Every now and then you stumble across something and think ‘gee, I’d totally tattoo that on myself’.  Well, this year I had one of those moments and went with it.

I’ve always thought I’d wait until I was at least 30 before I got a tattoo. I had that gut instinct that if I did something like that before then I’d most probably end up regretting it. I was a fickle young thing.

So for the last couple of years I have seriously contemplated a couple of ideas. I did get very close to a cross stitch design. Figured I needed to stitch it up before embarking on actual ink. And after I had done that, decided it would be a bit big for what I wanted.

I’m a collector of old craft. Either finished pieces or the things people use to make with. I have lots of old needle cases and needle books. Tons of old needles, wool winders, thimbles, you get my drift. A couple of months ago I bought this simply gorgeous antique souvenir sewing kit. It didn’t take long for me to realise that THIS was what was going on me forever.

Click here to see the other images of the box. It is such a delightful object, I am going to treasure it for a very long time!

I’m the kind of person that believes in the importance of signs. It’s crucial to remind yourself of the messages you hold true. Some people hang stuff on the wall, pin things to their office cubicles, embroider samplers, paint on footpaths. I have a small affirmation stuck on the inside of my wardrobe door, I have pictures on my walls, and a vast collection of button badges I can pop out for the right moment.

It’s Never Too Late To Mend, is very much a motto for me. I apply it to craft, politics, our lovely planet, my relationships and communities. And now I proudly wear my motto on my arm to help me keep on track for the rest of my life.

A massive thanks to Matt Gordon who was working out of Down to Earth Tattoos for his beautiful work. He was so much fun to hang out with!

And another massive thanks to Mark Burban for the great pic. I did some really great work with Mark and will be revealing more on that project soon!

Now, get mending!

xxx

rayna

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On the same day that the Wyndham Weekly reported I was to be the new Artist in Residence at Iramoo, Delfin Lend Lease announced a new $1B property development on the fringes of Wyndham Vale.  This yet to be publicly named development will house up to 12,000 people within 4000 dwellings.  According to media reports (but surprisingly nothing on Delfin Lend Lease’s website) there are plans for four schools, community, sport and recreation facilities, open space with lakes and waterways, and a shopping centre.

Like all master planned developments, this estate will be designed and branded with a specific theme(s) of housing and will be sold in staged releases of house and land packages.

Since then yet another large development has been announced for the area. Raising even more questions about the pressures all this rapid development is going to place on already stressed infrastructure.

Far too often the values and long term goals of existing communities are left out of the design and planning processes.  While councils may develop long term goals for their area, in areas of rapid growth it seems clear to me that corporate developers have much more power and control over the social and environmental development than the community or local government. Add on top the differing levels of decision making responsibilities between local and state government, it does all get a bit confusing for local people who do want to participate in planning processes.  I can’t speak for the Wyndham Vale community because I don’t know the specific history of the relationships between the council/state government and the developers operating in the area. But I do know that of the many conversations I’ve had with locals about the history of the evolution of Wyndham Vale, these issues seem to be very much at play here.

Reflecting on these issues, I would like to present the major project for my residency, “WE are Wyndham Vale”.

I invite all residents of Wyndham Vale to contribute their future visions and exciting ideas for the area.  All of the submissions are to be incorporated into a large visual wall map of the area. The map will then be embroidered for exhibition, alongside the submissions.  Participation is easy, simply download the submission form, print it out, fill it in and email or post it in or drop it off at one of the drop boxes around Wyndham by the end of 8th of July (details on the form).

Once all the submissions are collected and the design is collated, I will be holding public stitching sessions for people to get involved in the making of the map.  You can indicate if you want to be involved in this part of the project on the contribution form.

My hope is for a community vision of the priorities local residents hold important for the future of this area. The map will be framed and kept on display in the Iramoo Community Centre.

So please download the contribution form by clicking the get involved button below and get thinking about what YOU see Wyndham Vale’s future looking like.

Finally a special big thanks to the Iramoo Community Centre and Wyndham Council for getting behind this unique project.

Looking forward to seeing your ideas!

xox
Rayna

click the button above to download the submission form (.pdf 61kb)

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“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever does” Margaret Mead

In this time of global environmental and economic crisis, the looming challenges can sometimes seem insurmountable, especially considering Australia is one of the biggest carbon consuming countries per capita on our lovely planet.

While the challenge to turn this around may seem enormous, it’s not impossible to meet. One of the most important and effective changes we need to take on is our relationship with stuff. Indeed it is our obsession with material things that is such a massive contributor to our environmental excesses.

While the mainstream media might still be consumed with the debate as to whether climate change is a human-created problem, or even exists in the first place, most Australians are getting on with the job and working towards solutions. From the direct action activists placing themselves between the trees and the chainsaws, to the vast hordes of cyber campaigns, to the school kitchen gardens, to earthships, the solutions are as diverse and inspiring as the communities working on them.

The craft community is no exception. While the same capitalist consumerist pressures exist within the craft world, you would be hard pressed to find a crafter who hadn’t spent some time thinking about the social and environmental ramifications of their making. In fact, many centre their crafting around finding different ways to reuse old materials or to make statements about their vision of the way the world could be.

As a community we are fantastic at cheering each other on. Of all the different worlds I interact with, none is so happy and enthusiastic as the crafters. What we aren’t too hot at is calling each other out on our naughty stuff. What I really don’t see enough in the craft world is crafters questioning the world around them, and their craft within the context of that. Craft does not exist in a vacuum. Issues of sustainability, economics, sexism, racism and cultural appropriation, homophobia and all the other phobias do impact our making. Identifying and challenging those issues need not be scary or dramatic, but it is important to do.

Sustainability is one of the easiest ways to check out our attitudes. For makers, we can firstly ask if we are really makers or are we just consumers and hoarders? We’re all a little bit guilty of stashing, but it’s good to check in every now and then and make sure your stash isn’t requiring a whole house of its own. If it is, the time has definitely come to start being an actual maker again! And of course, it’s important to check out where your supplies actually come from. No point making your own stuff in protest at the sweatshop industry when all your supplies come from sweatshops. Buying less supplies but making sure it’s locally made not only has a big impact environmentally but also makes a significant difference to the local craft community.

One of the harder challenges for those of us makers is to ask ourselves if the world really needs the things we make. There I said it. Yes, there can only be so many fabric covered button badges, beaded bracelets and wall decals. What there isn’t enough of is shoes for school children, menstrual pads for school girls and warm clothes for homeless people. I’m not saying that we have to use our craft to save the world all the time. But we should ask if our craft is directly unsaving the world. I used to make cross stitch kits. But one day I realized I was sending the majority of them to America and it seemed to be a pretty big waste. You can already buy cross stitch fabric, embroidery thread and needles in America so why post them there? Now I sell electronic copies of my patterns instead. It’s a lot less resource intensive and my customers get the design instantly. Not only am I now using less transport miles and packaging, I am providing a better service to my customers. Proving the point of environmental campaigners that doing business sustainably is not only better for the environment, but it’s a smarter way of doing things.

What our world really needs is less stuff. Not in a minimalist, bland boring kind of way. But a surround yourself in brilliant, useful, locally made inspiring stuff way. Crafters and makers have such a brilliant long history of leading the way when it comes to adapting to new environments and demands for better ways of doing things. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to see the craft scene leading the way as role models in the environment movement?

However uncertain our future is, one thing we can be sure of is our survival as a species relies on our capacity to get truly creative and embrace the challenges of a post-carbon future. Can’t get much craftier than that!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Rayna Fahey is a local craft artist. She co-founded the Craft Cartel with Casey Jenkins and runs radicalcrossstitch.com Rayna is a self-described craft evangelist and loves nothing more than finding new ways to combine her love of craft, hanging outside, gardening and subverting the dominant paradigm.

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As readers of Radical Cross Stitch will know I am a big time fan of Melbourne community radio station 3CR.  There is nothing like turning on the ol’ wireless to hear people from my own communities talking about news and issues that are relevant to me and the lives of the people around me.  And it’s even better that I never hear any loud voices screaming at me to quickly empty my pockets into the hands of giant corporate consumerist empires!

So I didn’t hesitate for a second last year when the fine folk there asked me to contribute to the 2010 Seeds of Dissent Calendar.  I still consider that piece to be my greatest stitching achievement so far and I was super happy over the weekend to finally pick it up from the framers after a 12 month hunt for the PERFECT vintage frame.

Well I promised that I’d make the pattern available and at long last it’s now in store.  And if you hurry and grab it over the next couple of days it’s half price (sale ends Friday).  Proceeds go straight to 3CR! If you don’t already know the 3CR Radiothon is on NOW! So you should pop over to their website and become a subscriber. The theme for radiothon this year is Handmade Radio and subscribers get a copy of CRAM which contains a fab pattern to make your own radio! Including some wee cross stitch embellishment patterns from me.

Need more reasons to love 3CR? Check the spunks in this wee clip

3CR Radiothon TVC 2010 from 3cr on Vimeo.

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At long last I got around to making a new Kiva loan! (check out my other loans here).  And I’m pretty excited about this one!  It had been getting hard to find actual makers to lend to, but recently there seems to have been an influx so this time it was pretty easy.  But I was extra happy to find a maker who is making traditional craft for local use.

Señora Teresa is dedicated to the sale of jewelry on credit in the zone of Pampahasi. She has performed this activity for three years. She is very well known in the area and the orders that she fills are for craft jewelry for ladies who wear the traditional clothing, since they use large jewels for their hats, the fastening on their cloaks, rings and large earrings. She has some complete sets of jewels that are very pretty and expensive, all bathed in gold. She buys the jewels and later sells them in her jewelry shop.
…
The loan will be invested in the purchase of rings and earrings, since she has orders for a festival that is held each year in the zone of Pampahasi. The jewels are used traditionally for the dances of the Morenada or Dances of the Dark, which is a folkloric Bolivian dance where the dancers disguise themselves in black adorned with prominent characteristics and the celebrants use these jewels for adorning their hats and to fasten their cloaks. Señora Teresa this very grateful to Emprender and Kiva for the confidence shown her in granting the loan.

Sounds like an amazing festival, I’d love to go check it out sometime!

My loan was counted towards the Etsy.com Handmade lending team, which is starting to make a bit of impression in the Kiva community.  We now have 94 members and over $6000 in loans.  Still a way to go to catch up to the Athiest Team that has over $2million in loans!  Any Etsy peeps out there wanna join us and help top the 100 member mark?

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Since I last made a loan the Etsy Lending Team has got more active and there’s a number of regular lenders boosting up our lending numbers.  We’ve just hit $4000 in loans!  Are you an etsy seller and a kiva lender?  Come join the team

My latest loan was a little hard to find.  I’ve noticed there’s a lot less makers on  Kiva and a definite increase in people selling cheap mass produced products.  This makes me quite sad to be honest.  I thought Kiva was about reducing the need for sweatshop economies..

Regardless, I did find the Morales family in Barranquilla, Colombia.  They make and sell a range of things to help their family prosper including hand made shoes, jewelry and clothing.

So give them a wave people, and wish them luck!

And for those of you out there still looking for last minute christmas ideas, consider a kiva gift voucher!  It’s a great last minute gift idea and the recipient gets to chose the person(s) to lend to.  Go on, make a difference!

Happy festive season everyone and see you in the next decade.

xox

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It took me quite a while to gather up the confidence to have a go. It’s all new and scary, you see. But I finally had a project I really wanted to do so I hitched up my pants and leapt in.

I was armed with the awesome tutorial by Pip which I wholeheartedly recommend checking out. Even if you’re not planning on doing the fabric thing and printing on paper with actual gocco paint, this tutorial is super helpful. I definitely used Pip’s tutorial alongside the official instructions and it made heaps more sense with both.

So I’ve now made TWO different screens and made a heap of patches.

The first lot were made as some pretty banners for vacant blocks of land.  We’ve attached ribbons on the corners so they can be tied on to fences.  I thought this was a good first project since the prints don’t need to be perfect and we can’t be too attached to them since they’ll probably get taken down.

Here’s a bunch drying.

And here’s a couple in action!  The first one was in St Kilda and the second was on Malvern Road somewhere

FUN!  Part of my little creative contributions to the realestate4ransom.com campaign highlighting the stupid waste of land we’ve got going on round the place.

The next project I did was in honour of Buy Nothing Day 09 and also as my wee action towards Copenhagen.  Being seven and a half months pregnant does preclude a fair amount of activism so I took the creative option!

I got the idea after a cool chat with an awesome Friends of the Earth volunteer at the Green New Deal conference.  Sorry I can’t remember your name! Hope you see these and like   When I get around to sewing up some more I’ll send some to the FoE shop.  I decided to border some of them with small black satin ribbon, just to make them a bit glam.  I also decided I very much like printing on calico.  It seems to pick up the ink best and it looks nice too.

Printing on fabric with Gocco is a little bit hard and takes a bit of perseverance.  I’d very much like to try it with someone else doing some of them!

What is really easy though is printing on paper!

Last weekend I went to the open studio for the super cool Gemma Jones.  The open studios were part of the Big West Festival – which was also super cool!  Can’t wait til the next one! (I should also write about that – especially the knitted bridge installation – but I reckon it won’t happen so go check out the other cool crafty stuff on their website).

Gemma gave a couple of demos on how to use a Gocco and we all got to have a go.  It was MOST FUN.  I picked up some new prints for my wee girls new room so the walls are quickly filling up with rad art.

Those prints were done on an old sex guide book.  Some of the pages were hilarious!  My favourite was ‘what to say in bed – and when not to laugh’.  Genius.

So now I’ve gotten over ‘the fear’ I’m psyched to do more!

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In collaboration with the realestate4ransom prankster campaign against the rampant land speculation plaguing Melbourne’s suburbs, Radical Cross Stitch and the Melbourne Revolutionary Craft Circle invite you to engage in a small piece of community beautification. This post is all about the how – make sure you read all about the why before you begin.

The following document contains full instructions on how to cross stitch a dollar sign on your favourite local block of vacant land.

Materials:

x Red wool – can be obtained from your local op shop, your own craft stash or raid someone else’s
x Time
x A fence with either diamond or square grid on a block of vacant land
x A friend or two – ‘cause these things are always more fun with mates

Part A: Finger Knitting

Step 1: Tie your wool in a loose loop around your index finger

Step 2: Swing knot around to the back of your index finger then loosely loop wool round your middle finger.

Step 3: Bring wool round the back of your hand and from left to right, wrap over the front of your fingers above the existing loops.

Step 4: Take hold of original loop on your index finger and pull it over the second loop and over your finger and release.  You’ll need to bend your finger down to get it over easily.  The first one might be a bit tight if your original loop wasn’t loose enough.  Don’t worry this is normal and won’t happen on the rest of them.

Step 5: Repeat step 4 for the loop on your middle finger.  Will look like this when finished.

Step 6: Take hold of loose wool and wrap around your hand counter clockwise, ensuring the new wool sits above the old wool looped on your fingers.

Step 7: Repeat steps 4-6

Step 8: After about 7-10 rounds a ‘snake’ of knitted wool will be forming behind your hand.  Pull on this snake to lengthen and tighten it.

And that’s it!

Now time to keep knitting.  You’ll need about 10 metres for this project.  Once you have about 5 metres of knitted wool, cut the wool and tie it round your finger knitting to knot it.  Don’t worry about this looking too attractive; it’ll get chopped off during the fence stitching process.

Part B: Fence Stitching

Now these photos aren’t as sexy due to the whole night time installation aspect of this kind of thing.  Turns out my camera doesn’t like taking close shots of bright red wool at night with a flash… But you’ll get the drift.

This tutorial is based on a stitch done on a diamond shaped chain link fence.  If you’ve struck gold and found a square grid fence, the directions will be slightly different.  I’ve italicised the extra bits.

Step 1: Figure out where you’re going to start.  You want your stitching to be nicely centred.  Don’t rush this process!  Count it a couple of times if you need to.  Make sure your design has enough room without running into the edge of the fence, or into a broken bit of fence.

Step 2: Tie the end of your wool onto the fence onto the left corner of the diamond or bottom left corner of the square. Don’t worry about the hanging end bit of wool, you can tidy these all off at the end.  But ensure it’s tightly secured so it doesn’t come off!

Step 3: pull your wool straight across the diamond and through the next diamond.  Pass the wool behind and down to the diamond below. Gee that’s kinda hard to explain – look at the picture! For square grids you’ll go diagonally up and then down.

Step 4: pull the wool vertically (or diagonally) up, through and behind to the next diamond.  In the picture my next diamond was the one up and to the left from my first.

There’s your first cross!

Now a brief pause to talk about tension.  It’s really important to keep all your stitches tight!  Firstly because it looks better, secondly because it lasts longer and finally and most importantly because it uses less wool!  All that time finger knitting – best to use it efficiently!  I usually stop every couple of stitches and give everything another tug to make sure it’s nice and tight.

Step 5: repeat steps 3 & 4 for the rest of your pattern.  Once you get the hang of it you can start to get a bit clever about using the ‘thread’ to secure the behind work a bit neater as you go along.  You want to keep the behind work as close to the stitches or the wire as possible so it keeps it neater and makes your finished design really clear.  There’s no clear way to explain how to do this because it all depends on what direction you’re going in.  It’s something you pick up with practice.  So the more fence stitching you do the better!

Step 6: When you’ve finished the pattern, tie your wool off as tight as you can.  As with your original knot, make sure it’s super secure.

Step 7: Cut off the extra wool.  Make sure you leave a couple of centimetres spare just so the wool has a little bit to move before coming undone.  Remember your stitching has to brave the elements so it will all move a bit over time.

Step 8: Step back and admire!!

Congratulations you just made one ugly mofo fence, heaps less ugly.  And if you’ve used this pattern – you’ve also helped educate your community that this wasted block of land that appears to be just collecting weeds and rubbish is also helping line the pockets of some fat cat speculator.  These blocks don’t just sit there doing nothing – they sit there making money!

The Pattern!

While of course you can use this tutorial to make whatever pattern you want – there’s no such thing as a bad fence stitch! – this tutorial has been put together to encourage to get on board with our campaign to highlight the vacant land in our suburbs.  Land that is sitting there being ugly when it could be a lovely home – or a nice local business.

Here’s the two dollar sign patterns.  One for a square grid (these are the easiest to do – but the fences are rarer) and one for the diamond grid.

They’re not the best quality image for the diagonal fence sorry…  Will work on getting a better one, but it should do the trick for now.

And that’s it!

I’ve also made a pretty pdf version (8MB) of this doc which is easiest for printing if you prefer.

Very much looking forward to seeing what people can do with this tutorial.  As a special treat, if you send me pics of your finished dollar sign and let me know your postal address I’ll send you one of our limited edition gocco printed speculator cum rags!

So get out there kids.  There are literally hundreds of canvases across our suburbs to decorate!  If you need help finding one maybe check out the invest page on the realestate4ransom.com site for some ideas.

xox

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Those of you who’ve been following this site for a while will know that one of the biggest issues that concerns me is the stifling effects of land speculation on our communities and our creativity.  While many of us crafty types would love to make stuff full time, it’s just not possible when we need to work so many hours a week to pay the rent/mortgage.  It’s bloody frustrating that our economic system rewards those that just buy and sell for a living yet punishes those of us who actually create.

One of big current issues in the craft world has been the ripping off of the ideas and designs of independent crafters/illustrators etc.  It seems like a weekly occurrence that some big company has found the work of a designer online and stolen it for their own products.  And who has the legal budget to fight that kind of crap?

Whilst this might seem like a new phenomenon, the practise of capitalising off the creative talents of artistic communities has been around for a long time.  And the most damaging application of this practise occurs in the land markets.  While we’re out busting our bums creating vibrant awesome and sustainable communities, behind the scenes is a secret, shady bunch of land sharks circling.

It’s called gentrification – and there’s a really good explanation of how it works on the I Want To Live Here film comp site.

It sucks that we bust our asses creating great places to live only to get priced out of the area by lazy land hoarders cashing in on the value our hard work creates.

I think it’s super important for creative people to understand because it’s pretty common to see creative responses to the aesthetic issues of land banking – but rare to see these responses address the real drivers behind the issues.  I’ve been  seeing more and more projects emerging that are designed to make boarded up buildings attractive or to ‘help’ landlords find creative people to move in.  But while the intentions behind these projects are very positive and genuine, they do all have the long term effect of making the land more valuable, thus compounding the problem.  What’s needed are creative ideas to try and break the cycles and systems that create the problem of high rents and vacant buildings in the first place.

But of course the first step is understanding.

I always say that an important role of the artist in society is to act as a mirror of society – so we can see what we’re really up to, and to help create the visions of the way things could be.  Inspiring and creating change is something artists and crafters are really good at – and have been doing for centuries.

So I was super proud to be asked to be part of a team of local creatives keen to get together and create a visual campaign around the effects of rampant land speculation in Melbourne.  It currently takes 9.5 years of full time average wage to buy an average house in Melbourne (it was 4 years when the subprime crisis hit the US).  This is absolutely insane!  Yet still our media and politicians continue to perpetuate the myth that forever rising property prices are a good thing.

But who are they good for?  Not young people, that’s for sure.  How many of you young renters out there could ever imagine having the half a million bucks it takes to enter the market in Melbourne today?  How many of us continue to buy the story that the First Home Owners Grant is about supporting young people.  When in reality all the policy has done has further inflated prices above and beyond the original grants.  First Home Owners Grant? Baby Boomers Bailout more like.

This stuff is so important for creative people to understand for two reasons.  Firstly because it directly impacts on our lives in regards to the hours of our lives we waste working to pay for the roofs over our heads.  And secondly because our own communities are guilty of perpetuating the same behaviour.  I can’t count the number of craft and indie design markets I have seen this year alone with insanely high stall fees.  There was one in particular I saw where the stall fees for a ‘fringe’ event alongside a major design event were higher than for the design event itself.  And this is becoming more common.

We need to call bullshit on it.

The fact that there is a massive shift in awareness towards the important economic and environmental benefits of handmade stuff is freakin awesome.  There are wonderful communities everywhere making and buying the things they need in life without destroying an ecosystem or exploiting another community in the process.  We need to do what we can to support these systems and a big part of that is keeping a close eye on the marketplaces that support the trade in these products.

I have personal experience in running a market so I have an idea about how much these things cost – in both time and money.  Our markets were run for the love of craft so we didn’t ever break even on costs but we really didn’t charge much for stalls.  What was important for us was that our sellers had the freedom to make really out there stuff.  Charging a high rent – which is what a stall fee is – would impact on that freedom, so we kept the fees low.

I know we could’ve charged a bit more.  I’m sure our sellers would’ve forgiven us for wanting to at least cover costs.  But if we had of charged that, and if we’d have hired a flasher venue and spent more on advertising etc there is NO WAY we would’ve been charging some of the stall fee levels I’ve seen recently.

I think it’s essential that if the craft movement in particular is going to have an analysis on issues of environmental impacts, multinational retail and workers rights we must also have a solid analysis of the politics of property – both physical and intellectual – since these areas have such massive impacts on our practice as crafters.

Enough ranting.

For this campaign we decided the main objective was to try and get young people to pay attention to the way land was being used in our suburbs.   And to try and draw attention to who really drives the debates around these issues.

So presenting Melbourne’s latest real estate company: realestate4ransom.com Check the website and Facebook for more info on what it’s about and to see some of the images of the street part of the campaign.  I’ll try and update some major bits here too.

But the main reason for this post is to get some of you undercover operatives in the Melbourne Revolutionary Craft Circle fired up to get out and do some craft!  I’ve put together a tutorial on how to do a dollar sign on a fence.  This post was supposed to be that tutorial but given the length of this post already I think I’ll do it separate..

So check out the website, fan us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Youtube (stay tuned for mad clip) and help us spread the word about what’s really going on.

Tutorial next!

xox

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