June Meeting 2013

Old Business Fyber Cafe will have a booth at the Elkton "Smile" Festival to benefit the Elkton Charter School Music program. We will display our "River" quilts, have pieces for sale/display, and promote our group. We will be doing children's activities, having them decorate "Festival Flags" with markers, crayons, glitter, stencils etc... Call Meredith to volunteer or help with supplies. The event is June 29th, Saturday, 10am to 4pm. The Black Sheep Festival is in Eugene, June 21, 22, & 23, call Peggy or Jana join them. The "weaving challenge" has been hung in the Sutherlin Library by Peggy and Kay. New Business July demo, Sylvia, Georgia, Amy & Jan are participating in the International Quilt Challenge "Painters" and will discuss their projects, in progress. For Aug. Vera will discuss deconstructed screen printing, after she takes a class in Portland. In Sept. Crystal will show us how to upload images to be printed onto fabric by a company, for her sliced photo quilts. We are also taking ideas for a new challenge, quick, less formal then the "River" challenge, bring your ideas to the July meeting. We will also return the "What's My Line" challenges to the artist, Pat wants hers for a gift. Show & Tell Many of us met the deadline to finish our "River Runs Through It" challenge pieces. I'll show closeup details in this post, then make a separate post with the finished pieces. To sort of tease you. Maureen started, as she is on the far left side, her piece "Naked Singularity" was needle felted and embellished with rhinestones.

Maureen and Sylvia did a dyeing session , see previous post, and Sylvia ice dyed several pairs of cotton socks, WOW! She also made a matched set of t-shirt and blouse, in rich green/blues and mauve.

When ice dyeing, they layered several items, with layers of ice and dye, in a zip lock bag, with holes punched in the bottom, and let it drip through. Nancy was playing with stained coffee filters to create rocks for her "River" scene, still in progress, she folded and shaped, then stitched, to form individual 3-D rocks. Crystal's "River" is unfinished, but coming along nicely, she has printed a poem onto muslin and on the green grass area, by running the fabric through her computer printer. There is a flowing outline of a lady, blending into the water, like a river sprite. She was going to thread paint, but ended up couching silky yarns at the Bandon retreat.

Pat's piece is nearing completion, she is working out the details, she has created a mountain background with "Texture Magic" and a golf course with a green and sand traps out of needle felted fibers. She will add a flag at the hole, and other details.

Jana has created "A River Runs Through the Shire" with a hobbit house into the hill side, with a round red door and flower garden. She has also made an "Alice in Wonderland" applique top, for her sister, from a commercial pattern. It is bold and colorful.

"A River Runs Through Maui" is Cheryl's needle felted creation. She worked on it while on vacation in Hawaii, with lots of wool, and 3-D figures, of parrots, and coconut palms, and waterfalls in the background.

Cheryl took at card weaving class, and brought samples to show us, she also brought the "Inkle" type loom, that it is woven on.

Vera has been busy getting ready for her trip to the Czech Republic to visit family. She hand painted with Tskineco inks and a felt tip stylus, two portraits, one of her cousin as a young girl in her first communion outfit, and another of her cousin's grandmother. They are very life like and delicately detailed, she framed them in picture frames. A "Color Hues Dye" class at Oregon Collage of Arts & Crafts in Portland, by Barbra Picket, gave Vera lots of samples in color mixing on silk, the product does not need fixing or heat setting.

Vera continued the dye painting with stencils, and used shaving cream as a base to thicken the Color Hues Dyes. She also played with soy wax batik for large multicolored patterned pieces of fabric.

Vera's "River" piece is finished with a geometric interpretation of a Topographic map, she has added a legend at the bottom, which shows what each color stands for.

Amy's "River" has a birch tree grove, with the trees extending above the edge of the quilt, and an extra section of rocks and flowers below the bottom. Silk ribbon embroidery among the bottom flowers adds texture and depth.

The bottom of Kay's "River" has hand painted squares of fabric hanging from it, and ribbons, trims and bead accent the edge of the river. The sky is a beautiful orange mauve, with more scraps of papers and fabric embellished on top. Kay also brought a long wall hanging with the 5 stages of life of a butterfly, to display in Elkton, at the Butterfly Gardens.

Meredith has the last piece to the right, and has chosen to end with a waterfall, going down to the floor. Her forest was not quiet complete, and she is dyeing more blue cheese cloth for the waterfall, but we got a pretty good idea of how it will look.

There was no demo this month, as we knew that unveiling the "River" pieces would take some time. Congratulations to all our artists, who have created some wonderful work for this challenge. We are looking forward to seeing the rest of them finished.