Eye for Fiber: an art group

September and November, 2008 Meetings

2009-02-19T18:56:00.009-05:00

A quick catch-up! We had a good meeting in September; Fall was in the air and Barb D. taught us how to do Right Angle Weave, a beading technique. It's very cool and produces a beaded fabric that is very fluid and drapy. We didn't get a lot done as it's time consuming but a wonderful way to embellish! As you can see in the photo at right, Margot was riveted by Barb's demo!

November was fun too - in spite of the snow. We played with a image transfer technique that we learned at Fabrications in October. You simply draw on a piece of Pellon Tear-Away with water soluable oil pastels or crayons and them squeegy some gel medium through the Tear-Away to transfer it like a silk screen.

You can get about 3 or 4 prints from one drawing before it becomes too light/faded. The gel medium leaves it stiff and a bit plastic feeling but it's wonderful for collage work. The photo at left is a print by Link K. this will make a great background for some creative collage building.

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Barb D has an MFA and teaches art at a middle school. I tell you this so you know she is not timid about using her art materials. All my prints were too pastel and too "empty". I need to pay attention to how Barb just dives in and "goes for it". The following two photos are of her "screens" and her prints.
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Show & Tell was fun too!
Linda K had another one of her bags. She has a new one every month and has earned the title "Bag lady". Here is her Tiger Purse.

More later.... Deb H

Back in the Day

2009-02-10T01:07:00.002-05:00

Do ya'll remember this? Let me know if any captions need to be edited.

Summer!

2008-09-10T17:11:00.014-04:00

Summer is about over; the air has lost it's hot, humid feel and has gained a bit of crispness to it. The leaves will start to change any minute now. This may herald the end of summer and the quick jump into cold and snowy, but life should also be a bit less hectic: more time for art!

July we played with design Elements. These are basically, a small design, created with fused fabric to be used on a larger piece. The technique was learned from Melody Johnson and seriously condensed version of the concept was experimented with in our group.

The one above is mine. Below is Linda J's.

Linda K (above) got a little carried away ;o) And Margot (below) has a good start.

The idea is to work quickly and spontaneously with fabric that has Wonder-Under® fused to the back so you can just tack it all together with an iron. When happy with the final design and placement fuse it all down thoroughly (on a piece of empty WU backing paper, peel off when cool). The element can then be used in a larger design or on a shirt, bag, or journal. I did several of these in a class with Melody at QSDS in 2007 and found them to be quite addictive!

August was hot and humid but the library was well air conditioned and we had fun making fabric beads. Linda K shared her technique and we borrowed ideas from Sherrill Kahn's book "Creative Embellishments". This is great book of ideas for all kinds of embellishing in all kinds of medium. Some of the techniques are quite unique and some of the materials are down right bizarre. The book is fabulous for the adventurous :o)

Alas, I forgot my camera (again!) so, here are pictures of my beads after I got home. Actually, three of the beads were made by my DD, Ashland. She joins us when she can. I have decided this idea has a lot of potential and I had a blast doing them.

My favorite is the chartreuse - of course! :)

Show & Tell!
Barb loves vegetable prints! She is making a contemporary version of Log Cabin (ish) for curtains for the dinning area of her house. This will be a bright and cheery place to enjoy eating :)

I showed off my hand dyed and hand spun wool yarn.

Margot made a quilt for a family member who loves turquoise.

The back is as pretty as the front and the batting is actually a wool bat from Margot's own sheep.

Sandy did a wonderful amall art quilt with raw edges, superb!

And she also did a few beaded buttons. I drooled.

Our next meeting is at the school on Septmeber 17th. Barb D will show us how to do a beading technique called Single Needle Right Angle Weave. If you want to join us, e-mail me for a supply list.

Deb H

A Time Warp

2008-05-29T14:15:00.022-04:00

I think there is a time warp that effects this Blog. It seems like I just posted and when I check, it's been months. I need Hermione's Time Turner ;o)

February was a fun dye day but, no one had a camera - oops! Here is some of what I did, I took photos later at home; my laundry room with rinsed yarns and one piece of silk noil, drying.

Some warp I dyed the same night, being wound.

A close-up of my favorite yarn for the night; a Ball of Tofutsie sock yarn that I dyed in my usual palette of teal, green, and purple. Yum!

Barb D did a skein of orange marbled sock yarn that was delicious, I wish I'd gotten a picture!

March was a lesson in color theory. Barb did a great job of explaining the basic principles of color theory, Kay learned a lot!

And then we played with water colors to practice the concepts.

April was a lesson in Abstracting an Image by me. I hope that my audience found the subject as worthwhile as I do. It has so much design potential and don't you just love computers for this?? Here is a couple of examples of quick-and-dirty abstracts via filters in Adobe PhotoShop; the original photo I took of a plant with cool purple leaves.

Same photo with a "notepaper" filter applied by the program.

Same photo with a "palette knife" filter applied and then a "liquefy" distortion on top of that.

Cool, huh? And such great potential as an art tool.

May was playing with monoprinting. Now, that was fun! I was so busy that I only took a few photos but, here is Linda J's two pieces. She did multiple layers of printing on hers.

Here is Margot L pulling a print.

Here are a few of my efforts, a budding Picasso, aye?

And here is Kay S, she is our super achiever. Dang, girl!

The June meeting will find us at the library as school is out for the summer (or will be by then). The program is undetermined as of yet, but it will be fun :o)

Deb H

A Bit Of Catch-Up

2008-02-07T18:38:00.000-05:00

Yes, I've been a bit lax in posting... can I blame it on the huge amount of snow we've had so far this year (in Michigan)? Maybe not, but it does effect my satellite link-up so that's not as far fetched as it sounds. In reality, I've just been busy and distracted.

December's meeting was fattening - too many goodies! But we also had fibery stuff to do. In the Nov/Dec 2007 issue (#15) of Cloth, Paper, Scissors, page 32; there were some really cool things that I can only call Spirit Wards. Inspired by a native tradition in Africa, these hanging fabric collages were very fun to make. I must remember my camera more often as the finished items seen in January were impressive. Mine is not done (no surprises there!) but I'll post it if it ever does get finished.

Meanwhile... January we decided to play with an idea from a new book called Creative Embellishments for Paper, Jewelry, Fabric, and More by Sherrill Kahn. We made beads and "windows" by melting page protectors. These were fun, if a bit stinky in a closed room in 6 degree (F) and snowy MI. Of course, if you can melt page protectors, what else can you melt?

The top photo is a "window" created by sandwiching fabric strips, bits of peacock feather, and some tiny silk oak leaves from the floral department of (cringe) the "J" place, between two layers of Page Protectors (or Sheet Protectors depending on which brand); the top loading plastic pages you keep in three-ring binders. All this was hit with a heat gun until it started to melt together.

The second photo is beads created by rolling cut strips of the Page Protectors around a steel rod (BBQ skewer in my case), wrapping it with hair ties and melting it with the heat gun. One bead is plain, in one I rolled up peacock feather and in the third, a sheer fabric.

So, if you can melt one kind of plastic... The beads above are a plastic wrapper that came off a 4-pack of Campbell's soups. These seemed to work best if wound loosely (lower right) and they cooled quite shiny.

Next, this bead was a strip cut from one of those flimsy water bottles. I wrapped it with a sheer synthetic fabric which burned quite impressively when the bottle plastic curled away from it. Ack! This plastic seemed to be a favorite as it cooled/hardened more clear and shiny than the Page Protector beads which became quite cloudy when cooled but it was harder to get to stick to itself.

Lastly, I did a quick thing with Shrinky Dink as I have never seen it before. I have to admit, that was memorizing!

A glittery gel pen that I scribbled on the pre-shrunk plastic with stayed sparkly. Other people played with some very cool stuff like Fun Foam and turned out some really neat things. Hopefully they will share pictures with us.

Show & Tell
Linda J did some more sun printing with Setacolor paints.

She also did a beautiful quilt with lots of circles and curved piecing - very nice!

February we are going to torture wool and silk with dye :),
Deb H

November 2007

2007-12-11T16:02:00.000-05:00

Our November meeting had us working on more ATC's (Artist Trading Cards). Some of us were making refrigerator magnets for gifts, some were making cards, others were just building our ATC stash so we can trade. Several of us brought finished ones to show off! Here is a picture of the ATC's that are done.

Sandy O is very prolific and here are some of hers

Some more of Sandy's

Some of the other's

and some more

And Linda K was wearing an adorable doll pin she made

Linda J had continued to explore the Flower Pounding technique we worked on in October. She did much more pounding, using the last of the fall color in her yard on cotton and muslin treated with Alum. She found the muslin seemed to work the best at absorbing the flowers and leaves' color. She then took a permanent black fabric marker and outlined her results. Very stunning!

A detail.

The weather has turned nasty cold here and Thanksgiving brought our first snow of the year (as usual), I hope it won't interfere with our next meeting - we are going to play with Spirit Wards from the latest issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors!

Deb H

October's Meeting!

2007-10-23T16:07:00.000-04:00

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

Busy Fall!

2007-10-18T13:59:00.000-04:00

Hi all,

Well, I'm a bit late but here is September's post.

September's meeting found us back at the school in our fabulous art classroom. Ah, home! We were a small group this month and our topic was art journaling. Not as in "journals as art" but as in "journaling our artistic efforts". So, not the pretty little journals, memory books, and picture books that are a work of art in themselves, but the kind that you use to track (journal) all of your artistic thoughts and ideas. It appears these kinds of journals can fall into the first category as well, but are really a way to think through a project, help us with our bazillion issues that have to do with just plain being a working artist (whether professional or hobbyist) and a place to collect all those ideas that just need to get written or drawn down. The photo above is a journaling aid I picked up at Borders. It's a pre-decorated, small journal that you are supposed to write down your thoughts or art ideas that are spurred by the accompanying card deck of art related essays. These types of journaling aids are ideal to get you started if you are not sure how to proceed with one and to break-up a creative "block".

But most of us use journals to plan out art projects and write our own essays to get us through difficult points of art or creative dead-ends. We scribble ideas down in quick sketches, write a brief description of a concept worth developing and paste in pictures from nature, magazines, the Internet (whatever) that inspired an idea. Here are some of the journals that we shared;

From very neat to very messy to very colorful. But they all do the job!

That's all for this month!

Deb H

August Meeting!

2007-09-12T16:05:00.001-04:00

Our last summer meeting was August 15th at the library. In September we will meet at the school in our marvelous art classroom! The agenda for Setember is not finalized yet, but it will be geat!

So, for August we had a lesson on some of the elements of design. Cathy A led us through a few eye opening exercises. The first one was to draw a posed figure without looking at our paper in 10 seconds. I will NOT post my results of that exercise. They were hugely funky and not in a good way :oP"""""
Next we sectioned off our paper into six boxes and crated lines to express certain concepts or emotions. <--- From top left to bottom right they were; feminine, overheated (I could relate to this one, sigh), angry, cheerful, masuline, and relaxed. Here are the results of my efforts.

Next, we did the same type of thing using color. ---> Our words were; fresh, tired, energized, slow, road trip, and Birthday. Here is my 20 second rendition.

Lastley, we divided our page into three sections and cut up magazines. We pasted images we liked into the three sections and then decided the emotions the mini collages brought to mind. <--- Here is my cut-and-paste. It was great fun (felt like grade school :o) and I learned that my "art language" is definately COLOR, as opposed to line or image, to create a feeling in my work.

We all had such different results, I should have remembered my camera so I could post others work. It was very revealing and I'm off to do some more, there is always more to learn!

I have managed to update our meeting dates on the side bar. Come join us if you are close!

Until next month! Deb H

July Meeting

2007-08-13T01:51:00.000-04:00

Here are the paper exercises we did in July.

First up, we picked one color, a more intense version of that color, and it's complement. Then we cut out graphic designs to make positive/negative images.

Secondly, we chose complementary colors, then chose more paper to create an analogous + complement color scheme. We used the analogous colors to fill space.

Lastly, we did a group exercise, round robin style:

This was great fun!

How could these exercises translate into fiber? The first one might be interesting translated into thread painting or quilting. What if a design is quilted in yellow thread on black fabric? What if it's black thread on yellow fabric?

Could the analogous color exercise be used to design a literal image such as a face? How might this idea translate into a traditional quilt block?

The elements in our final exercise pull it all together. We started by dividing space (anything but in half!), then we added text, black and white elements, printed image, and finally filled out the design to balance it. Think of all the ways you could add these elements with fiber......

April Meeting!

2007-04-25T18:48:00.000-04:00

Pat S is one of our most prolific members and she has three of her ATC's (Artists Trading Cards) published in a new book by Patricia Bolton, publisher of Art Quilt Magazine (among others). Go to our "Gallery" to see the inside photo of her three cards. Good work Pat!!!

At Show & Tell she shared some of her latest work with us; the blue fern piece has a photo printed on fabric - twice! The sheer fabric is mounted about an inch in front of the back photo and give the work a very 3-D look. She had seen it in Quilting Arts and had to give it a try.

Another one of Pat's recent pieces; beads and wire on hand dyed China silk.

Another Show & Tell dazzler; Sandy O's denum jacket that she has embellished. Beautiful!

Or meeting was a review of some techniques we've done in the past for our newest members; torturing Tyvek, Shiva Paint Sticks on fabric, silk screening, and a few other things.

But one of the fun events involved Cathy A pulling out her hand-dyed fabrics that were left from her booth at the Chicago Quilt Show last month. They were gorgeous and turned into a "feeding frenzy". No one was surprised except Cathy (and don't you just lover her pink hair?)!

March Meeting!

2007-04-14T13:09:00.001-04:00

Our March meeting was fabulous. We unveiled some of the quilts for our "Eye" challenge. Not everyone has finished their quilts (yours truly included) but the quilts that were there; finished, unfinished, and sketches of great things to come, were very impressive. At left is Kay S, Pat S, & Sandy O discussing some of Sandy's incredible work.

We had a great show and tell as well; Many people had the yarns and fabrics they dyed last month and they looked marvelous - sorry I didn't get photos of those - I spaced out!

http://www.sheepyhollowherbs.com/ is a local herb and wool farm that is owned by Jenny D. who did a great demo of Needle Felting for us. She showed us some incredible techniques for needle felting as an embellishment to our work. The wheels are spinning (so to speak) with ideas for adding this medium to our embellishment tool box.

And last, but not least - we hit the big time! This meeting was the 2nd anniversary of our group, two years have flown by and we have grown as a group and as artists. To celebrate we had cake (thanks Kay!) and a reporter from the Tri-City Times of Imlay City come and interview or group. In the March 4th edition we appeared - Cool, huh?

Feb '07 Meeting - Dyeing!

2007-03-13T14:11:00.000-04:00

We decided we needed a dye day to play with some MX dye stocks left over from other projects. MX is a fiber reactive dye for cellulose fibers (cotton, rayon, linen, etc) and after it's been in a dyestock solution for several days it loses it's ability to "react". But the experts tell us it can still be used as an acid dye (acid dyes are used on protein fibers such as wool and silk). So.... we are testing this concept!

Linda J is dyeing roving for spinning. Linda K's roving is in the foreground.

The fibers we are dyeing have been soaking in an acid (citric acid) solution to bring their pH down to 5.0. We can then paint our dye stock solution on the fibers and nuke them in a microwave (very carefully, can't set the building on fire!) to set the colors.

Left,

Debra G is painting sock yarn.

Right, Kay S is painting yarn and wool fabric.

Margot L painted lace - yum!

Right, Howard - I mean Linda K has her roving ready for the microwave.

Sandy G is painting silk dupioni!

Stay tuned next month (ish) for the results of our ground breaking and art-world shattering experiments!

Respectfully Submitted - Deb H

Eye for Fiber - Lagniappe!

2007-02-08T13:54:00.000-05:00

Hi all,
Lagniappe: Cajun, a popular term in southern Louisiana meaning “a little something extra” – a gift or show of appreciation. This is an extra e-mail to share something with y’all I thought was really cool!
While perusing some of my favorite Blogs this morning,
http://fibermania.blogspot.com/
http://www.persistentillusion.com/blogblog/index.php
http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/
http://www.funkyc.blogspot.com/ this is our own Cathy C; my favorite because it’s almost always good for a deep belly laugh :o) Thanks Cathy!

But, while on Fibermania, Melody Johnson mentioned this fiber artist and I clicked the link, only to be blown away by her work. Stunning!!!
http://www.deidreadams.com/

Enjoy! And see you at our meeting,
Deb H

Eye for Fiber Newsletter - February 2007

2007-02-08T13:44:00.001-05:00

Hi all!
Since some of our member's spam blockers consider me a moral threat (just kidding, Barb!) I have posted our newsletter here...

But first, a quick recap. January's meeting was stellar. We were led in another session of machine quilting, focusing on original designs and contemporary quilting. I learned so much and we even got a peppering of Ricky Tim's wisdom thrown in (not in person, obviously ;o). I found the whole thing very inspiring and helpful. Sorry I didn't get any pictures - I forgot my camera!

Next Meeting's Info:
Our next meeting is February 21st at the school at 5 PM (ish). For directions/address/map to the school, check the link in the General Meeting Information section below.
We will be doing acid dyeing with MX dyes. This will be mostly left over dyes from other dyeing projects, but we may try some fresh powder too to see what the different results might be.
Supplies;
WEAR OLD CLOTHES! I can’t tell you how many clothes I have ruined thinking I wouldn’t get messy :oP""
Bring any protein fiber, yarn or fabric to dye. That is wool, silk, soy silk, alpaca (any animal fiber), etc.
If you have a "dye" dedicated microwave or dye dedicated microwaveable containers, bring them too. Also anything you want for a mechanical resist; string, rubber bands (stinky), plastic clips, needle and thread for Shibori, etc.
An idea of what colors you might want to play with.

Cheers!
Deb

December & January Meetings

2007-01-17T13:49:00.001-05:00

We had a really great meeting in December. Cathy A. taught us about the techniques of machine quilting. She covered a lot of tips on smooth lines (boy, do I need to practice!) and even bobbin drawing - very cool! Threads, following a design, etc. It was very beneficial to those of us who need all the help we can get in that area (me!).

January (tonight's meeting) will be taking it one step further. Our teacher's quilts are wonderfully full of interesting designs of machine quilting that really complement the design and elements of the quilt they are on. She is going to cover the designing of the quilting that can make your art quilt even better! Another area of quilting that I desperately need!

Did I mention that quilting is not my strong point? :oP""

Deb H

Eye for Fiber Challenge!

2007-01-17T13:42:00.000-05:00

Eye for Fiber has decided on a challenge for our group members. Most of us are already working on our mini quilts for those who have not started, here is a reminder of the rules;
The theme is vision; the eye, how you see the world(?), something about vision.
Size is 18” x 24”, you may pick the orientation (portrait or landscape).
It must be an original design by you.
Technique: totally up to you!
Due Date: March Meeting (3/21/2007)
What is the purpose of our challenge?
1) To get us to our fiber stash and working on art!
2) To put together a body of work as a group.
3) To challenge us to work a little outside of our box(s) and grow as artists.

Sew on!
Deb H

2006-12-13T20:43:00.000-05:00

Hi All
Hope to see you in January. I had an unexpected Doctor's appointment so I could not come in December. Do you all know about the Knit Michigan knitting, spinning and weaving marathon to raise money for cancer research, for Gilda's Place, Karmanos and others. Check out the http://www.knitmichigan.com site for more information. Have a very Merry Christmas and New Year and Happy Holidays.
Debra Groth

Next Meeting - Dec. 6th

2006-12-04T17:36:00.001-05:00

Hi all,
Our next group meeting is really early due to holiday schedules and functions. It is This Wednesday (12-6). We will have a demo/lesson on FMQ (Free motion machine quilting) by Cathy A. We will continue the topic in January with design. As most of you know, my machine quilting skills are seriously pitiful so I am really looking forward to these two meetings. See you all there!

Deb H

Blog update and New group photo album!

2006-11-29T16:31:00.000-05:00

I have spent a little time cleaning up our Blog so it reads faster and easier. I also took a lot of the misc. photos and started a new group photo album. The photos uploaded so far are only a drop in the bucket but, its a start! Check it out at http://picasaweb.google.com/EyeForFiber

That's all for now folks!
Deb H

October 2006 Meeting - Altered Books!

2006-10-12T16:33:00.000-04:00

Last night's meeting was great fun. One of our new members; Debra Groth
gave a program on the art of Altered Books. This seems like such a good way to do frequent creativity excersises to me. An Altered Book is definately and art form and it lends itself to fabric as well as paper. Since it (at least mine) is going to be an on-going project, I hope to use it as a creativity booster, not unlike The Artist's Way morning pages.

Here is my Start;
"Garden"
by Deb H

Linda J has just been to
Alaska so that was her focus.

And Sandy O must have
been hankering for a
cup of tea!!

They are all a good start but we have miles to go yet!

We have also decided to work on a Mission Statement for our group and several of us are going off to Fabrications next week.

September Meeting

2006-09-20T11:09:00.000-04:00

Hey, Everybody! Tonight we'll be talking about how to use this blog. There's a good chance that you are reading this tonight and we are all together standing in front of a computer screen. Rock on!

This Month's Meeting Change!

2006-02-16T15:00:00.001-05:00

Hi to all the Eye for Fiber folks! I wanted to reiterate that our meeting for this month was changed from the 3rd week to the 4th week (February only) because of a school conflict - they were having a "do". So if you should up last night - sorry, check your e-mail fist! We will have our gathering next Wednesday (2/22), 6 PM, at the school. Our agenda is Show & Tell, Critique work in progress, show our 1 hr purse challenges off. I see Pat has been at it already - beautiful Pat!!

Scroll down this page a bit if you want to see our Tyvek meeting post and pictures. I only added what I had in my camera so if anyone else has pictures of their Tyvek meeting experiments - please post them! See you next week! Deb H

Purses

2006-02-03T00:09:00.000-05:00

Hi, Everybody! Here are two 60 min. bags - well the purple took 70 minutes. On that one I used one of my painted pieces from last Wed. Pat

2006-01-27T15:56:00.000-05:00

This will be especially great when we (I) learn to really use it. Pat, the crazy beader

Deb is So Cool!

2006-01-26T20:31:00.000-05:00

Hey Everybody!

Deb, what a great idea. Seems to be working for me. I'm posting just to see what happens.

Today, I added more paintstick to some of the pieces from last night. Here's the before and after shots:

The Tyvek Meeting

2006-01-26T14:18:00.002-05:00

Meeting 11/16/2005
Tonight's meeting was for torturing Tyvek. That wonderful, weird stuff that some mailing envelopes and other "tough" stuff is made of. Not a paper and not a fabric, it does really cool things when heated.
Our turnout tonight was small. It was very cold, windy and snowy - ugh! But we did great things!
Attendance: Barb Dinneweth, Deb Harowitz, Linda Johnson

We had too much fun torturing more than just Tyvek. Fabrics of all kinds from our stashes were given the "heat" treatment for some really amazing results! We used a heat gun - my favorite torture device, and a stencil cutting tool. Very like a wood burning tool or soldering iron, all will work as well. Most important lesson we learned? It's stinks! Work with good ventilation.

Barb Dinneweth is also cutting and sewing Tyvek to fabric to be abused for the sake of art! It's thanks to Barb (an art teacher) and the Imlay City Middle School that we have such a perfect art classroom for our meetings most of the year.

Linda Johnson is having waaayyyyy too much fun with this. Who knew being destructive could be so much fun?

My creation for the night. While it may not be art - it was a good experiment. Painted and melted Tyvek, scraps of hand dyed cotton, fabric paint, machine stitching, black silk noil. Very fun!

Deb H

Why we are here!

2006-01-26T13:05:00.000-05:00

We are the members of an Art Group that works mostly in fiber located in the lower thumb region of Michigan. We decided this Blog was a good way for us to keep in touch with each other and to show other fiber artists what we are up to. We hope you enjoy our posts and if you are a local artist, feel free to join us at our meetings - for more information about where and when you can e-mail us at deb@scarlet-zebra.com
Deb H