August Meeting 2013

Old Business Planning a field trip to "Quilt Country" events in Benton Co. Corvallis/Philomath on Saturday Sept. 21, Vera will be leading the group, View the SAQA exhibit and other quilt galleries and events. More info next meeting or call Vera. Meeting schedule, Sept. Crystal will demo how to upload to websites that print fabric from your photos. Oct. Crystal has a Kaffe Fasset video on his trip to India and design inspiration. Nov. Amy will do hands on demo on putting words into your art work. Dec. Christmas potluck. Our River quilts will be on display at Pyrenees Winery in August, set up is Sat 17th, anyone that can help at 10am, please call Crystal. They will be on display Aug, 17, 18, 24, 25 & Sept 5. New BusinessWe will vote on a new theme for our next challenge at the Sept. meeting, any suggestions, email Amy, I'll make a ballot. Show & Tell

Amy brought her finished top, ready for quilting of the ocean/beach scene she has been making. It is a combination of people playing on the beach, designed from her original photos. The central portion of a baby quilt with a zebra on it, was also shown, it is machine blanket stitch applique, and an original design, it just needs borders next.

Dorie was unable to finish her river project so Amy picked it up, and has worked to get it finished. Her basic backgrounds were established, sky, trees, and river, with several cut out black rhino silhouettes, and pre-printed fabric of lions and zebras was to go on the bottom. Amy finished assembly, adding Angelina fibers to the sunset, to make it glow, adding a large tree on the left, and several smaller trees, and cutting out the lion fabric to fit it on the bottom. It is embellished with yarns in the river and bottom greenery. Amy machine free motion quilted it in rayon threads, to finish it. It was a successful collaboration.

Maureen and a friend spent time doing more ice dyeing, she over dyed two pieces of fabric, one a tiger stripe black & white, for very dramatic effects. We had a guest, Pat, from the Umpqua Valley Quilter's, just to check us out, she wants to be inspired by our creativity. She is a talented quilt piecer, and fabric dyer.

Nancy has finished her river project with the addition of teal lame to her river, "Copper River" is an abstract city scape, with a rich sunset contrasting to black and grey buildings. She donated one of her ice dyed silk scarves to an Altrusa auction and it was fought over, and received a good price, and she said it was like getting rid of one of her children.

Cheryl has been busy spinning exquisite skeins of yarn with the wool from her dye workshop last month. She is using different techniques to make unique yarns. She also made a bag for her kindle with hand woven cream wool, and a strap made from a piece of her card weaving trim. The rug behind the bag, was another weaving project on a large loom.

Cheryl has been a busy lady, finishing her Ruana, that she worked on at the Bandon Retreat, it is very warm and soft to keep her warm for the early hours of winter mornings. Corienne was part of the Weavers and Spinner's Guild display at the Douglas County Fair, they demonstrated ice dyeing, and wove a scarf from yarn spun at the Lamb Show, and auctioned it off at the Livestock Auction.

Pat finished her river piece, with last minute stitching at the table, she has added a rounded bottom edge, to give it a distinct finish. The texture magic for the mountains and foreground, was stitched and shrunk with a steam iron. We will do a demo on this in the future. Her Golf Course, has lots of fibers, sand traps and a flag at the hole.

Vera has been working on her large fabric dye pieces, she has been using various resists, potato dextrin, adds crackle, school glue was great for a fine line, but did not wash out easily as advertised, she had to scrub and scrape it off. She used masking tape, and corn dextrin, and screen printed Indian designs on a bright red/orange/yellow hand dyed fabric. These experiments with resists lead her to take a class on deconstructed screen printing, which will be our demo today, and be in the next post. She and several friends also went to Grants Pass to see the International SAQA traveling show. They had a picture taken in front of their favorite piece, and had it made into a postcard, with info from the event.

Meredith has been practicing her free motion quilting, doing spirals in the center of her sunflower, that she made at the Bandon Retreat. She removed it from the news print, that it was stitched to, it was for a sample, but she liked it so much, she wants to put it onto a fabric background. She has discovered that free motion quilting is a tense, stop and breathe, nerve wracking experience. It gets easier with practice Meredith! She found nice, brown paper, blank postcards, that she has passed around for us to put our addresses on, we passed the card to the person on the left. Now she wants us to put some kind of art on the card and mail it to the other group members. Just for FUN!

We laid out on the floor, all 13 of the finished "A River Runs Through It" projects. WOW!! All together they are awesome. You can really see the river flow from one piece to the next. What a wonderful accomplishment for our group, I am proud of all of you! It will be on display at Pyrenees Winery in August, let's see if we can find other venues to display it. We want to show everyone what our fiber group is about, I look at all the different techniques we used, and can see how far we have come since we first got together as a group. So much growth and artistic achievement, from some very talented people!!