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.
March Show and Tell March 16, 2007
We had another bounty of Show and Tell at our March meeting. A lot of it was for our Art Page exchange, which I will cover in another post, but here are some others items that were shared. Please click on the thumbnails to enlarge.
Ruth wove this beautiful blanket double-width on her 36″ loom.
Here’s a detail of Ruth’s blanket. The striped effect comes from the way she sleyed it in the reed. We’re all curious to see how it looks after it is washed, but she hadn’t had a chance to do that yet.
Mary has been dyeing wool and spinning it in these luscious colors. The shorter skein of yellowy green towards the right is silk.
Mona brought some fabric prayer flags that her Monday Night Creative Group exchanged. They dyed the fabric and printed it with blocks of their own design.
Valerie made lots of the beautiful beaded leaves that Heather taught us the technique for in February.
Astrid brought two knitted items, a shawl and also a scarf for her charity project.
Life Among the Hummingbirds March 16, 2007
Heather is traveling in Costa Rica, observing hummingbirds, taking notes, and even doing some dyework to capture the elusive beauty of those jewels of the air. If you look closely, the large bird at the feeder closest to her in this picture is a saber-wing hummingbird. Here are a few excerpts from her email journal:
At the [Monteverde Cloud Forest] Reserve, we walked up a flight of stairs to reach the “Hummingbird Gallery”, which was a terrace about 20 feet long by 10 feet wide with 6 or 7 hummingbird feeders hanging about. But the hummingbirds!!! They were everywhere. We saw violet saberwings, green crowned brilliants, mountain gems, green violet ears, and even a coppery headed emerald. When you stood still near the feeders, they would ignore you, for the most part, and eventually they would use your body to do aerial acrobatic maneuvers around. Several times we stood next to each other (maybe a foot between us) and one hummer would chase another in between us – talk about close formation flying! We were both glad we wore glasses as more than once one would fly close enough to our face to make a breeze in our hair! The “Cloud Forest” lived up to its name during the 2 hours we watched the hummingbirds. It sprinkled off and on the entire time, but we were so entranced we hardly noticed the wetness. I managed to take notes on the violet saberwings and the green crowned brilliants today, and we plan to return Saturday to for me to study the green violet ear and the mountain gem. They are both much smaller, and are going to be real challenges to create as they have so many color changes on those little bodies! Heck, the green crowned brilliant, although bigger, was a tough nut to crack as he just would NOT flash his purple throat at me so that I could note the color! I must have watched him for close to 30 minutes JUST for that little purple spot!
I wish you all could have heard the sounds they made flying around – buzzing and chittering at each other, and us! It was really magical.
…………
As the sun sets, the numerous bird species are raucously singing, squalking, calling and chirling their way into the night. Now I hear the macaws calling their loud call, with the softer and higher chitter of the hummingbirds adding counterpoint rhythm. The colors of green on the canyon sides range from the darkest green-black to emerald to chartreuse to lime. I just looked up to see the most beautiful hummingbird, a new one, that looked to have a long curved bill, and was colored a brilliant sapphire blue. The long curved bill suggests that he is a “hermit”, perhaps one on my list. I will have to look him up and report on what, in fact, he is.
…….
This morning we slept in, then took a taxi over to the Hummingbird Gallery at the Monteverde Reserve. And it was a beautiful day at the reserve!! It was actually sunny, which really showed off the colors of the birds. The wind wasn’t too strong, so the little guys were out in force. We even saw three Magenta-throated Woodstars, which are so tiny you could fit one in an old film canister (um, not that I would recommend trying that, mind you). They are so small they never even light to feed – they just hover, seemingly effortlessly, and they sound just like a bumble bee! I took the opportunity to take notes on the Purple-throated Mountain Gem, and added a bit to my notes on the Coppery-headed Emeralds, and even the Green Hermit.
February Show and Tell February 15, 2007
Here’s a look at the some of the goodies that were brought to our February meeting. I think some of the snowy days in January let us get a lot of work done! Click on the thumbnails for a larger view.
Ruth wove these towels from a slubby cotton.
Patty will be showing us how to make these fabulous painted, textured papers at the March meeting.
Patty has been making machine-lace hearts on dissolvable stabilizer.
Mona is making fabric bowls in a fabulous variety of fabrics and colors!
Michele used a simplified kumihimo technique to make the cord for this necklace. The heart pin used some of her stash of quilting fabrics.
Heather dyed this fine, reeled silk to explore how well Jacquard acid dyes do at capturing the iridescence of hummingbird wings.
Glenda made these purses by punching wool into a linen base.
February Meeting February 14, 2007
For our meeting this month, Heather led us in a mini-workshop on making beaded maple leaves. Using tiny beads and fine jeweler’s wire, we made a grown-up version of those pony-bead creations that were all the rage with elementary school kids a few years ago. Above are two leaves that Heather made as examples, plus one of the kits that she put together for us to use. Notice how she did a lovely shaded effect on the leaves by using more than one color of beads.
Here’s an example of a leaf that is almost done. All that’s left to do is trim off the excess wire. Each lobe of the leaf is made with a separate strand of wire, then the sections are “sewn” together using one end of the wire that made up one section. The other end goes down to create the stem.
Here we are toiling away, under Heather’s expert eye. The coffee cups were pressed into service as bead holders. This was a very fun workshop, and we all appreciated Heather sharing her expertise!
The meeting also had an outstanding variety of Show-n-Tell brought in, and that’ll be in another post.
Fun with Felt January 26, 2007
Patty does wonderful felting, both wet and dry. I love this wonderful lion hotpad she made for me!
Here’s a close-up showing the great detailing in the mane and features. Patty started with a partly wet-felted mat, and a thin sheet of partly wet-felted yellow. She cut the lion out of the yellow, then finished wet-felting it all together. The outline was done with needle-felting. Seaview is having a felting party in February to play more with this technique — this won’t be a regular meeting, but at a private home. Contact us through this website or come to the February meeting if you’d like to join us.
When you are doing wet felting, you need a solution of hot, soapy water. A technique Valerie shared with us at a mini-workshop in 2006 involves using small amounts of very hot water, and scooping up a little liquid soap to coat the hands. Frequently remove the now-cold water from the wool with a sponge or towel, and reapply very hot water from your airpot/Thermos. Scoop up more liquid soap, and scrub (gently) away. Valerie said that you can use liquid dish soap, but she prefers the recipe below.
I like to call it Soap Goop, and it’s from Pat Sparks’ book Fundamentals of Felting. She calls it Cold Soap Gel.
Cold Soap Gel Recipe
1/2 cup powdered White King Soap, or 1/2 cup grated bar soap (can be homemade)
. . . . . plus . . . .
1 gallon very hot water (simmering) — The water must be soft or distilled.
Mix well until all soap dissolves. Allow to cool overnight. Ivory Soap works well for this.
Welcome! January 21, 2007
Welcome to the website/blog of Seaview Weavers Guild. We are a small, friendly, weavers guild located in Edmonds, Washington. We enjoy exploring all sort of fiber arts, yet remain true to our roots and call ourselves a weavers guild. But, you don’t have to be a weaver to join us. Our members also knit, spin, dye, felt, quilt, paint, draw, scrapbook, make monotypes, etc., etc. We feel that paper is a fiber, too, and anything involving any fiber falls into our scope of interest.
We’ll use this space to let people know about upcoming meetings, show our work, report on programs we’ve enjoyed, and share information. We also invite you come join us! Click on “About” for details.
