Sharing…

I have seriously failed with my ongoing tea towel sharing exercise but mostly because I am using them in art works! It has been awhile since I blogged so I wanted to share this lovely, simple project by Catherine Bailey. She is doing a small community project in her local botanical gardens using flowers. I love Dahlias so much.  And they are incredibly photogenic. She has created this beautiful blog to document it so check it out.

 

 

 

 

Five tea towels: #THREE

I’ve been a little bit late with this last tea towel post due to a rather large festival that was in town last week. Got a bit distracted. But here they are, more gorgeous tea towels.

This week I’ve concentrated on tea towels people have given me lately. People are coming out of the woodwork with beautiful gestures of bundles of tea towels that were burning a hole in their cupboards. They’ve been sent in the mail, handed to me in person and dropped on my desk. Thank you everyone! I appreciate it so much. I couldn’t think of a better gift right now.

 

 

 

 

 

Five tea towels: #TWO

This week’s tea towel ‘share’ includes a batch of old, worn and well-used tea towels. I love the tea towels that are faded, they have such beautiful, subtle colours. They are also my favourite to work with because of their softness. I love the texture and of the linen.

Five tea towels: #ONE

This post starts a homage to my tea towel obsession. Most people that know me know that I have an unreasonable obsession with the little towel that dries our dishes. It started some years ago when I began collecting them to make art works. There are self-imposed rules around collecting these pieces but I won’t bore you with that here. Suffice to say, I’ve become expert at locating exactly what I consider ‘beautiful’ in the world of the used tea towel.

To share the love, I’ll be posting five tea towels a week for the next little while. This will keep the inspiration up for me as I work on a major tea towel piece for a November exhibition in Sydney at Branch3D.  Today’s post is for Sandra (thanks for the idea).

My newest tea towel. I simply couldn’t resist and have never seen one like it in my travels.

 

An example of the tea towels I love the most. Worn and faded. I love the subtle colours. I don’t even mind the stains.

 

This one needs no explanation. So gorgeous it’s on my wall.

 

Another well-used tea towel. Given to me by a friend. It was her mother’s and she wanted me to ‘use it well’.

 

‘Greetings…’. Classic.

 

 

 

 

A drawing a day (for play)

Myself and a few friends recently decided to start a ‘drawing a day’ project (a suggestion inspired by a similar project I was following on Instagram – go follow the great and wonderful @eleanorvee to see what I mean).

Apart from being fun (the main reason for doing this) and giving me a small space each day for creative focus, this little project is testing my drawing skills. I need to develop them, push them a bit further….get them back again. My approach so far has been to draw on any scrap of paper I find in the studio and to choose found objects.  I’m enjoying it so far, disasters and all.

Dog toy – poor deflated cow

Here’s a few ‘drawing a day’ projects by amazing people: ‘One drawing a day’, ‘Drawing a day for a year‘, ‘One drawing each day‘, and here at Lauren Nassef.

Growing back – a work about the environment

A little while back I was asked to be a part of an exhibition in Portland (Victoria, AUST) called Environment Change – a visual response, curated by Catherine Bailey and Sandra Winkworth, both talented ladies. Catherine had seen my installation at the Merrijig and asked me to expand one aspect of it. I took some of the pieces I used in the wall hanging to make this piece, called ‘Growing Back’. It’s a response to my observations of ‘growing your own’ and ‘making your own’ coming back into fashion as a way acknowledging the environmental issues we face at this time in history. I have used vintage book pages and vintage material & thread in the piece.

The exhibition is on until February, 2013 and includes a bunch of other clever people. Sandra has posted some of her pieces on her blog here and you can find some photos of the exhibition on the Facebook page.

A lovely project, now over.

I deinstalled the Merrijig project today.  I had such fun doing this project and the owners of the Inn, Liz and Tan were very brave in letting me experiment with their space (troopers). One of the pieces, the tea towel bottle installation is staying in the space which I’m really pleased about, it’s my favourite.

The Merrijig is one of the oldest and most beautiful buildings in Port Fairy and if you get the chance, come and visit.

Thanks to all at Craft for supporting the project. I recommend keeping an eye on the Craft Cubed festival next year.

Image of the Inn courtesy of the Merrijig facebook page

Out of the drawer: some new additions

More little pieces are creeping in to my installation at the Merrijig Inn and Kitchen for Craft Victoria’s Craft Cubed project.  See the previous post to read all about the project. I’ll be updating with new photos throughout August. In the meantime, look out for possums eating your pears……

Lemony

Nana’s hydrangeas

Preserved tea towels

Mother possum and feral pear tree

This project is a part of Craft Victoria’s Craft Cubed event.

Out of the drawer: a tea towel installation

Lately this has been my life out of hours; getting ready for Out of the drawer, a satellite project for Craft Victoria’s Craft Cubed event. The project is a small installation of pieces made out of vintage tea towels from my collection.  Liz and Tanya at Merrijig Inn and Kitchen have kindly given me their tiny front bar space to install these pieces and the work is an attempt to respond to the space and their dedication to the experience of food. Its a been a new experience for me and a great learning curve. I hope its been successful.

I’ll be popping in over the next few weeks to add bits and pieces to the installation.  If you go along and have a look, not all the pieces are obvious, some are hidden and integrated which is fun.  And if you do come, stay and have a drink while you’re there, its a gorgeous spot and one of the oldest buildings in town.  Installation can be viewed during the opening times of the restaurant, 4pm-10pm Thursday-Monday.

I am completely obsessed with vintage tea towels and this project has given me a chance to reinterpret them into other objects.  Here are some of the objects installed over the weekend.

Tea towel bottles

More tea towel bottles

Tea towel fruit punch

Pineapple

Tea towel bowls

more tea towel bowls

detail

Local feral fruit tree branches and tea towel fruit

This project is part of Craft Victoria’s Craft Cubed event.

Tea Towel love – the quilt adventure

If you’ve ever looked around my blog you might have picked up by now that I am a bit obsessed with tea towels. Used, worn, faded, I love ‘em all. I have made many things with them over the last couple of years and have a very big collection (donations MOST welcome by the way…).

One of the things I’ve made that I am most proud of is this ‘tea towel quilt’ made as a collaboration with Mum, a skilled and experienced sewer/quilter. Admittedly I didn’t do a lot of the technical sewing but helped as much as my knowledge allowed. At first she was challenged because the quilt was being made out of irregular material (this provides all sorts of technical problems) but she rallied like a trooper and went outside her comfort zone. My part in the process was to choose and design the fabric pieces and colours. The quilt turned out beautifully despite breaking the rules a little – its a lovely piece and I love it more every time I look at it.

The quilt is made of vintage tea towels and table cloths with red damask on the back. A detail shot of the quilt is used on my background page here.

And for dog lovers, you can find a 30 second film of my puppy at 8 weeks playing on the quilt – a bit more close up action (here).

my tea towel quilt

hanging in an exhibition in 2010 called, ‘Conversation Piece’, a collaboration between mothers and daughters

long shot of the same exhibition

pegged up outside in a recent exhibition in the beautiful Australian bush