Saturday, March 16, 2013

March Meeting 2013

Old Business Plans were made for the Umpqua Valley Quilters' Show in April, set up is Thurs. April 11, the show is Fri. Sat & Sun, at the Douglas County Fairgrounds. We will display our three challenges from this year, "What's My Line?" "Beatles" & "Weaving." A membership list was passed around for updates and corrections, a copy will be made for everyone. The Fyber Cafe Textile Arts Retreat is in Bandon, Oregon at the Forget-Me-Knots retreat center, June 17th-19th, RSVP with Amy ASAP. It will be a "do your own thing" textile arts event, with creativity, fun, shopping, field trips, food and chocolate. Plans for our new challenge "A River Runs Through It" were discussed, and river fabric and patterns were handed out, we still have one more piece if anyone wants to get join, it's not too late. Jan?? Maureen?? New Business" At our May meeting Landreth will do a talk/presentation on "Studio Space" storage ideas, etc... A May Play Day at Meredith's in Grants Pass, will be Saturday May 4th, fabric dyeing and a demo of Meredith's Glass bead making. Plans, info, directions and carpooling will be at the April meeting. Show & Tell A new member joined us, Linda Walker is a recently retired, friend of Dorie's, she does machine embroidery, knitting and crochet, and is a new quilter. Kay had a photo of Sherry's tree project in the Ketchikan Library, some of our members helped make painted leaves for it. Cheryl plans on needle felting her River project, with a 3-D tree and figures, and brought a sample of her needle felting, a Wildman sculpture on a wooden branch. She also knit 2 scarves with handspun wool and alpaca. She crocheted 2 purses in heavy fat yarns, with acrylic handles, and washing machine felted them. She also made crochet leg warms in "Water" colors for her son, and furry llama slippers. The slippers in llama are very strong fibers for good wearing strength, then the guard hairs are brushed out to give a furry appearance. Dorie brought products called "Catch and Release" from Crawford Designs. These are discharge pastes similar to Jacquard de-colourants, that paint on and heat set with steam to activate. They also come in "Sparkly" colors, that caught all our attention. She painted the edge of the hood on her sweatshirt for a sample. Nancy worked on her computer skills, doing photographs for the "Celebration of Literacy" an Altrusa project, she emailed photos, learned to make prints. She also helped to hang the "Animals" show at the Umpqua Valley Arts Center, which has several art quilts on display, notably from artist Cassandra Williams of Hugo. Vera discussed her trip to Malaysia to visit her daughter, she visited a batik artist again, and took Guta and a Jacquard water based resist for her to try. She traded these for 4 meter piece of batik. The artist uses dyes from Germany, that takes steam to set. Meredith brought her photo transfers, from Pat's Play Day to show, and a new piece for the "Weaving challenge" She painted papers, and collaged them onto a wood frame with a cut out area, she wove copper wires in the opening, and stitched love, laugh, life, onto the canvas. She brought "Ikat Tape" to share, it is used in weaving as a resist to tie around warp threads for dyeing Ikat patterns. Pat took a class in Eugene from Angela MacIntyre on creating fabric papers, they layered various tissues, papers and fibers on a muslin base with a glue and added more paper and dyed cheesecloth and other fibers to create a colorful textile. You can find Angela on the web at Laughing Cat Designs. She also showed her peacock pattern she had made from a photograph, related to Amy's demo. Kay took a "nuno felting" class in Eugene from Tylar Merrill. They used a thrift shop silk scarf as a base, and added silk fibers, wools, and embellishments to make layers, that were then covered in plastic and toweling, then rolled up to felt. They hand rolled 400 times, then 100 more, then 400 times and MORE!! The hand nuno felting process took a lot of elbow grease. The Eugene Textile Center, has a machine to do this. Tylars company is Thimbleberry Felt Designs Crystal brought three quilted projects, a wall hanging pieced with bright fabrics and appliqued with flowers and birds. An Easter print table runner with patchwork, and a boy's Pirate quilt with a 5 point star in the center, and various pirate fabrics. Amy brought for show & tell, the start of her River project, a raw edge applique piece of a night scene with hand dyed fabric for the sky and moon, birch trees and ferns/foliage, with the river below. It is a work in progress, as details are added a little bit at a time. Landreth finished her "Weaving" piece, it has beautiful golden fabric with an open woven grid of rust yarns. It is over laid with 3-D rust dyed fabric leaves. Demo Amy did a hands on demo of creating a pattern from a photograph, by tracing with a ultra fine point Sharpie pen on clear plastic, creating pattern pieces for applique, to outline shapes, details, color changes and quilting lines. These can be enlarged on a computer, in "Tiling" or "posterizing" mode, or by the Copy Center by the Court House, which makes blue print size copies.