October

 We had two visitors and possible new members today.  A warm welcome to Shirley and Cheryl.

The Whispers display and some of the Raising the Surface pieces will be at the Armstrong Museum and Art Gallery and the opening reception will be on November 1 from 6 to 8pm.  The show runs through November until the 23rd. 

A reminder that our scroll and 3D pieces will be displayed at the second VSSQ meeting in April.

Challenge for 2024/25 season

Sandie announced our challenge for the year, Trail Blazing Women of BC & Yukon.   The inspiration for the prompt is the book:

Her Courage Rises: 50 Trailblazing Women of British Columbia and Yukon.   

These are the stories of 50 women who defied gender norms and societal expectations.

We will be making wall hangings of 3 layers quilted, 14" x 23" in portrait orientation with a rod pocket on the back.  There are no rules on what you use to make your quilt but the size and orientation must be correct.

Show and Tell

We started off with the Creating Talismans Jeanette showed us last month

Christine

Cathy had two rocks, one wrapped and stitched and one colored with alcohol inks.  Lovely!

Elisabeth had some pretty beads on hers, one of which she make herself.

Joan glued a complicated knot and some very intriguing purple things on her rock.

Shirley showed us 3 rocks and of course broke the rules by thread wrapping one and stitching one before she wrapped it.

Brigitte wrapped one of her father's collection of polished stones.

Show and Tell 

General

Linda has been busy as usual and showed us her beautiful knitted top, indigo dyed paper and silk scarves and her finished scroll with handmade twisted cording.

Cathy had a trip to the fishing tackle shop and decided to try and make a quilt from the lovely bits and pieces you can get for fly tying.  She says they are difficult to work with but still she had great results.

Judith brought in the sketchbook that Cath made her for the online group Sketchbook Revival.  Fabric front cover and sewn together by hand.

Joan had three beautiful 3D fabric flowers mounted on canvas.

Made with Fabric Magic to texturize 

Made with Fabric Magic to texturize 

Made with wash away stabilizer and thread work

Shirley brought along a pop up card she got for her recent birthday and some play with metallic thread.

Shirley ( our visitor today) showed us the wonderful scroll she made.

Lena has finished her scroll and used a lot of beads on it.  Amazing.

Sandie also had a finished scroll and some of her thickened dye pieces.  She hasn't taken all the wax out yet and the one piece she did boil is quite a lot lighter than it started.  It was suggested that soy wax might be a better option as it is easier to remove from the fabric.

Left: untouched, Middle: ironed to remove wax, Right : boiled and much lighter.

Christine finished her stamped batik piece and has stitched it with gold thread and bound.  

Christine gave us a short talk on making your own stencils.  

Some questions to consider first:

What do you want to use it for?

What medium are you going to use with it?

What are you going to use it on?  Paper or Fabric?

Some suggestions for materials are paper, thin plastic, freezer paper or card stock.  Paper works fine but will be damaged by too wet a medium and you can't clean it off to reuse.  Thin plastic from file dividers is easy to make fine cuts on and get good detail.  Freezer paper will lightly adhere to your fabric when you iron it on. Card stock it sturdy but thick and harder to cut.

You would need a cutting mat, exacto knife or stanley knife to make your stencils.

You can take a picture and in a photo editing app turn it into a line drawing that you can then trace on to your thin plastic to design your own stencil.  Here is one to try.

 https://online.rapidresizer.com/photograph-to-pattern.php

An old photo album was suggested as a good place to store your stencils after use.

A stencil was used for the poppy pods.

The birds were from a stencil.

Mat, Stanley knife and exacto knife

Thin plastic stencil

Use both the negative and positive stencils!

Feathers 

Shirley then showed us how to make feathers from a piece of denim.  She had sewing a strong centre line down the piece of fabric and then we carefully pulled out the light threads to leave the dark threads.  Trimmed into feather shapes.  If you sew in the oposite direction you can pull the dark threads to have a light feather.  This will work on other fabrics that are dyed fully through the fabric.  Those with a design just printed on one side will not work well.

Here is a link to a website with good instructions on the sewing:https://www.instructables.com/Upcycled-Denim-Feathers/

Half done

Light feather

September - A new season has begun!

 Welcome back everyone.

We started out with a little housekeeping.  The Whispers Challenge display is set for the Armstrong Spallumcheen Museum and Art Gallery in late October through November.  We are collecting the pieces now and will be all set to deliver them on time.

The Vernon Silver Star Quilters are having their annual book sale at the September 19 meeting.  

On to Show and Tell:

Scrolls

Christine used hand dyed fabric in her scroll and a button from an outfit made for her by her mother.

Elisabeth started with some dyed silk she got from Lorraine and incorporated some lovely little lace bits.

Cath used a indigo dyed hankerchief as the base for her scroll.

Bev created her Ode to a Silkworm with silk fusion as the base and some men's silk ties as highlights.

Shirley also used silk fabric in her very long scroll.  

Jeanette kept hers small but beautifully detailed.  She wanted it to fit on a wooden thread spool.  You can wander up her garden path.

Brigitte used the primary colours of red, yellow and blue on her indigo dyed fabric.  She joined them together with pojagi seaming.  Not quite finished yet.

Batik

Endy had 3 pieces to show.  A beautiful soft flower piece, a bright one and of course her dress.  She is planning on dyeing the background black around the dress.

Joan thought her butterflies washed out too much so has redone them with Intense pencils.  I didn't get a picture of the redone piece, but think the washed out ones look very good too.

Cathy sent her batik piece in as she couldn't make the meeting.  She had used turmeric, coffee and chilli powder but all the colour boiled out with the wax.  She recoloured it with wax crayons.  Very nice effect.

Brigitte brought in a few pieces, she dyed the whole piece rather than painting with the thickened dyes.  Some are just doodled on and others stamped.  The picture also has the needle case she made with some of her tiny scraps, just sewing them together until she had enough fabric.

Cath dyed her whole piece as well and then stitched the design and finished it off in a small wall hanging.

Elisabeth had 3 pieces, she had stamped two of them and whole cloth dyed them.  The other one she had painted.

General show and tell

Elisabeth has framed more fabric art.  

Bev found some lovely eco printing at a market, made by Isabelle Gervais.

Joan did some indigo dyeing with the leaves from Maiwa.  Very soft blues, could be used for skies or maybe over dyed.

Cath had a cute frog with gold Gutta as a resist and painted with inks.  She has also been investigating ombre dyeing and brought in two pieces.  The blue one will be used as a sky in an upcoming piece.

Dyed but not washed

After washing

We then moved on to Creating Talismans.  The instructions are from Quilting Arts Issue 91, page 16.

You are wrapping rocks, shells or sticks with fabric and embelleshing them with stitch, beads, wire or anything else you like.  They can sit on the shelf or hang.  This is just the beginning and we hope to see some finished rocks at the next meeting.  

Bev

Shirley

Joan

Jan

Jeanette

Jeanette

Brigitte

Christine

Endy

Elisabeth

Elisabeth

Cath