home
about the artist
gallery
blog
links
contact

Archive for the ‘Columbia FiberArts Guild’ Category

A Two Meeting Day

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

This morning I attended the quarterly Columbia Fiberarts Guild meeting which included demos by four members and nice catered lunch. It is one of my favorite meetings of the year because we get to socialize and chat and share. In the afternoon, the SAQA area meeting met in the same place. It was almost meeting overload, but I do get energized when I spend time with other creative souls.

I am going to share some photos of the meeting today because I haven’t accomplished much except to unsew the bridges as I plan to start over with them.

This is Maris, our treasurer and felter, extraordinaire. Isn’t that a gorgeous piece of felted silk?

She did the bowls up above. Here is another shot.

Here are some other shots of her table.

Maris called this nebs. They are little loose pieces of wool that she adds to the felting.

Here she demonstrates how she makes a vessel by felting over a ball.

Carla makes amazing scrappy quilts by first stitching all of her scraps into a long strip. You can see a coil of sewn fabric on the table in front of her.

Betty demonstrated how she creates these gorgeous beaded bracelets.

 

At lunch, we were given a plain white paper placemat that we could decorate with these crayons. I should have taken a photo of the very creative work done at my table.

And, now to close, here are the adorable two guys that I live with. Scooter got a hair cut yesterday. He seems to feel more energetic without all that fur.

Finishing

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

I have Allegro pinned in place and hanging on the design wall. I want to get this finished and move on to other things. I am really itching to make some new cloth. I want to work a little on the white section and make it a more fluid and less staid.

Here is my latest fiber sketch.

Tomorrow, I will finish my term as president of the Columbia Fiberarts Guild. So, today I have spent a lot of time finishing up details for the meeting tomorrow. A couple of years ago, on a whim, I agreed to be president-elect. I was new to this guild, but I have run a business and been president of many organizations. Still, I think there was some skepticism about me. I spent a year as president elect, not doing much at all. This past year has been a pleasant experience for me. The guild is small and the members who volunteer for board positions are very competent so my job has been to facilitate and nag. We have accomplished quite a lot. And, I gave my president-elect lots of jobs to do. She is going to do a great job in this coming year.

After the guild meeting, I have a SAQA meeting. It will be a longish day. I am thrilled that SAQA in Oregon is finally active. Our first juried show will debut at the end of this month at the Northwest Quilting Expo.

Something Different

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

Here is a sneak peek at the piece I am working on to commemorate 15 years of the Quilt Art list. It was nice to go down to the studio and work on something rather brainless and fun!

I spent most of the day with 5 marvelous women from the Columbia Fiberarts Guild. The Guild has a huge number of slides covering the years of 1966 – 2000. They were gathering dust and were in danger of getting lost in someones attic. We decided that we should pull slides from each year that would represent the work being done. It was so much fun looking at the photos of everything from macrame to fantastic wearable art.

The slides had been catalogued by category. The first thing we did was to sort them by year. Here you can see some of the worker bees and the piles of slides.

We finished sorting and pulling slides for every year. I am so happy to have this finished. They will now be sent to Costco to be burned to DVDs.

I want to thank every one who left a comment about my PAM debacle. I want to make it clear that the embarrassment title was completely tongue in cheek. I was not embarrassed, only quite confused.

Having had some private conversations with people I really respect, I now feel that it was a good thing that I got denied. I do not need this. It is an extra expense without much cache considering the number of artists and the lack of any continuity of the work that is represented.

I am in a really good place with the pace and growth of my work. I just want to be in my studio making stuff.

Do or Dye

Monday, April 5th, 2010

Well, I did both. I presided over a marathon and extremely productive guild board meeting. This afternoon, I did a base dyeing on 4 scarves with watered down Colorhue dyes. Tonight, I added the shibori effects. This one was folded and dipped in black.

This one was folded and dipped in black, but I obviously was not as precise with my folding!!

The other two were pole wrapped and squirted with dye. Click on the photo and you can see the detail a bit better.

I had an epiphany this afternoon while watching the Dr. Oz show. It was about the DNA diet.

A now famous study conducted at Stanford University looked at the long-term effects of weight loss using a few different diets assigned at random. Results showed that some participants lost weight on one type of diet, such as low-fat, while others did not. The study then tested participants’ DNA for 3 specific gene variations and found that those using the best diet for their DNA lost as much as 2 ½ times more weight than those not using their best DNA diet.

Dr. Oz explained the 3 different diets and the profiles that fit with each. I now know why I could not lose weight on Weight Watchers. I fit the profile for a low carb diet. The only other times in  my life when I have lost weight and kept it off were low carb diets. I am going to give the low carb diet a try. It means weaning myself off the grains that I love so much. I can only have them in moderate amounts. I think I can do this. But, first, I have to finish me See’s Candy Divinity Fudge Egg. I am having a slice a day. One more to go.

What a Great Day

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

I had back to back meetings today and both were fun and inspiring. First, was the quarterly meeting of Columbia Fiberarts Guild. We had a program which featured members of the guild doing demonstrations and showing their work. We capped it off with a delicious catered lunch.

This afternoon, we had our first Portland area SAQA meeting, with a great turn out and several guests who may decide to join. The highlight was seeing part of the SAQA @20 trunk show. I was excited to see that this group had my piece. It is up there on the left. I used my handpainted silk and did lots of hand stitching. We are going to have our first Oregon juried show, titled Oregon, State of Diversity. To cap off the day, I won this door prize, The Transformations:  Reflections Catalog.

One of the demos today was by a paper collage artist, Susan Schenck, who is not a member of the guild. I loved what she did so much, I thought I would share some photos.

Here is one of her pieces. A detail is below.

She started a collage of this dog photo during her demo.

She has tons of magazine pages sorted by colors. She told me that she is partial to text on color to give more interest and texture.

She uses wall paper for the background because it can stand up to the dampness of the glue. She told me she finds it at yard sales. That is where she gets many of her frames, too.

She does a sketch of the photo on tracing paper and then does the collage under the tracing paper, filling in the background first. She uses a paste glue called Yes!. The old phone book is her pasting station. Brilliant.

Hope you enjoyed sharing my day with me.