January Meeting February 5, 2008

Robyn Spady gave a wonderful talk titled “Less is More”, about how to weave fancy trims, called galloons and gimps. These are the sort of trims you pay enormous amounts of money for at the fabric and upholstery stores, yet are surprisingly easy to weave, and utilize very few ends of warp. As Robyn asked, “Can you manage to warp five ends?” You bet, Robyn!

My apologies to Robyn!  This is best of the pictures I got — the auto focus wasn’t doing very good job that day.  She is holding a fringed trim that has three warp sections, one in the center and one on each side.  The weaving is done with a thick bundle of assorted yarns, is this case red and black.   The weft is mostly floating free, and when the weaving is done, you cut up the center to make two strips of lovely, fluffy fringe.    She also showed us how to to make a variety of other trims, similar to those shown here.

We got so inspired by this that we are bringing warped up looms to the February meeting to let everyone have a try.

December Meeting February 5, 2008

Just a potluck — good food and good company, but no pictures.

November Meeting February 5, 2008

Valerie lead us in a damp but fun workshop onmaking felted flowers.  First a base shape is felted, and cut to the size and shape wanted.

Then, some additional fiber can be felted on to add detail

resulting in a lovely flower!

Beads and a pinback need to be added.

And they can be any color that amuses.

The best thing at Show and Tell was Heather’s amazing wall hanging. This is a hand painted silk warp, woven with a silk weft, that will be installed in the dining room of her client. The framework  will support it vertically and will give the effect of a  cascading waterfall. Sure hope we get to see some pictures of it in place!

Heather is on the right, above.

All we can say is, “Wow!”

October Meeting October 11, 2007

The post  on the October meeting is posted below the post on the May meeting.  Why, you ask? Well, I did the write up on the May meeting after I did the write up on the October meeting, and foolishly thought that by calling it “May Meeting” it would miraculously sort itself out.  It didn’t.

May Meeting October 11, 2007

 In the Better Late Than Never category, here’s a report on our May, 2007 meeting:

Cheri Bridges of Ah! Kimono taught a fabulous workshop on Japanese shibori dyeing.

Cheri brought some wonderful samples to inspire us! The pieces in the picture are all her work — the indigo fabric in the first picture was made in Japan.

Silk scarves could first be underdyed, or not.  Then they were folded and carefully stitched in various patterns.

The stitching is pulled up tight to create a resist, and the scarf is ready to go into a second dyebath.

Here are our finished scarves –

And here we are, wearing them!

October Meeting and Show & Tell October 11, 2007

Michele (left, above) taught us how to make origami ornaments from folded fabric.  First we made a trial version from paper, then moved on to the cloth.

Crisp, precise folds are the key.

A few stitches help hold it all together.

Almost done . . .

Michele made these — aren’t they fun?

 Show & Tell  — click to enlarge thumbnails

Valerie made this lovely silver bracelet and the gorgeous felted flowers.  They inspired us so much that we’re doing felting next month.

Ruth received a lot of donated eyelash yarn, and has knitted 30 scarves for friends since June!

Astrid brought the latest socks she’s knitted, and also some hand dyed yarn that she has for sale in her online shop.

September Meeting October 11, 2007

Well, we had one, but I wasn’t there! The group had a fun workshop on cardmaking with Nona Pearl of Close to My Heart Stamping.

April Meeting plus Show & Tell April 13, 2007

Our April meeting featured a fabulous talk by Anne de Vuono, who makes the most amazing hats! I didn’t think to get more pictures of them, but do check out her website. She gave us an overview of the history of hats, and explained some of the techniques she uses.  Then she showed us two amazingly cool things to do with ribbon.  If you are very nice, I’ll post pictures later.

Show and Tell — click to enlarge thumbnails

Heather is back from Costa Rica, and showed us the fabulous dyework she was able to do there. Above left, she and Patty are stretching out the dyed portion of the warp, which so far has the colorways of three different hummingbirds. The remaining undyed warp is that luscious pile of silk in the middle, and take a closer look at those fabulous colors!  Above, the warp slightly spread out, below, slid together for your amazement. The total warp length is 18 meters.

All I can say is, Wow!

Valerie free motion machine embroidered a harp motif for a bag, them scanned the image and used it with some of the paper techniques Patty showed us last month.

Ruth had a surprise when she washed the blanket she showed us last month.  She thought it was all acrylic yarn, but it turns out most of it was wool, so it shrank quite a bit.  The later part of the weft was acrylic, so she cut off that portion. The wool part is soft and lovely, and the striping from the sleying disappeared.  The acrylic part still shows the striped effect — it’s the top layer in the picture on the right.

Michele took a class at In the Beginning and made this gorgeous doll.

March Meeting — Paper Play April 13, 2007

Well, how fun was this!  Patty set up three stations where we could Play with Paper to our heart’s content. Stamping, layering, crumpling, painting — it was all good. As always, please click on the pictures to enlarge.

March Meeting — Art Pages April 13, 2007

At long last,  here are some pictures from our art page exchange in March. Click on the pictures to enlarge them.

Valerie has been having fun with free motion machine embroidery.

Mona scanned botanical drawings from her sketchbook and printed them on canvas.

Mona also did some traditional printing.

Patty mixed silk fusion and machine embroidery. She did someother cool stuff, too, but I didn’t get pictures:(

 Astrid has pictures of her art pages on her blog.