Pounamu Wrap

It must have been in July a fellow fibre artist kept putting posts on faceboook for folks to enter the Franklin Arts Exhibition and as I had woven this rather special wrap I thought I'd support the exhibition by entering.  The parcel was left with my son to get in the post on the designated dates and Peter and I went off the Australia for a much needed break.  (We flew in to Brisbane and out of Sydney and explored the coast in between.)  We had only been home a day and I got a call to say I'd been award a prize and could I come to the opening so we repacked our suitcases and headed back to Auckland.  I received second prize in the Functional Textile section.  A thrill to be called up on stage and shake the presenters hand.

 The warp is 28/2Nm silk and the two wefts  are a devine merino I brought home from Rome last year.  I'll just say the draft is original, probably part of the twill family.  All yarns hand dyed.

Baubles and Beads

Every three or four years the Professional Weavers Network of New Zealand hold an exhibition.  These take a lot of planning and discussion and sometimes the best laid plans change as with the current exhibition.  The title and theme changed and I just could not get with the plan so decided not to participate.

Scroll back to our annual Seminar earlier this year and our long suffering Convenor put the hard word on us.  Not enough entries to make an exhibition.

 

Suddenly a light bulb lit up so I asked if I could enter even though the date for submissions had closed and she not only agreed, she liked my idea.

And so a couple of months of creation began.

I have to admit that if I wrote down records I have lost them but I'm pretty sure it was 48 thread per inch of Schappe-Seide silk which is beautiful to work with.  Two inches in the reed and floating selvedges for twill.  I wove one 6 inch length and stitched it to the cardboard hexatron and realised it was slightly loose.  Dropped two threads and that was enough.

Each piece of silk was dyed a primary or secondary colour to fit with the group instructions.

 

A friend had some black textured velour yarn I could "borrow" for the neck piece.

 

 

This piece I call a wall necklace and I loved working with the primary colours.  The small 1 inch hexatrons were a bit fiddly but fun when finished.   I found a necklace to repurpose with the perfect blue beads.

Ear rings and brooch complete the ensemble.

As they were displayed at the Percy Thomas Gallery in Stratford.

My regret is that I was working so hard to meet the deadline and didn't have time to remake the necklace in primary colours.  That would have held it all together much better.

A very fun project once I got my head around what to make for Angles.