Membe Michele Murnane led us in a very fun workshop making French Lace Pins and book covers!
Here are some of her samples. She brought generous supplies of lace, buttons, ribbon, fabric, charms, etc.
and we also brought our own items to incorporate into these delightful fiber arts collages.
Shirley and Gail ponder what do next with their book covers.
Show and tell featured dyed items, some knitted entrelac pieces and other knitting, as also a gorgeous woven table runner!
Leslie from All Wound Up Yarn Shop taught us knitted Entrelac technique.
This intriguing method of knitting is a bit tricky to get started
but once you get it going it’s a lot of fun. Leslie was a great teacher!
Working in a slow color change yarn makes for lovely effects, or you can also change colors as you go along for crisp color changes.
Members brought back some of the dyed items we did last month, and it was great to see them once they were dry.
Yvonne Ellsworth of LavenderSheep Fiber Garden led us in a very fun dye day. We used liquid dyes on a variety of cellulose based items.
Dye was squirted or dibbled into pre-treated fabric or yarn. Some pieces were tied to form resist patterns, where the ddye coudl not penetrate. Others were smoothed and pressed to create blended colors.
Once they are rested overnight to allow the dye to fix to the material, a process called batching, the excess dye is rinsed away. and the very colorful item can be used however one wishes.
Julia Lowther of Flying Fox Jewelry gave a Zoom-based workshop on her Free-form wire technique, which resembles knitting with wire.
It’s not truly knitting, but uses a knitting needle to form loops.
Finished pieces will be pulled through a draw plate to bring it to a consistent diameter and smooth the shape.
We had a Plaid Llama sale, which is vastly more colorful and fiber filled than a White Elephant sale.
We also had an extended Show and Tell of our work since our last meeting. It was great to gather again for a new meeting year!
Judy Zugish of Fishsticks Basketry taught us how to make delightful garlic baskets.
These somewhat free-form baskets came together quickly and were fun to make!
We returned to our home at ArtWorks and Astrid Bear led us in a workshop on paper marbling.
We floated marbling paints on a sizing of carrageenan solution, manipulated the paint into various forms, then took prints onto paper.
We masked up and ventured out on a field trip to Wayne Wichern Millinery in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood.
Wayne showed us around and talked about various types of hats. Then he fired up the steamer and demonstrated forming a felt hat blank over a wooden block.
We continued to meet via Zoom. Valerie Day did a demo of her airbrush system, which blows air across felt-tip markers to transfer the ink to your desired surface. The system she uses is eBrush by Craftwell.
Valerie used multiple colors of Sharpie with a stencil to create this image.
Astrid Bear led the group in making several types of mini-books, some just one piece of paper that is folded and cut in ingenious ways. For more info on these techniques, check out the book COVER TO COVER by Shereen LaPlantz, out of print, but pretty easy to find used.
An upswing in Covid cases returned us to Zoom meetings. Flóra Carlile-Kovács of Flora Felts did an excel lent job of remotely teaching us one of her techniques for making felted flowers.
Starting with fine merino roving, hand dyed by Flora, we layered the fibers, wetted them, then worked them around a chopstick for some of the shaping. The finished flowers are wonderfully three dimensional.
Seaview Weaving and Fiber Arts Guild 