Alex by Yvonne Chapman Brooks

Yvonne’s Artwork

0466 467 153
0466 467 153

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Big shoes to fill

Big Shoes to fill is a textile piece of a small orphaned red kangaroo Joey called “Debo”. The reference image came from the Kangaroo Sanctuary in Alice Springs who allowed me to use this image for this piece. The finished piece is stretched over a canvas and measures 75cm x 75cm. This piece will be my entry for the Cossack Art Award 2026. As with any of my textile pieces it starts as a sketch which is then traced onto acetate. This provides my pattern for cutting the fusible webbing, and the placement of the cut out fabric pieces.  I cut and place each piece of fabric onto a piece of calico, this provides a stable backing for sewing. I have chosen floral fabrics to give texture to the final piece. This part of the process takes about 4 to 6 hours. The free motion machine sewing on all my textile pieces, consists of thread painting over my placed fabric. This is the same method for every piece I do. I use only straight and zig zag stitches, and a variety of machine embroidery and cotton thread, plus metallic filament and iridised thread. In this particular piece there is a lot of gold metallic thread, I do this first as the thread is fragile and will break if I try to cover too many layers of stitching.  My thread changes are too numerous to count, and my selection of colours is important for blending or “Painting“ All my work is produced on my extremely basic, “Janome My Excel 18W” machine. Once my Joey has been completed and cut out I have to work on my background. I like the look of the Alcohol inks on white cotton, it is the closest I can get to my watercolour paintings,  the colours are bright and permanent. First, I soak the background fabric in Isopropyl alcohol.  I dilute a small amount of the Inks with some isopropyl alcohol to paint with.  I chose a more toned down background for this piece as the Joey is very bright, I wanted the red dirt, pindan colouring of the outback for the ground, and used some random shapes to create texture and gravel. The final image has Hot Fix Crystals and some seed beads, plus a splash of the gold Alcohol Ink for that little bit of shine. The eyes have a couple of hot fix crystals for the “twinkle” and just to catch the light from a distance, making the Joeys eyes look alive.   The Joey is then sewn onto the background and the body quilted to ensure a firm even surface.  I use wadding over the canvas and staple into place, then stretch the finished piece over that. This is more time consuming than it sounds, as the fabric can gather in places where the subject is sewn to the background. once the fabric is smooth and taut I sew calico onto the back of the frame to create a neat finish.  Debo is now ready for the Cossack Art Award. Wish me luck! 

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Oh My Stars AQC entry 2024

Oh my stars! The 2024 Australian Quilt Challenge theme was “Oh my stars!” which originally bought up images of film stars and pop idols, but I am not so good at people, so decided to go with something I know I am good at, animals.  I played around with several images then settled on a dog and a mouse. It had to include stars so I decided a star shaped biscuit was the connection between the mouse and dog.  I made a pattern of the head and enlarged it onto brown paper, the acetate pattern was traced from this and would be reversed for tracing the shapes needed for the iron on fusing web. The fused  fabric is then  cut out and using the correct side of the acetate pattern, I can place the pieces onto the calico backing.  I use a Janome sewing machine, very basic, and a hoop to keep the fabric flat whist sewing as the multi directional stitching can make the fabric warp. I use embroidery thread and cottons, with bobbin fill as my bobbin thread in white for the lighter areas and black for the dark areas.  As with all my textiles I only ever use straight and zig-zag stitches.  Once the dogs head is complete I can cut it out from the backing, then I can begin on the mouse.  I tried a few different angles for the mouse, but decided to show the biscuits he was sitting on from the eye level of the viewer, looking at the dresser face on.   The background was dyed using Alcohol inks on white homespun. The diluted inks are painted on, then splashed, to replicate my watercolour painting backgrounds. This is left to line dry and then ironed to fix the ink.  Constructing the quilt The mouse and dog are cut from the backing fabric and I placed them onto several different layouts, before finally deciding on a dresser that held plates. At first I had the plates way too small, so had to remake them.  I settled on a part of the  dyed background that complimented the dogs colours, and then began to deign the dresser. This changed a couple of times in the process.  Finally I had a design I liked and a dresser I was happy with, so the finishing construction begins.  Each piece was sewn onto the dyed background and the mouse and dog appliqued over the top. I added applique stars made from the dyed backing fabric, and added some buttons that were star shaped, you can never have too many stars! I wanted to tie the whole piece together and not make it look so divided by the dresser. I tried to keep the stars the same tones as the background to make them less of a focal point.  At last I was finished! “Otis the great Dane is shocked to see someone had helped himself to HIS favourite star shaped biscuits. The Audacity!” The quilting and final embellishment took about 3 days, and in total the quilt took about 5 months to make. It is 90cm square. My quilt entry was accepted as a finalist and was exhibited around the Eastern states of Australia in 2024. It didn’t win any prizes but I hang it proudly on my wall at home.  

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Carousel. Tradition with a Twist quilt

Tradition with a Twist was the 2016 Theme for the AQC challenge, I chose to create a “Carousel”. The tradition being a yearly fair that would attend local towns in the Uk when I was growing up, where the favourite attraction was the Carousel. The twist, well I always liked to think I was riding a real horse, so there he is, a real horse in the carousel. I started with a watercolour concept of the four horses I wanted to recreate, then had to replicate this into material.  Making a pattern and placing the fabric Making a pattern is important, I have enlarged my image onto several acetate pieces and drawn the image as detailed as possible.  I reverse this acetate pattern and use it to trace the Vliesofix, a bonding mesh that will be used to iron the fabric on to the calico backing, by reversing the image for drawing I can put the tracing the right way up to place the fabric underneath in the right spot. I call this Trace and Place.  It allows me to place several layers of fabric in the right spot for ironing and bonding, and finally sewing.  Sewing begins As the shapes begin to take place and once layering has been completed Sewing begins. I use only straight and zig zag stitch for all my textiles. I have a very basic small Janome for this so as the quilt gets bigger it can be a challenge to sew. I have a huge stash of thread which I begin to thread paint over my fabric pieces, paying attention to direction, texture and colour.  As sewing is completed on the horse images, I cut them out from their calico backing, making a piece that will eventually be sewn into place, making it in separate pieces means I can keep it as flat as possible with no buckling as I sew. I can also compose the best composition, they look quite stunning on a black background! Making up the background I hand painted the background using acrylic paints mixed with a textile medium for permanence. I was going to have an evening look but decided it wasn’t bold enough, so went with the black and made it night time, this way the lights of the carousel would appear brighter.  I added white globes over the painted light so there would be a glow behind them.  I also added the 3rd and 4th horse poles.    The shine on the real horse is a cellophane Angel Hair filament, when placed between baking paper and ironed it makes a solid web of “fabric” that can be cut to shape and sewn, without losing any of its shine or glitter.  the floor was made from large pieces of fabric, sewn to look like wood, then blended with velvet that had been hand dyed with real bright colours, to create reflected lights.  The finished quilt measured approximately 36 inches square. 90cm x 90cm.  Winning quilt. This quilt was entered into the AQC (Australian Quilt Challenge) in 2016  It very nearly didn’t make it at all, as on the 7th January 2016, when it was halfway though construction, WA’s Largest bushfire threatened our town, having destroyed the neighbouring  town of Yarloop  and tragically, with loss of life. I was evacuated to a nearby town and taken in by really amazing strangers who quickly became friends. They took in a woman with a half finished quilt, a few clothes, a car full of dogs and all stressed to the max! it was almost a week before we were allowed home.  But I finished it.  CAROUSEL was entered and chosen to exhibit with 30 others at the craft exhibition in Melbourne, and around Australia for the next year. It didn’t win anything here, but the following year I entered it into the Mancuso World of Quilts in the USA where it won “Best use of Colour: Innovative section” I was blown away. A major prize!

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