Tuesday, October 23, 2007

October's Meeting!

EFF met at the Library this month due to a last minute school schedule conflict. Since it is so close and the library is so accommodating to us, it was just fine. They didn't even complain when we made so much noise, you'd have thought we were remodeling the meeting room! More to follow...

Several of us just got back from spectacular workshops. Linda J was at a four day workshop in North Carolina at the John C. Campbell Folk School called Playing with Curves taught by Pat Meinecke. She showed us her wonderful quilt-in-progress with all kinds of perfectly pieced curves and circles. She was delighted with how much she had learned.

Margot L, Linda J, and me (Deb H) just got back from workshops at Fabrications Fiber Art Retreat. Margot took Del's class and showed us her mixed media creation - a 3D floral that was very cool and contemporary. Linda was in the fabric painting class with Desi Vaughn and showed us a huge stack of really wonderful painted fabrics using a multitude of techniques, lots involved sun printing. Some of these just knocked our socks off! I gave a quick recap of my class with Laura Cater-Woods and showed the quilt that they have seen sooooo many times before because it was stuck and I just couldn't figure out how to save it or move it forward and I liked it enough not to trash it. It's on the move again - yahoo! For Show & Tell, Kay S had a needle felted witch's hat with needle felted flowers and a vine and leaf wandering the peak of the hat. It was lay-down-and-dye (pun intended) adorable! Sorry, I had my camera and forgot to take pictures at this point - oops!


But before we called it a night we tried our best to annoy the whole library. We tried a little leaf and flower pounding. We all agreed, this is the best way to take out any and all aggressions :o)

Being a last minute idea, inspired by the lovely fall leaves here in Michigan right now, we did not have time to pre-treat our fabric properly. We did have a roll of PhotoFabric cotton twill by Muttonhead (Blumenthal Craft). It's a pretreated fabric that is backed with paper, you can feed it through your printer to print on fabric and it makes the printer inks permanent once rinsed in cold water. We tried it on that and after pressing with a hot iron, removing the paper backing and rinsing in cold water, then drying with a hot iron, it seems to be permanent. I guess only laundering a few times will really tell how much, but.... How often do you wash wall art anyway?

None of us produced art here but we did discover some interesting facts;


all plant matter should be very fresh
leaves and flowers that had more "juice" transferred a lot easier (even with just a rolling pin)
leaves and flowers that had too much "juice" gave water-color effects
to appease library staff who are troubled by the noise, invite them to join in the fun
it's better to hammer on leaves and flowers than people whom you are angry with ;o)


This may not replace regular dyeing and painting for me but it does have a lot of potential for a surface design technique.


Whew! I'm all caught up, see you next month!

Deb H

No comments: