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!!

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.

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.

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.

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.