Monday, July 29, 2013

Landreth's River

Landreth's River project is titled "High Desert Predators," she has used subtle colors with lots of stitch detail for the background. The focus is on an Eagle, and a nest in a bare tree. The background is free motion quilted with lots of detail, shrubs and cactus, and lots of critters, scorpions, snakes, mouse, bugs, and more.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

July Meeting 2013

Old Business The "Weaving Challenge" is hung in the Sutherlin Library. Please stop by and see it. Demo for August, Vera will talk about her class she is taking, on "deconstructed screen printing." Sept. Crystal will talk about how to upload your photos to be printed onto fabric on a web site, and how she used the fabric to make her sliced up flower quilts. Oct. Crystal has a DVD on Kaffe Fasset's inspiring trip to India, and how this effects his colors and fabric design. We will watch this, equipment permitting. Sept. is "Quilt Country" in Benton County and the Corvallis/Philomath area. Anyone want to organize a field trip? Vera and SAQA will have work on display at the Student Union at the Oregon State campus. Gracie gave a report on the Elkton festival, she said it was a great success, they raised a lot of money for the music program, and our booth was the highlight of the event. Many kids enjoyed painting/drawing flags, and many came back for seconds. New Business An "Ice dyeing" workshop will be planned for Sylvia's late July/early August, for those of you who have missed out, and those who want to do more!
Show & Tell Gracie started us off with her ice dyed T-shirts that she made, nice rich colors, for new school clothes.
Sylvia is involved in the "International Quilt Challenge - Painters" her assigned painter is Cezanne, and she got an interesting design/color book, inspired by Cezanne. She has designed a landscape with mountains, and decided to hand dye her fabric. She used "Color Hue" dyes to dye a selection of small scraps of silk in two different textures, to work in a collage style.
Nancy is almost finished with her "River" project, it is titled "Copper River" and has copper, silver, gray and black shimmery lames, and metallic knits, The fused abstract using "Steam a Seam" is bold and catches the light, she will be adding small bits of teal metallic to the river, to fit our guide lines. Crystal has couched silk ribbon onto her waterlady while at the Bandon retreat, and is still creating the finishing touches.
Crystal and her husband are creating a line of wine T-shirts with designs from local artists, and she modeled for us, and had several others to show, they will be available at local wineries.
Cheryl has been busy again, she took a dye workshop with the local USPIN weaver guild, using "Lanocet" dyes. She dyed and over dyed wool, into a rainbow of colors.
Cheryl has also made great progress on her "Ruana" that she was spinning and knitting at the Bandon retreat, it will certainly keep her warm this next winter while she sits and knits. She also had a sample she had spun of a specialty yarn, that she learned from a book "Spinner's Handbook of Yarn Designs" it is a core spun yarn, with the colored fibers spun in tight coils around a center core of crochet thread. Corienne has been gone to a week long weaving retreat in Bellingham Washington, She took a class on how to custom fit jackets, they used a standard pattern provided by the teacher, then custom fit it to themselves, with different techniques she learned. She will be making a jacket from her hand woven fabric, a painted warp-woven cotton. She promises to spend time finishing her "River" project. Vera returned from her trip to the Czech Republic with bags of little pieces of intricately laser cut wood and rubber, from a family member's die factory work. She will use them for many purposes, printing, resists, clamping onto folded dye projects, etc.
I finallly got a good pictures of Jana's "River" project, "A river runs through the Shire" she has been working on her "Tour de France" project, were she commits to spinning every day during the tour, her wool is beautiful and called rose quartz.
Peggy added more detail to her "River" project, adding hand stitching, fibers, and beading. She declares it finally "Done." She had added press on Pellon to the back and found that it made it too stiff for handwork. She also had a selection of recycled materials for grabs, small divided plastic boxes, and water pouches, and has access to all sorts of larger size cottage cheese containers, if anyone wants them for dye work.
Kay is trying to finish the work on her sunprint set, she will make it into a table runner, and asked for advice on sashing and finishing. She is just "DONE" with the hand work, and has to stop eventually.
Pat has done more needle felting on her golf course for her "River" project, and still needs to finish the binding, she is happy with the detail and additions she made.
Meredith has finished her "River" the waterfall continues off the bottom edge of her piece, falling into an old steel bucket. It is a magnificent ending to the series of panels. The 3-dimensional work she has done, brings it to life, as the water tumbles down. Her 3-D forest has just as much detail as the falls. Bravo!!
Our new member visiting us today is Lorraine, she moved to Roseburg in January from the Seattle area and found us at the UVQG quilt show. She brought a show and tell, a set of fish in a series she hangs in her stair well, the six pieces are linked with some fish extending into the next piece. They are fused with some raw edge stitching and some satin stitching. A delightful introduction to our group, please continue to join us Lorraine.
Amy has created some 3-D textile art objects, from the book "Exploring Dimensional Quilt Art" she has been inspired to explore 3-D. From a piece of her hand dyed fabric, machine quilted with a stiff interfacing, she cut out and assembled a bowl and a hanging spiral. She intends to try several of the other shapes and ideas in the book.
We assembled the River panels on two poles, to see the additional new pieces, we did not get them in order, but it looks awesome! Landreth's piece is in the mail, with Corienne, Dori, & Crystal still working on theirs. THEY ARE DUE AT THE AUGUST MEETING!! All the pieces will be displayed at the Pyrenees Winery several weekends in August.

Friday, July 5, 2013

Elkton SMILE Festival

On Saturday several of us went to Elkton for a benefit music and art event, for the Elkton School Music program. We had a wonderful time, helping kids paint "Festival Flags" with stencils, markers, glitter, googly eyes and watercolor pencils and crayons.
The kids had a wonderful time, and the picnic table was full most of the day, with a line in the afternoon. Many kids wanted to make a second one, and if we had space at the table, they did another. Meredith said the flags were all clipped around the canopy, and by afternoon there was no space for more. The kids got to take them home after they dried and they were all very creative.
I did manage to find a minute to walk around the gardens and see the new butterfly enclosure, where they hatch out new Monarch butterflies on milk weed and other flowers.
We set up a display of our "River Runs Through It" challenge pieces, and Meredith, Kay and Peggy talked to many people through out the day about our group and the work we do. Several other quilted wall hangings, dyed fabric and scarves were displayed, to give an example of some of the art we do. Thank you everyone who participated, and to our members, Gracie, Sylvia, and Cynde, for getting us involved in their school project for a good cause.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Bandon Oregon Field Trip

On Tuesday we took a mid day field trip, out and about, our first stop was at Art 101 & Washed Away, South of town, only to find out they had moved into a store front in "Old Town." Further South we stopped at Wild River Wool Shop, in Langlois, Oregon. She had a wonderful selection of fleece, wool, dyed roving, and various specialty fibers, mohair, silk, and angora. She also had small packets of mixed colors for needle felters. Her framed needle felted picture, was textile art we could learn a lot from. She had made 3 Dimensional pictures of sheep, horses and dogs, that leaped out of the frame, with darling expressive faces.
She had smaller pictures, of cats, fish, and flowers. Quick and easy little projects for us to try, in assorted small frames.
A large assortment of finished knit hats, scarves and mittens, along with "Insta-Dreds" a dark wool twist, made to be added to the hem of a hat, Meredith modeled for us.
After a few purchases, we headed back into town. We found the new location for "Washed Away" a very well done, professional museum quality space. We were given a tour by a nice young man from "Ameri-corp" who was volunteering for the summer. He explained the quantity of garbage, plastics, metals, tires and miscellaneous stuff, that is dumped in the ocean, local groups do "Beach Cleanups" and bring all the stuff to them to be cleaned, and recycled into art sculptures.
They have a lot of hands on workshops where locals, tourists, and school groups get together and make the sculptures. Last summer, Pat had been there with her grandkids and they had a blast, working on the Starfish. Many of the pieces are loaned out to environmental shows/festivals and events to promote clean beaches, clean oceans and the dangers to wildlife all the trash poses. On the way back to the retreat center, we stopped next door to the newly built "Face Rock Creamery" that replaces the Bandon Cheese Factory, to try cheese sampling, ice cream and sandwiches, as well as a full window view into the factory.