March Meeting 2014

Old Business A commitment was made for the Bandon Art Retreat, I have Amy, Tricia, Crystal, Cheryl, Meredith and Tracy going. There is room for a few more, cost is less than $100, reserve your space now! Payment deadline is end of April. The Umpqua Valley Quilt Show is April 11-13, set up is Thursday April 10, at 10am, volunteers for set up are Amy, Peggy, Meredith and Lorraine. Any others are welcome. Other entries for the Show are taken at the Arts Center on Friday the 4th. To the April meeting bring your Weather Report challenge piece, and one other personal display piece. TBA sometime in May is our wool dyeing and wet felting play days at Vera's with Cheryl's guidance on the dyeing. Peggy announced that the Quilt Visions Museum's new display in San Diego, is called "Weather Report" were they reading my mind? No New Business

Show and Tell

Tricia started us out with her cashmere wool scarf, that she embellished with ladder ribbons and other types of yarns.

Tricia is deciding on a name for her glowing sunset, made with layer upon layer of shear fabrics. She can't decide if this will be her Weather Report piece or the Autumn leaves.

The background of the forest floor is crazy patched with leafy fabrics. She has made an assortment of delicate fall leaves, by stitching on shears, organzas and other light fabrics. Each leaf is individual, and is so well done, it looks like it could have been done with an embroidery machine, but it was all done free motion by Tricia. Great job!

A scrappy bright blue, teal, and turquoise, with little bits of warm colors, was Tricia's project, with strips being curved pieced, and quilted in waves. Names were suggested for this piece also, is Tricia Title challenged? How do you come up with names for your art work? Corienne was in Pendleton for 5 days watching the Oakland High Basketball team go to State.

Nancy's fiber fabric is the same as everyone elses, in that we all have a favorite side. But she has added bits of rayon embroidery floss from her Mother's collection of Brazilian embroidery supplies. She is thinking of adding starch and forming it into a free form shape for a wall hanging.

Fiber fabric by Lorraine is mainly purple and teal, but the back ended up being very multicolored, it is also very thick and dense, she just could not stop adding more fibers.

Pat G. has been busy making "Strands of Jewels" for the Umpqua Valley Show. They are long narrow strips for display on the end of each row, guild members have been busy making these for the show in April. Pat G. has made several, a set of chicken blocks, embroidered squares, paper pieced Batik leaves and free floating colorful circles.

Pat has put her Fiber fabric to good use. She said it looked like colorful flowers, so she has used it for the background of her "Weather Report" challenge piece. The title is "Spring has Sprung!" and she embellished it with an assortment of metal springs from the hardware store, and a curled strip of black bias tape.

Cheryl has done it again, with a fabulous needle felted piece called "Sayonara Rain." Her "Weather Report" challenge features a Japanese temple with Cherry blossoms, that bloom between the spring rains and the monsoon season. She is a master at needle felting, I really like the reflection of the temple in the pond at the bottom of the picture, her attention to detail in this technique is amazing.

Cheryl's picnic of Teddy Bears is so darn cute!! On her vacation in Hawaii she took small bits of mohair fur and make these tiny little bears. They are assembled traditionally with cotter pin joints, bead eyes and embroidered faces. They are dressed in a variety of handmade outfits giving them even more personality. The Ringmaster is her favorite, and she is making him a small whip to go with his outfit.

The yarn that she spun at last years "Tour de Fleece" has been knit into a beautiful shawl by Jana. The 100% Merino wool is called "Rose Quartz" and has a heathered blend of many colors for a mauve/rose sheen. Kay has been working on a wedding quilt for her grandson, a batik log cabin quilt, for an October wedding.

Fiber fabric with lots of added bits and glitz was made by Peggy, she added lots of ribbon, dyed cheesecloth for extra body, and a piece of a crochet doily she made ages ago. She brought a 3-D folded box pattern for us to copy.

"Tempest in a Teapot" is finished with lots of extra embellishments, real parrot feathers in the hat, metallic thread embroidered lightning in the teapot, and other details. Peggy redid the tablecloth, removing the items and the white doily, and replacing the tablecloth with a printed fabric she made by photocopying an old paper doily, the more muted color and the texture & detail is incredible. The sky was painted with Tskineco inks, not watercolor paints as previously reported.

Meredith's fiber fabric has a one sided likeability also, she is going to use it to cover her Zentangle Journal.

Meredith has been busy weaving two scarves for her husband, to get a truly random zigzag, she had her two playing grandchildren yell "STOP!" in her studio while she was weaving. This only lasted a while as they got into a rhythm of yelling also. The small bits of color are squares of sample silks given to her from Corienne, and added to the weave. Vera returned from visiting her daughter in Malaysia for 6 weeks, with two seagull wings in her suitcase, that she found on a bird on the beach, they had a beautiful pattern of black accents on the white feathers. No clue yet, what she is going to do with them. But she is a true artist at heart. She also attended the Oregon SAQA conference in Newberg, Oregon, and enjoyed the discussion & presentations. We had 13 members help make the bright colored geometric design exercise, see the previous post, and will pass out sections to the participants at the April meeting.

I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge in the right column to see some other wonderful textile artists.