January Meeting 2014

December's meeting was canceled due to snow. We have quiet a few people that come long distances to our meetings, and lots that live in the country, with hilly driveways. The snow hung around over a week, making driving difficult or impossible. Several of us did get together after Christmas at Kowloon's Chinese Restaurant for good food, visiting and relaxing after the busy holidays.

January Old Business We will be putting our "River Runs Through It" art work in the ICU Waiting Room at Mercy Hospital, this week. Dorie has organized this and chosen a large open wall with lots of traffic. All artists statements were due! Please try to keep the deadlines, many of our challenges have flexible deadlines, but when it is important, please try harder. Name tags are now required at all meetings, or there is a 25 cent fine, we have many newer members to encourage. A $5 fee was collected to help with expenses with hanging the show at the hospital, dowels, hooks, singage, etc... Also for anything we need to display at the Umpqua Valley Quilters Show in April. We are going to go on a field trip Saturday, January 25, to the Oregon Gardens Quilt Show, East of Salem. We will carpool to the show, plans are TBA. In February our "Weather Report" challenges are due. (flexible deadline) Several of you have already finished your pieces, well done! Our workshop will be a critique of the pieces, let's apply the design principles we've been learning.

New Business The Art retreat in Bandon this summer is reserved, a $100 deposit needs to be made to save the dates/reservation. A show of hands was good to confirm interest, and the deposit was sent. The dates are Mon-Wed, June 23, 24, 25. and the cost is around $80-100 depending on how many people go. Sylvia said the Elkton Festival would like us to come back and have a booth again, in June, we had lots of fun with the kids last year, helping them paint Festival Flags. If you are interested in helping contact Sylvia.

Show & Tell Sylvia finished her "Weather Report"

Titled "New Sun in the Sky" Sylvia's bright art is made with Seta Color paints and bleeding tissue paper. She has done some beautiful thread painting on it to add detail and highlight her circles. Gracie made a wonderful Christmas gift for her Mom, on canvas, with melted crayons and a saying about family. Unfortunately I did not get a photo. Landreth has finally recovered her health and has hit an artistic block. She is struggling to overcome it with journaling and sketching, and is having fun with it, keeping it secret and personal, has given it more meaning for her.

A stunning jacket was modeled by Dorie. She made it from a commercial fabric with couched yarns on it. Directional details added contrast of textures. It is very soft to the touch and nicely tailored.

Nancy received a belated postcard for our challenge, from Crystal. It has appropriately been embellished with Crystals.
Meredith has been working on two sketches for her "Weather Report" project, a still life with pumpkins, titled "Frost on the Pumpkin" and a 2nd "Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows." She also reported the new quilt shop "Rustic Rooster" in Myrtle Creek, is moving to 1st St. in downtown M.C. She has also been playing with Zentangles in a sketchbook, and has two new books "Mixed Media Masterclass" by Sherryl Khan, and Stitch Alchemy.

Vera received a Christmas gift, a handmade necklace from China, made with threads and fabrics. She also received a tiny hand held sewing machine the size of a stapler.

Our new guest Chris, brought an embroidered pillow that she just finished, for Show & Tell. It represents Autumn and has flowers, grasses, and grape vines, and a ruffle around it. Thank you for joining us, we hope you come back again.

For her "Weather Report" challenge, simply titled "Snow" Sue's elegant image of snow on a winter forest, is beautiful. She made the piece with a hand cut stencil and bleach discharge paste, then added lots of French Knots with crochet cotton. Kay is returning our "Weaving" challenge pieces, the Sutherlin Library loves having us display there, and is looking forward to having the "Weather Report" challenge next. Kay also worked on some Christmas presents that were given away, two folded booklets with photographs in them.
Corienne wore a wonderful handwoven jacket that she made, from her own woven fabric. She took a class at a weaving conference on "How to fit jackets" and it was very helpful. The colors are very rich and it is full of texture. Pat G. brought us all sorts of recycled materials, plastic trays, gloves, large sealable plastic bags, plastic for tarps, and misc. storage items. They are from the hospital, donated to and veterinarians, and any left overs she brought to us. She is asking a donation to the vets to help with the free spay & neutering they do for the shelter.

Loraine has finished her "Weather Report" it is a very playful "Raining Cats & Dogs" done in a Laurel Burch style. She hand painted the cats and dogs with lots of detail and metallic paints and fused them to the backing.

Amy has continued her work with her hand cut botanical stencils. This time she has used black fabric with Jacquard's Decolourant discharge paste. Then it is free motion quilted with a variety of rayon threads. Spiderwebs were added with Sulky Sliver holographic thread.

"Raining Candy" is Amy's "Weather Report." The top is done and ready to quilt. It is mostly fused, the pattern was made from an original photo of two girls waiting for the thrown candy at a Veteran's Day parade. Our Demo for January is Solvy layered fibers, to make a lacy fabric, Vera is showing us how and provided a bunch of disolvable material and a huge pile of yarn, cording and threads. Stay tuned for our next post on this fun technique.