroughly covered in seeds and weeds!  All worth the hassle.  My piece is a combination of a couple of photos because I loved the Queen Anne's Lace in the foreground ere but in another I was in amongst the red poppies.

Now, I have done a silly thing (too many projects on my mind) and made my piece 20" x 16"!  I am 'fessing up'.  Here's the full piece...

Poppies Galore

And here's my submission...

Poppies Galore - square

I am  mostly happy with it and maybe after Christmas I will play some more with it to accentuate the QA Lace heads.  I did think of adding the plants using white acrylic paint on the edge of a credit card - very slightly smudged to create that van Rensburg look of his animal heads.  I will try this on a another piece.  The stems are cord couched down.

Hilary

First of a new series 

My choice for the first quilt of the new series is: windows

I am taking advantage of the fact that I already have an idea, which has  something that I have been wanting to make for the last ten years, and this will actually make me do it!

Auvergne

   We spent our summer holiday in a village at 900m (almost 3000ft) near Le Puy en Velay in Auvergne. Every morning as we went along the road, we had a clear view of the mountains receding in the distance, with a thick mist in the valleys. I loved the contrast of the soft greys and the white of the mist, blending into each other, and wanted to try to reproduce the atmosphere by using monoprint when I got home. These two photographs were taken at a different time of day, so the colours are not  right, but give an idea of the landscape.

   When I saw the hills in Derric van Rensberg's paintings, I thought that perhaps I could try to interpret the Auvergne mountains in a quilt. I love the bright colours used by the artist and I am particulary attracted to the  contrast of orange and blue, but these colours really are not so suited to our more northern climate, and definitely not for the image I had in mind. First of all I tried making several prints at a couple of monoprint workshops that I went to. The first one turned out too dark, but the ghost print, to which I tried to add a more interesting sky (didn't really work), was a bit better. At the second session I had some much better prints, but I still have to collect them, as I left them to dry at the studio.

   In the end I decided not to monoprint my quilts. Instead I used  a torn newspaper stencil, as I like the organic edge it gives, and which worked well for the hills. I did several, as I wasn't sure how well they would come out, intending to choose the best one. I got a little bit carried away, ending up with nine, of which only two were not satisfactory. It was difficult to choose which one to use, as I wasn't entirely satisfied with any of them: I preferred the composition of some, but there  wasn't enough contrast between the hills and the mist, but the others had good contrast, but the composition wasn't quite as pleasing. Finally I settled on three,and still have difficulty in choosing between them. I had originally intended to quilt  the hills and sky more intensely, but I found that the quilting introduced hard lines that distacted from the effect I wanted to achieve, so they are very sparsely quilted. They were not very easy to photograph. I will probably use the two unsatisfactory ones for freemotion quilting practice, and just have to decide what to do with the other four afterwards!

St John river, NB

I enjoyed the colours in Derric's paintings so it was easy to use him as inspiration. 

At the end of September I went to New Brunswick, a province in eastern Canada, to take a week long course with Freeman Patterson and Andre Gallant.  Freeman's other "home" is in South Africa, in Namaqualand so some of you may have heard of him.  In fact it was during my time in SA that I did learn about him and his courses - a good 20 years ago! 

He has a property on Shamper's Bluff which overlooks the St John river and we spent a day roaming around taking pictures there. 

This is my original picture, and then the one I enhanced in Photoshop to resemble Derric's colours. 

and this is what I made but I haven't bound  it.  I can't decide whether to face it or bind it.  Always a dilemma. 

Gathering Storm

Derric Van Rensberg

Gathering Storm

A moment captured in this scene of wheat fields in the Western Cape where the still, drowsy, late afternoon is suddenly disturbed by distant thunder rumbling in the mountains. On cue, the day begins to cool and the sun bathes the surrounding country side in an eerie lingering brightness before it finally sinks into the crags on the horizon and the curtain slowly falls on another day in Africa.

Derric Van Reenen is a well known South African painter.

I was not familiar with his work until another artist I know, suggested Derric as my choice of artist for the 12 bythedozen blog. I looked up his paintings on the net, but it was when I visited a cousin in a distant town who had one of Derric’s paintings on his wall and a signed book of most of his paintings that I was really happy with my choice. Visiting a gallery in this town, I fortuitously came across an exhibition of a dozen paintings by Derric. I was then sure I had chosen the right artist!

Enjoy,

Allison

South Island

I took a photo somewhere on South Island in New Zealand on our 2015 trip, but the colours were washed out and grey.  Interpreting the photo in the colours from Derric Van Rensburg's work seemed a way of bringing the subject to life.  So I looked at a number of images of his paintings, pulled various fabrics from my stash, then didn't look at his work again until I had finished. 

I tried doing fused applique slightly differently from normal, applying the Steam a Seam to the background, then gradually adding the fabrics.  I now know why this is not a good way of working,  as the Steam a Seam didn't reach the edges of all the pieces of fabric I had lots of problems with the edges fraying.  I tried it in an effort to be more improvisational in the placing of the fabrics, rather than having the entire picture meticulously drawn out beforehand. Back to the old way of working  I guess.

BLUE CRANE

Initially my thoughts were great, when I read who Allison had given us for this last challenge in the series. The bold, rich colours should suit those of use who live south of the equator. As the months, weeks and days past me by, I realized this was taking me into a colour palette that I was not too comfortable with, but, as you are told growing up and developing in the creative field, don't limit yourself by staying in your comfort zone!

Living in a household which has a love of birds and as Derric tends to hide a little white heron somewhere in his landscapes /animal pics I decided to use one of his landscapes as a painted whole cloth and then brought in our national bird, the blue crane, in silhouette  form.  

This was his landscape.

...... and this is the result.

Painted whole cloth and Machine embroidered/quilted.  This was not what my initial vision was and I found myself moving in a very different route with a very different result.  The large ratio of bold orange is definitely a first for me and overall I am quite pleased with the result. The binding  stumped me initially and then I remembered my small stash of local schwe schwe fabric and found two perfect options.

Dreamscape inspired by Derric Van Rensburg

As Hilary explained yesterday, this is my last posting as a member of 12 by the Dozen. It has been a wonderful adventure from the very start of the group, and it has been a joy (for the most part!), especially the opportunity to meet as a group in Birmingham a few years ago, and to spend time together in Shropshire. I feel that I can't devote enough time and energy to the group now, as I feel under the gun to prepare work for a solo show next year. And I have also started an intensive yoga teacher training program which I love! I may not become a teacher, but I am certainly learning a lot. And that is my intention.
So I wish you all well and will certainly keep a close eye on developments in the future as you all strive to interpret new architectural challenges. All the very best, Helena

Hello everyone ,
Just to let you all know that the Auckland Quilt Symposium committee refunded me for all the costs incurred in setting up the 'Blog It 'exhibition . Thanks to everyone who suggested helping me out with the costs . Everything has been paid for .
Rosemary

Derric van Rensburg appealed to me mainly because I enjoyed his use of certain colours . I also liked the way he portrayed the animals in his pieces , slightly hidden but again with similar colours in his backgrounds . Many of his pieces are landscapes so I ended up doing 2 pieces in the end ( as I often seem to do !!)
These are the pieces I interpreted :



Here are my interpretations :


With the eagles head I first painted the background and then thread painted over it . Then I appliqued the eagles head on . The darker areas on the feathers was done with Derwent Inktense Pencils but I have not added moisture to the intense because I liked it as it is .

Hello all,

To start the next series, I nominate Ginnie Robbison from my hat draw.

Allison.

More than just the beginning of a new series...

Tomorrow brings Series 3 to a close with the final reveal day on work inspired by artists.  I thank everyone for coming up with some wonderful artists and such a variety.  It has been enlightening to be introduced to so many new names and their work.

But it is with sadness that we say goodbye to Helena who has been with us from Day 1.  Helena is about to start on a new and exciting phase in her life with a solo gallery exhibition next year.  Her work has been inspired and I have looked forward every reveal day to see what she has come up with.  I will miss her but she has promised to stay in touch and keep an eye on what we get up to.

Apart from everything else in her life she is about to embark on an intensive yoga training course.  Best wishes for the future, Helena.  Thank you for your friendship and support.

So, as one door closes another must open.  I am hoping to be able to introduce you all to a new member soon - watch this space!

Hilary

Time To Talk.........inspired by the work of Derric van Rensberg

Imagine my surprise when Allison anounced that our next artist is Derric Van Rensberg. As a wonderful parting gift when I left South Africa 12 years ago I was gifted a painting by Derric which now hangs on my bedroom wall. It is so very special to me for a few reasons. The person who gave it to me is a very dear and sadly missed friend. I am welling up as I write..........
It is the view from my kitchen window - Bloubergstrand across to Table Mountain. I love it. The colours are softer, unlike his usual vibrant style but they capture my emotions and memories perfectly.

View of Table Mountain - Derric van Rensberg

My dear friend is also an artist and together we planned to each create a scene with the two of us walking into the distance among the spring flowers, out on the Westcoast.  She was going to create hers in oils and mine would be a textile piece. We intended call our dual pieces 'Time to Talk', which captured a precious time between friends with no distractions.   Unfortunately we never got around to it.

So for this final challenge in this series it was an easy choice for me. I have decided to finally create 'Time To Talk' using van Rensberg's work as my inspiration.

Farmscape - Derric van Rensberg

Time To Talk  Claire Passmore 2019

Hope you like it!

Just to let you all know that yesterday I  couriered back all the 'Blog It' quilts . Dianne will receive all the Canadian quilts , Hilary will receive all those from UK,Guernsey and SA and I have sent Venettas , Utas and Jinnies separately .
Thank you all once again for your enthusiastic participation which was much appreciated by the Symposium committee and the many viewers .
Rosemary

Hello again everyone ,
I have sent almost everyone images from the Blog It exhibition apart from a couple , the emails of whom Hilary will be sending through to me . Hope you all like the way it was set up .
One of the other exhibitions is called "HER Story" which is about ground breaking women from the past . Our fellow blogger, Claire has a piece in that exhibition and so I am sending through the image of Kate Sheppard which is Claires and then 2 others which caught my eye . The whole exhibition was wonderful . Rosemary

Hello everyone ,
The NZ Quilt Symposium is on and the blog exhibition is up and receiving many visitors and being much enjoyed by the many viewers. I will be showing  photos on the blog soon . So thanks everyone for making this possible .  Rosemary

Art by the Lake

I thought  I’d share a video of my show last weekend with the Lakeshore Artists. We exhibit twice a year, in the fall at this beautiful outdoor location, in the grounds of a local cultural centre. One-third of the proceeds goes to a local food bank. I am thrilled to report that I did very well, selling 7 pieces, including Fiesta, our latest 12btd, and the large blue circle you see in the video, Coral Reef. I am the only textile artist in the group of about 50 professional artists. 

 

This is my piece titled Vice Versa which I entered into the South African National Quilt Festival, held in Johannesburg last month. I was thrilled to win Best Interpretation of Theme, which was Interchange. This piece, with others, will be shown in Germany and also Ireland in the next few months. Enjoy. 

Andriacci inspired quilts

For once I think I'm glad, or maybe that should be relieved, that my sewing room is out of action. This round of quilts is amazing, the variety of interpretations and the standard of the work is wonderful, I'm not sure that I would have made the cut! I salute you all.

After five long months we are actually moving in two days time. Although not much smaller than our present house the bungalow we are moving to has a very different layout so I don't know how long it will be before I'm sewing properly again but I hope to pick up the group challenges again soon. I've no doubt that I won't have to wait as long as Mai-Britt did!

Hello everyone ,
My apologies for apparently not putting up my Andriacci piece by the 31st . My only excuse is that I have been travelling (US, SA and AUS )during the past 6 weeks and only arrived back in the early hours of 1st . September . However I thought I had scheduled it to appear on 31st August . It has not appeared !! Where it is in cyber space I have no idea ??? Anyway here goes:

ANDRIACCI appeals to me immensely as an artist because of his naive style but also because he makes his naive shapes more interesting by filling the primary shape with secondary shapes . In my quilting I do a lot of stylised flowers and so having zoomorphic symbols to deal with instead is a good challenge for me . I have done several Andriacci inspired quilts now and may do others in the future as the more you look at a work of his the more you see in it . I am really glad that most of you got some fun out of your beautiful interpretations . Here are mine :The Inspiration

My Frog

My latest piece done while visiting Patricia in SA where we had so much fun sewing together . I based this piece on Andriacci tree images which ,of course, are less structured than mine. I really loved doing this one . So much fun and bright colours.

Something Fishy

I found Fernando Andriacci's work a little bit to colourful for me, but I was happy to find his painting "Hidden Guys" which colours spoke to me. It's a funny painting, I keep finding more "guys" every time I look. 

This is my piece "Somthing Fishy" based on the right side of the painting.

I'm happy to have finished in time as I had several technical problems with my newly unpacked sewing machine (after a six month in hibernation), not to mention starting a "bit" late....... Next time - give my self more time. I'm ready for your challenge Allison. 

When the Crocodile eats the Moon

I was excited when I first saw the work of Fernando Andriacci but then I started to think about my piece and it suddenly seemed more challenging than I expected.  To the extent that I started using distraction tactics not to have to think about it.  I had to give myself permission to be as ridiculous as possible and to let my imagination run riot to get the ideas flowing.  What fun!

The title refers to the title of a book I have just read by Peter Godwin about life in Zimbabwe in the recent past (harrowing).  It is what the indigenous people say when there is a solar eclipse - a crocodile has eaten the sun!  I love that.

So my piece is an elephant which is my sewing machine with the LCD screen (and me!), knobs, thread, rotary cutter AND the crocodile eating the sun!

It is a wholecloth, painted and machine quilted.  I used a black laundry marker to draw the outline, then quilted the sandwich in those lines.  I have used Inktense pencils and blocks, ordinary artist's acrylic paints, Fabrico markers, Koh-I-Nohr paints and ink pad (to stamp) - and NO water.  It was all done with Aloe Vera gel and I didn't have a single bleed of colour anywhere.  I thoroughly recommend this idea.

This is the work of Andriacci that inspired my piece.  Thanks, Rosemary.  

Hilary

Dreaming of multicoloured mice

   I've already introduced our resident mouser JP. Although he is not our cat, he spends a lot of time in our garden, the attraction being the mice who live under our terrace . Other cats have always shown a passing interest in mouseville, but none have been as dedicated as JP. He spends hours lying in wait, and sometimes he is successful. When he is not mouse hunting, he sleeps on the terrace, or in the flower patch.

 . I liked Andriacci's paintings with the brightly coloured animals, si I decided to use JP as a model for my quilt and took several photos of him (from a distance). When I was designing my quilt, I tried to make the cat and the mice angular as in some of Andriacci's work, but they didn't look right, so I decided to keep them a little more rounded and realistic .  I quilted them first and then painted them with inktense blocks and pencils. I was pleased with the result once I finished the quilting, but was disappointed when I had finished colouring the quilt. I like the way JP has come out, but I'm not satisfied with my colour choices, finding the overall result not quite right. I think it's the background: it might have been better left in white.

Haida Gwaii

This summer we had  a fascinating trip aboard a very small ship (12 passengers) that took us around the national park of Gwaii Hanaas in Haida Gwaii.  We hiked through rain forests and visited abandoned villages where we were given talks by local Haidas about life there.  We saw bald eagles, ravens, one bear and lots of other birds and some deer.  We paddled in kayaks around tidal pools, and learned a lot about the west coast environment from the marine biologist on board. 

West coast art, particularly Haida art is very distinctive.  I wanted to be influenced by it, but not copy it - in these days of cultural appropriation sensitivity I tried to avoid copying.  So this is an example of this style of art.  It is a small piece that I bought from a young local artist and you can see the complexity of the design.  It is in part a whale  and a raven.  Not sure about the RHS. 

The piece by Fernando Andriacci that I used as my influence:

And my piece:

LOGGERHEAD TURTLES

In keeping with my African roots I picked up on his under water scenes and in particular the turtles and have connected it to a scenario that happens almost every year off our southern shores.  Baby Loggerhead Turtles , a threatened species, for some reason find themselves caught in the cold seas which slow them down and eventually they find themselves  washed up on the beaches around the Cape.  In May this year over 200 we're washed up onto the beaches along with many who did not make it. They are rescued by volunteers and transported to the Two Oceans Aquarium where they are looked after until fit enough to be released.  They are then transported to Ushaka Marine World in Durban where they are released into the warm currents off our shores.  Many of those that did not make it had injested plastic, a very real and worrying problem in our oceans as we are all aware.

My piece is a homage to these little fighters who are faced with a growing pollution of plastic in our seas. Turtles are appliqued, the pale blue swirls and dots are actually a plastic bag that I have stitched on and then cut away with a soldering iron.  I have quilted the background with bubbles as the area was quite restrictive and this fitted in best.

Do Amigos - 2 Superheroes

This artist has been so much fun, as many of us predicted. Thank you Rosemary for bringing Fernando Andriacci to us.

I made this quilt almost as soon as Rosemary set the challenge - such was my enthusiasm! It was a case of just getting out some inks and fabric paints and spending an afternoon just letting my paintbrush wander - and this was the result.

The two funny characters I painted are very obviously inspired by Andriacci's own characters, although much simpler. I love the way he nests little 'personages' inside each of his characters - the more you look the more you find. It made me wonder whether Andriacci perhaps took some of his own inspiration from Paul Klee - I am thinking of his piece, 'The Cat and the Bird'.

Paul Klee: 'The Cat and the Bird'  (Public domain)

I decided to try and make my two characters as vibrant as I could - and as they took shape I imagined them as two friends who dress up as superheroes - with little jet-packs on their backs, ready to zoom off and save some poor soul who needs cheering up. It sounds silly but as I painted them I created imaginary personalities for the pair, who I named Pancho and Paloma and completely lost myself in the moment. It was bliss!

Superheroes:Inspired by the art of Fernando Andriacci

I loved making this so much I might even make a few more! Thanks Rosemary!

I forgot to add the piece I used for my inspiration ..............

Original artwork by Fernando Andriacci