Monday, January 23, 2017

Bandon Art Retreat 2016

Nine creative and talented members of Fyber Café took a trip to the Oregon coast for our annual Art Retreat in Bandon. Forget-Me-Knots quilt shop has a wonderful retreat center above the shop. It is right next to the new Face Rock Creamery and right on the edge of "Old Town Bandon" shops and the boardwalk and marina. Amy and Susan started work on "Happy Villages." Starting with charm squares and cutting shapes for the houses, then adding windows, doors and roofs.
Susan's village began with a river running through it. Bridges and houses grew along either side of the river, as she stacked the fabric houses.
UFO's were a theme for Amy as she free motion machine quilted her original design of a Ricky Tims medallion. Hearts and loop-de-loops quilting finished the Flower Fairy baby quilt for her nephew's new baby girl.
Annaka spent a good deal of time, drawing and shading her detailed dragon. She will enter it in the county fair.
Cheryl taught Annaka how to wet felt a multicolor wool purse. By rolling and rolling and rolling some more, to get enough agitation to felt the wool fibers together. This project was too much for Annaka's patience, but she finished a nice reversible purse.
Barb worked on getting the different pieces of her oriental quilt together. Elegantly made with red, black and gold prints, she made good progress on it.
Barb started composing elements from her girl scout days. She has a lot more badges and other memorabilia to add to it.
barb also worked on red, black and white "Pineapple" placemats, and a green and gold batik table runner.
It was all about wool for Cheryl during the retreat. She spent a lot of time spinning beautiful yarn, and dyeing small batches of wool in bright colors.
Cheryl did the wet felting with Annaka, with the wool she had just dyed, and made a pouch type purse also.
Cheryl's husband Larry came along also, and they spent each morning on long walks on the beach. As Cheryl spun, Larry hand carded soft orange, gold and green wool.
When Cheryl was done spinning, Larry took his turn at the wheel and spun all the wool he had carded. He also played his guitar for us and wrote a song about walking on the beach with Cheryl.
Lorraine made several fantasy fish, with bright florals, large print batiks and Kaffe Fasset colorful prints. She had elements pre-cut and they already had fusible on the backs. She had fun playing and changing all the elements around.
Knowing we were going to work on villages, Lorraine brought her's to show us, that she had made, in a class taken with the author. We also took some field trips, South of town we went to the Langlois Wool Shop, and found colorful roving for needle felting, specialty fibers like silk and cashmere, and other wonderful stuff. Further South to Gold Beach we went to the quilt shop and stocked up on more fabric, we did not need. Back in Bandon we went to lunch at the Wheelhouse, and the bakery had tasty home made bread sandwiches. We did potluck for our other meals and had a great time visiting around the kitchen table.
Several early morning walks on the beach, called us out of bed. The tide was very low both mornings, and we could walk out to several of the large rocks usually sitting in the water.
After consuming some fruit of the vine one evening, Susan and Amy had been thinking of putting some color in their hair. So we all trooped off to the nearest Rite Aid and raided the shelves for pink, purple and blue temporary hair dye.
We all dyed our hair, being silly and having fun. Most of the products lasted for 2-3 shampooings. After the retreat Amy and Meredith went to their hairdressers and had the color put in for real. We were all sorry to have to leave, we got a lot of quilting and spinning done and had loads of fun.

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