August

 We were back at our usual location this month and the wildfire smoke is letting up a little more.  Our thoughts are with everyone who is experiencing hardship due to the current fires.  

"When adversity strikes, that's when you have to be the most calm.  Take a step back, stay strong, stay grounded and press on."  LL Cool J.

QuArtz to VSSQ

Our annual QuArtz visit to the main guild meeting at VSSQ has been moved from September to the October 15 meeting.  We are bringing  our Home Challenge pieces, the accordion books and a display of our beads.  If you are not going to be at the VSSQ meeting please bring your pieces to either the September or October meeting.  A short write up about your Home Challenge is needed and it will be read at the meeting. 

Our Trailblazing Women will be on display at Gallery Vertigo from September 1 to the 26th.   The reception for the exhibit will be held on September 3 from 6 to 8pm.  We will be included in the annual Cloth-O festival.  

Preview Art Magazine, a guide to galleries and museums in the Pacific Northwest has an article on the Trailblazing Women in the upcoming issue.  

New Business

We have had to limit our membership to 25 due to space constraints.  Joan will be taking membership information at the next meeting and the dues will remain at $25.  You must also be a member of the VSSQ guild.   We will have a wait list available if our numbers exceed 25.

There will be a sign up sheet for the study of Art Styles that we are doing this season.  Two people will talk about different art styles and you will make a small quilt or postcard sized piece representing one of the styles.

We are also looking into Edge Finishes and there will be a sign up sheet for that as well.

The main challenge this year is an Abstract/Representational Blind Challenge. You will work in pairs on the same picture, one doing a representational depiction and one doing an abstract depiction.   You will not chose your partner, hence the Blind Challenge part.  We are working on coming up with a name for the challenge.  

One more note, Linda B had asked the main guild for some embroidery floss and they delivered big time!  She had more than she can possibly use so if you need any just ask Linda.

Home Challenge

We had 12 Home Challenge pieces shown at the meeting.  It was quite an amazing array of beautiful work and so many different takes on the meaning.   If you look on the main page of the blog you will see the headline Home Challenge under Pages, on the right hand side of the main blog.  

Show and Tell

Linda K.  went to a weaving workshop and made a couple of bottle covers from bullrushes.  She also brought in her cord made from dandelion stems.

Cathy showed some rusting she did with the tiny iron pellets and a stencil.

Linda B. brought her shibori dyeing from last months workshop and a hand stitched thread painted picture of a beautiful bird.  She found a wealth of information on Deborah Wirsu's website https://threadsketchinginaction.com/

Joan played with some cyanotype on a variety of different surfaces.  She was surprised that the silk didn't take the colour as well as the cotton.

on onion skin paper

on silk, quite grey

on 100% cotton

Bev finished her accordion book and had labeled each page with the technique she used.

Christine  had some goodies to share as she downsizes.  She also brought in some older shibori style dyeing done by wrapping the fabric around a tube.  Also her corrone embroidery.

Linda W.  also had shibori dyed fabric, the pink was done with wax and the blue without.

Jeanette used blue and red for her shibori and has some lovely purple in the finished fabric.

Deborah found a very long cross cut saw to rust and left it sitting for days.  What a wonderful outcome!  Now what will she do with it all?

Cath did some rusting on a hand dyed fabric and used a stencil for the design.  She made it into a bag with a little play on words,  "All we are is rust in the wind."

Tree Rings

We played with fabric scraps and a technique from the Summer 2024 issue of Quilting Arts Magazine. Diana S. Fox explains how she came up with a unique way to make tree ring quilts and join them together.  You can find her work on the website:https://contemporaryquilter.com/.  I particularly like the quilt 'Who Broke the Yolk', look for it in her portfolio on the site.

I don't know who's work is who's but I will keep them together so you can see the progress.  Looking forward to seeing how each of you finishes your tree rings.  

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

Group 5

Group 6

Single pictures

July at Shirley's

This month we had our meeting at Shirley W's so we could play with messy things!

The blog this month is courtesy of Linda W.  I was away so only had to cut and paste. 

Nicely done Linda and thank you very much.

We had 10 QuArtz members in attendance at the home of Shirley W. on this hot July morning. We began outdoors to prepare for our Bee’s Wax Shibori Style Resist dyeing. Shirley W was leading us in the process today and had set up 2 stations for the process, one for soda bath soak and dye, and the other for waxing.

At station one, we began by soaking our fabric for 30 min in a bath of soda ash which Shirley had prepared in advance using the following proportions:

Mix 9 teaspoons of Soda Ash to 1 gallon of water

Shirley showed us how to “dress” our bottles or PVC pipe to get an interesting variation in texture. We used rubber bands to hold the fabric in place.

She showed us some examples of the results of her completed process

Once our fabric was prepared and on the “bottle” we went next to the waxing station. She used a fondu pot set to 350° F to melt the wax. Shirley demonstrated how to create patterns with wax on the fabric.

She provided a print out of the process for reference and a recipe for the dye.

Recipe for Dye Mix

Process for Shibori Style Dye Resist

While our waxed fabric was cooling, we prepared the dye. Some of us were unfamiliar with the ingredient Urea.

We mixed up various colours of dyes provided by Shirley and Brigitte.

We then took turns “painting” on the dye to suit ourselves in various pattens. When we were done, we wrapped our projects to take home to leave moist in the bag for 8-24 hours before we rinsed them out. We are all excited about what the results may be.

Shirley demonstrated rinsing and described the process for removing the bee’s wax.

Business meeting

With the dyeing completed we proceeded to the cool environs of Shirley’s living room to proceed with the remainder of the meeting chaired by Shirley. 

She began with a quote by Leonard Cohen which was most appropriate for our process today.

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in”.

We were reminded that our accordion books, beads and Home Challenge are going to be on display at the September 17 Guild meeting. We look forward to seeing completed projects at next month’s meeting.

We started by showing the progress we had made on our accordion books.

Shirley W showed how she made some special pockets and used a long tube of fabric which she stuffed with Timtex inside to give support. She decorated the edges to create a spine which was very effective. She described that Timtex is like Peltex by Pellon and that both products are available with or without fusible on it. She used her hand made cord as a closure.

Elisabeth showed how she designed her book with 6”x6” squares. She also used Timtex inside her pages for support . She edge finished her pages with a zigzag stich and joined the pages with a faggoting stitch on her sewing machine using invisible thread. She used lots of beautiful embellishments. She also used her handmade cord as a closure.

Brigitte showed how she has come up with a clever way to put her book together using thin wooden dowels and ribbon for her book spine. This idea creates a very unique hinge that has an exotic look. She is making good progress on her pages as well.

Joan has completed her book and showed how she used light weight pellon for a softer look and feel. Joan made some smaller inner pages to fill later and used a variety of Toolbox Tuesday Techniques to show what she has mastered.

Ella also made a cord as a book closure. She used pellon so her book pages would be pliable. She has decided to make a standard book instead of an accordion style. Her pages are in progress, and she plans to make more as time permits. Ella plans to put the instructions for the techniques she used for each page on the back of each one as a reference in the future.

Linda W. has been slow to complete her pages as she has made them larger to be displayed on a 12” x12” canvas in the future. She has incorporated multiple techniques on each page. She plans to make her pages so they will attach to her accordion book as a holder with techniques described, and then to the canvas as a display. The concept is a work in progress. She showed some of the pages she has completed so far.

We had other items for show and tell as well.

Karen had recently been to Quilt Canada in Winnipeg and had taken several classes. She had taken a class with Julie Garcia called Fabric Landscapes and showed us kits from the class that she was working on. This class was all hand sewing.

Karen also took a class From Sketch to Stitch with Inktense Pencils. The instructor was Ana Buzzalino. For this class, the image needed to be transferred to your fabric. Karen reminded us that there is a light table available for public use at the library. The image transfer was done with an Inktense outliner pencil. Techniques explored were dry on dry, wet on wet, wet on dry and dry on wet.

As a member of the Fibre Art Network, Karen also attended a session in Oliver earlier in the spring put on by Janet Scruggs. This one was 3D Embroidery in a style similar to Sue Spargo.

Jeanette showed us her rust dyeing from the iron pellets. She used a paper template of a tortoise that came out very crisp and with good colour intensity.

Shirley P showed her rust dyeing as well. She used a circular design template. This created a very interesting pattern.

Our newest member Linda B surprised us all with her completion of her Home Challenge. She enjoyed doing the project and reminisced about the places she has been to. Part of her Artist Statement is “There’s no place like home”. We’ll show her completed challenge with the remainder of group.

Other topics....

• Brigitte says that if you are having trouble threading your needle, turn it around and thread it from the other direction. Alternatively, turn your thread around.

• Linda B volunteered to teach the group how to use AI for both graphics and text.

• Shirley P found a web demo on how to wrap your quilt on a canvas frame

  This is how I wrap my quilts around a stretched canvas | Lisa Capen Quilts | Facebook

  
  

  New Business

  
  

• Dues will remain the same for next year.

• Bring Trailblazing Women to August 11 meeting and give to Cath for the display at Gallery Vertigo in September.

• Bring your completed beads to be displayed for the Sept 17 Guild meeting on August 11 and give them to Karen. She will create a display using a board provided by Shirley W and pins provided by Brigitte. She will bring this to the Sept 8 meeting for review.

• Bring your completed Home Challenge and completed accordion books to the Sept 8 meeting as well.