June Meeting 2014

Old Business Elkton Festival is canceled, it has been changed to a music festival with no vendors. Black Sheep Festival in Eugene is June 20-22, Umpqua Valley Arts Festival in Fir Grove Park is June 27-29. Bandon Art Retreat is June 23-25. July's meeting will be Fimo/Sculpy buttons with Peggy and Amy. If you have supplies bring them or we will have enough to share. The "Weather Report" pieces are hanging at the Sutherlin Library. New Business The Sewing & Quilt Expo is at the Portland Convention Center Sept. 25-27, This would be a great field trip!! Our August meeting is going to be at Vera's for a dyeing workshop. We will NOT be meeting at the conference rooms for August. We will be doing wool dyeing as well as cotton fabrics, order silk scarves from Dharma if you want to do ice dyeing. We can also ice dye the cottons. In September bring your ideas for a theme for a new challenge. Ideas put forth so far, 3-D, recycled materials, Nonsense words. I'll dig up the other ideas, that we passed on before. Show & Tell

Amy brought her work in progress of birch tree bark, printed from her photo, that she is stitching with texture, and moss, several swallowtail butterflies will be placed on it with leaves.

More ice dyeing by Meredith on large yardage of silk, the first piece is textured habotai silk from Dharma and has bold colors. The second larger piece she wants to use for an outfit for an event she is going to SOON. Good Luck on that!

The sunflower is Meredith's trial piece from last years Art Retreat, she practiced stitching onto paper. She liked the practice piece so much, that she cut it out and applied it to the correct piece of paper, with some extra leaves. Framing with the picket fencing on 3 sides finished the piece for hanging. Pat W. has finished cardio rehab after her surgery and is doing well, and she is ready to start on art work again. Dori did a class in Central Point with an applique rooster, it was a hands on with Donna Greenwald. She enjoyed it a lot and learned some expertise in applique. Peggy has been drawing Zentagles in her sketchbook.

A rich navy blue sweater has been needle felted by Kay, it has other embellishments as well, ribbons, beads, & embroidery.

Jana's love for thread painting is showing up in her work, from an original photograph taken in Ireland. It is still in progress, as the musician is playing a small accordion, beneath a Guinness sign. She is also participating in the "Tour de Fleece" an online challenge to spin everyday while the "Tour de France" is running. She is carding and spinning white cashmere for this challenge.

Pat G. has made an amazing bag with trimmed selvedge edges, she always trims her selvedges to 1" or 1 1/2" wide strips.

Pat G. is looking forward to a quilting cruise to Alaska in August, they sent her a challenge fabric, to make a block for a drawing. She has made this delightful Sunbonnet Sue block.

Tricia has been printing leaves onto a hand dyed fabric. She paints the leaf or fern with acrylic paint and uses a brayer to print it onto the fabric.

Hand made stones with batik fabric are Tricia's latest adventure. Instructions are from the newest issue of Quilting Arts magazine. The organza dragonfly is made the same way her leaves are made from today's demo. Cheryl set Lorraine up with a friend of hers and she got 3 Jacobs sheep for her orchard pasture.

Corriene has been making "Split ply braiding" it is traditionally done for camel girths. It uses an 8 ply cord that is split 4 & 4 when it is woven.

During a recent trip to Washington DC, she also went to Pennsylvania visiting old grave yards, and woolen mills and Amish farmers markets. At a roadside stand she purchased a small Amish quilt with hand quilting.

She also could not resist a traditional handmade Amish straw hat.

Nancy used her design exercise to make a bib to cover her "Crumb catchers," she zigzag stitched it in colorful threads for contrast.

Sue has been on the road to Las Vegas, and she managed to knit two baby hats for her new grand baby. She also discovered a wonderful quilt/yarn shop in Winters, Calif. right off of I-5. The Redding quilt shop is also right off of I-5. Demo

Tricia showed us how she makes her fragile fabric leaves, that she used in her "Weather Report" wall hanging. She layers several layers of organza, tulle, or silk between two layers of Sulvy, washaway stabilizer. She draws her pattern on the Solvy and does a narrow satin stitch around the edges, the leaf veins and detail are finished with free motion stitching. Then the Solvy is dissolved leaving a delicate see through leaf. She also traps bit of fabric between sheer layers, the free motion stitches the layers together.

Tricia's leaves are on the left, Amy's on the right. Amy makes her leaves on painted and melted Tyvek and Lutrador, the heat gun leaves bubbles and holes in the synthetic fabrics, then stitched with free motion stitching to outline and vein the leaves. The texture is rough and very good for autumn leaves. No Solvy is used, the pattern is stitched directly on the Tyvek or Lutrador.

Demo - Needle Felting & Wool Blending

During our May meeting, Cheryl gave a demo on wool carding and blending wool to get different color combinations, and Landreth gave a hands on workshop for needle felting. Cheryl began with hand carders, showing us how to card and roll punis, preparing your wool to spin. Then she blended wools to get an assortment of different effects.

Landreth prepared several info boards, showing how different fibers needle felted, and different types of interfacing to use to secure the back of the fibers. She gave everyone an assortment of fabric to try, chiffons, silks, knits, lame and she supplied needles, foam and fibers so everyone could play with the assortment.

All our artists had a wonderful time playing with the fibers and needle felting, thank you Landreth and Cheryl for your expertise.

May Meeting 2014

Old Business The Elkton Festival participation has been canceled, they are not doing vendors this year, only a music festival. Bandon Art Retreat is June 23-24-25, We had a cancellation, so we still have room if you want to join us. Monday we'll stop a Landreth's on the way for a studio tour and lunch. If you are not going to the retreat you can still go to Landreth's. The wool dyeing has been added to the August dye workshop at Vera's. We choose our regular meeting day Tuesday, August 12th, everyone welcome. Vera would like some help the day before, to set up tables and get ready. There will be NO meeting in Roseburg for August, only the dye workshop. Black Sheep Festival in Eugene is June 20-21, for car pooling contact - Sue or Cheryl. No New Business --- Show & Tell

Kay began our Show & Tell with a free form bowl, that she made from her section of the design exercise. It has curled edge pieces zigzaged around a thin wire and a black backing fabric. She put a small vase in it with a red poppy.

Vera returned from visiting her daughter in Malaysia with beautiful batik fabrics. They toured a batik factory, where every thing is free hand drawn with traditional brass Tjanting pens and wax. The skirt panel is traditional Malaysian art, while the more organic piece was made at a deaf school. They also have a wonderful museum of batik art.

Vera has been working on silk scarves for the Oregon Caves gift shop. There are many beautiful colors on silk/rayon "devore" fabric.

Cheryl has been trying to reproduce a special yarn she saw at "Websters" a tightly twisted yarn wrapped in black thread. She also attended "Fiber in the Forest" retreat, with her husband, who is now addicted to spinning since she taught him last month, and she keeps finding him in her "Good" bags of fiber.

Amy is working with her needle felting machine, to create a fiber landscape. It is layered onto a wool felt, then free motion quilted with rayon threads. Vintage rayon embroidery floss was used to put French Knots into the foreground flowers.

Sylvia took an Indigo dye class at The Eugene Textile Center, with Barbara Setsu Pickett, they used a synthetic indigo, that used no mordant, just water, The silk pieces were folded and clamped, then dyed, refolded, clamped and dyed a second time, this created different intensity in the blue on the fabric.

The second project was to sew up the long side of a silk scarf to make a tube, that was scrunched over a wine bottle, then dyed, the resulting texture is so detailed and beautiful. A larger infinity scarf was tied with marbles and a golf ball to create the patterns.

Landreth has a beautiful piece of hand dyed fabric that she put onto stretcher bars, and added a touch of needle felting, to show how the felting can be used on different types of projects.

Landreth's little frog mascot was passed around, to show the type of soft sculpture that needle felting can create. It is so cute!!

Corienne has been off to the Hand Weaver's Show in Portland part of the annual Gathering of Guilds large art show. She brought a large black cashmere scarf that she had woven, with a black yarn needle felted into a scrolled pattern as an accent. The photo is kind of gray, but the scarf is a rich deep black.

Lorraine has made a hot pad for a bowl that goes in the microwave, you put the bowl into the pad then it is easier to get out when finished heating.

"Picasso with a Buzz Cut" is Lorraine's creative effort with her section of the design exercise. It is colorful and bold, with a bit of fringe on top.

"Fashion Statement" is Pat G.'s art work based on the colorful and bold patterns of Aboriginal and African dress. She used her section of the design exercise to dress a woman in colorful clothes, and for the border she used Australian fabric she had gotten on her recent trip.

Dorie brought her example of needle felting, a sweet little purse with a fiber swallow on a branch, the soft subtle colors are delicate work. Nancy brought a pair of wool pants that she loves the color on, and she asked about felting them in the washing machine. Lots of advice was given, using high water temps, shocking the wool in an ice bath, then hot water again, and adding tennis shoes to the washing machine for agitation. She will give it a try.

A bright little 3-D fishy is Sue's art made with her design exercise section, she used organza an the fins, and wishes she had hemmed it better, so it does not fray. A bead eye and embroidered smile complete the friendly little guy.

Needle felting was also Peggy's Show & Tell. She made a small purse out of a sample piece she made at our felting Play Day at Vera's a few years ago. Embellished with brass charms and different fibers and yarns, it is a colorful example of needle felting. She has been checking out yarns and fibers at "Mindy's Yarn Shoppe" in the 5th Street Market building in Eugene. The assortment is extensive, exotic and tends to be expensive, but worth it.

Crystal finished her Easter projects, with an orange scrap, strip pieced Carrot table runner with loose green leafy tops, and an Easter fabric table runner. Unlike many quilters, it is nice to finish holiday projects IN TIME for the holidays. Demo and Hands On Cheryl brought her carders and a pile of assorted wool, to show us how to blend colors, and Landreth brought enough supplies for everyone to try needle felting. So I'll put that in my next post.

April Meeting 2014

Old Business The Bandon Art Retreat is Mon -Wed, June 23, 24 & 25. Payment is due, $100, we still have 2 places left if you want to join us, contact Amy. We'll start the Bandon fun by meeting at Landreth's in Charleston for a studio tour and lunch. If you can't go to the retreat, you can still join us at Landreth's. The Umpqua Valley Quilter's Show set up is Thursday, see previous post. Our display is awesome! The "Smile" Festival in Elkton for to benefit the school Music program is Saturday, June 21, contact Sylvia, Peggy or Meredith to help. We will again be painting festival flags with the kids. Sections of our design exercise from last month, were passed out, do anything you want with them, no deadline. We are still planning on a wool dyeing play day, and a wet felting play day, TBA, hopefully in May? New Business For our next meetings we will do: May - needle felting with Landreth, June - 3-D leaves with Lorraine, July - Fimo buttons with Amy & Peggy. If you have any ideas of something to demo, or something you would like to learn about, let us know. The Black Sheep Festival is also in June 20-22, Fri, Sat, Sun at the Eugene fairgrounds, entry is free, and there is a whole lot of fibers, yarns, sheep, spinning, weaving, felting, and more. This is a huge West Coast event and worth seeing, carpool anyone?? Show and Tell

Meredith finished her "Weather Report" piece, "Frost on the Pumpkin" she used 3-d elements on the stem and vine, foil to make frost, stitched a man in the moon, and other wonderful detail.

"Sunshine, Lolipops, and Rainbows" is Meredith's second Weather Report, she named it after an "Oldies" song. The rainbow was made with Inktense Pencils on iron-on interfacing,the sun's rays are a yellow organza, and she stitched on raindrops and beads. She also brought her "Clown Tang" garment bag to hang at the show. It was a group challenge that got out of hand, with hundreds of hours, to do zippers, piping, hand dyed silk lining, and lots of texture.

Kay added a different base to her "Thunder and Lightning" project, and mounted it on a turntable for the show. Peggy has been playing with a new book "The Painted Quilt" one of the projects is quilting first, then going over it with Shiva Paint Sticks to highlight the texture. She announced that the new exhibit at the Vision Quilt Museum in San Diego is "Weather Forecast" that is quiet a coincidence.

Jana brought her "Dharma Potholder" for display at the show, she believes she made it for the self portrait challenge, but never included it then.

"Color Play I" by Sue, is made from a failed project, that was cut up and repurposed to make two bold, graphic works of art. See show post for better pictures. She said one of her favorite quotes is "to think of your sewing machine as a power tool with thread."

Sue has created two wonderful 3-D vessels, with triangles, a stiff interfacing, and quilting. Each has satin stitch edging and the points turned down with beads dangling. A few twigs give it an elegant look.

Tricia's Sunset quilting has highlighted all the shears she has used to layer the glowing colors. It is finished in time for the show, as well as her fall quilt, which has added hand painted beetles in the forest floor.

Cheryl has finally taught her husband to spin, she gave him bits of roving and wool of all different colors for him to play with, then he wove his yarn into a rug. He is very proud of his progress, and wants to make several panels, then sew them together to make a blanket. Since we have several 3-D pieces for the show, we talked about having a table display for them, and Cheryl will bring her Needle felted dolls, Gypsy Woman, and Wildman. Dorie reported the hospital display looks great, and new labels are being made for the pieces. Stop and see them at Mercy Hospital, Roseburg, Oregon. Crystal's arm is recovering, and she wants to do a "Weather Report" piece titled "Eye of the Storm" we look forward to seeing what she creates. Pat W. is recovering nicely from surgery too. Nancy has been going crazy house cleaning and hosting double Bunco parties. Pat G. has been working on Patriotic quilts for the Umpqua Valley Quilters Guild, they need quiet a few by June of next year, for the returning Charlie Company of Douglas County National Guard members. They are now affiliated with the national group "Quilts of Valor." Landreth has been working on art papers made with "Citra Solv" for more info check out the Citra Solv website, click on the art section. She showed a lot of pages she has made from National Geographic magazines, they have a certain type of ink, that works best for this project. She is still experimenting, with different techniques, and a way to transfer it to fabric that is permanent. She will keep us updated on her experiments.