November Challenge and December 5x7s

In November we all brought in our responses to the challenge issued by Terry:

Merriam-Webster defines a cycle as “a set of events or actions that happens again and again in the same order – a repeating series of events or actions.” The theme for 2015 is cycles. It can be any kind of cycle: time, calendar, planetary, organic, mathematical,  scientific, economic, musical, religious, social, military, literary – or even a bike, trike or unicycle!

Use your imagination to show a complete cycle. Your artwork should somehow show that it is a metaphor for our journey through life.

Here are some of the pieces produced:

The Winner: Lynn!

Terry

Miriam

Stelle's - note detail of stitching below

Devon

I did not capture all the pieces. Sorry!

And here are the 5x7 pieces brought in for our annual exchange of art:

October - Dyeing with Mushrooms

Many thanks to Cornelia and husband Sam who presented an excellent program on dyeing with mushroom. The program was not only informative and interesting, they included a hands-on portion. Each of us dyed a silk chiffon scarf in a hot potion of local dyers' puff ball mushrooms. Here are some pictures from the evening:

Here is a link to an article recommended by Cornelia: click here.

And here is a book recommended by Cornelia: Mushrooms for Dyes, Paper, Pigments and Myco-Stix by Miriam Rice

Pictures from our fun meeting:

Colors that can be derived from mushroom, shown on wool yarn

Charming doll made entirely from mushroom-dyed yarms.
Each color is described in the chart below:

Recommended mordant

Recipes for each color

photo of *dyers' puff ball* mushroom. note the distinctive pea-like structures inside

Silk pieces painted during the August meeting taught by Diane. Thanks, Diane, for steaming each one!

Pair of quilts made from special silk ties.

SEFAA Open House

Here are a couple of pictures of our wall space at the recent SEFAA open house. I completely forgot to take a picture of the table! Sorry.

July Meeting: Digital Printing, Spoonflower, and of course Show N Tell

Danielle's postcard with thread-painting enhancements

Our meeting last night was yet again overflowing with inspiration, information, and just plain fun. Here are some of the show n tell items displayed:

Ben's Quilt for his church to hang in a Central American clinic they support

Cornelia's products from a mushroom dyeing class

Marian's work from a drawing class

Thread painting by Marian

Terry's samples from the mushroom dyeing class

Kathy presented some great tools and techniques for digital printing. Then she introduced us to Spoonflower. We are all hooked now.

Digitally printed fabric, used as a mask for further digital printing

Digital print enhanced with stitch

A resulting piece using the previous mask for a tree print

Digital print from a photograph

Digital print enhanced with oil crayons and stitch. Very three-dimensional

A color chart from Spoonflower

A Spoonflower sampler from many of Kathy's digital creations

Thanks to Kathy for a great presentation. And thanks to Spoonflower for sharing a swatch pack with each of us. Great future fun!

Boro Cloth and Kantha Too

For our April meeting, I presented a short talk on Japanese Boro cloth , as well as Kantha cloth. Then we played with strips of fabric torn and woven into 12x12 pieces:

As always there was much inspirational show and tell:

And some cool tools to consider:

These crayola markers produced rich color. See below:

This is a preferred pen for permanent drawing on fabric: