December Meeting

We had a good turn out for the meeting in December despite holidays and some fresh snow on the ground.

For Joltz this month Cath brought along paper with a few blobs of water colour paint on it.  The idea was to turn this into faces.  Just a few lines with your pen.  The results were varied and amusing.

Joltz faces

Show and tell was up next and the tea bags keep coming in.  The creativity displayed is wonderful!

More faces.

Judith has done all of her tea bags for the group.  Her motif is tree.
She decided on a word play, can you guess all of them?
Hint - the middle one is Chemistry.

Catherine gave a very interesting presentation on the Native and Celtic Art styles. We had difficulty coming up with an accurate definition of this style of art.

Native art is characterized by thick lines of colour in bold shapes that evoke an image. The style is representational rather than realistic and two-dimensional. Formline is a term sometimes used to describe Northwest Coastal design. The stylistic elements can be u-shaped, ovoids and s-shapes. The patterns depicted are usually animals, nature, and legendary creatures such as thunderbirds.

       




                                       

Celtic art is often extremely stylized. Energetic circular forms and spirals are characteristic. Typically Celtic art is ornamental, avoiding straight lines and only occasionally using symmetry. Celtic art has used a variety of styles and shown influences from other cultures in their knot work, spirals, key patterns and lettering. There is a sense of balance in the layout and development of patterns, the filled areas and spaces form a harmonious whole.



      



Stensils use similar lines, again representational not realistic.  

Stensil 

Stensil art

               

These art styles are often found in modern tattoo designs.

                                 
                                 

Celtic inspired tattoo art

Celtic inspired tattoo art

     

November Meeting

JOLTZ started off our November meeting.   Very simple instructions, starting with 'Draw an I.'  Or is it an EYE?  Draw a T.  What would you choose to draw?  No two turned out the same.

The tea bag show and tell was amazing!  Everyone has their own interpretation of the art form and the results are as beautiful as they are varied.

                         

       

                                                                       











Presentation                   Bernie

Bernie's presentation was on using our computers to print images on the tea bags and then colour them.

He used free clip art or copyright free images found online.  They were then reduced in size to fit on a tea bag.  In his word program he arranged them on the paper and printed that out.  He then taped the tea bags down over top of the image and ran it through the printer again to print the image directly on the tea bag.  This method works with both laser and ink jet printers.

As the tea bag is delicate I found that fusing it to a larger  piece of thin fabric before taping it to the paper worked well and made it easier to remove the tape.   Tracing the image on to the tea bag is another option.

Bernie then coloured the images in with water colour pencil and carefully brushed water over to enhance the colours and smooth out the pencil lines.

There were pre printed tea bag samples for us to colour and you know how we like to colour!

One more interesting way to do your tea bags.


A Google search of Tea Bag Art will supply endless choices for you.

Here are a few websites that will inspire:

http://alysnsburntofferings.blogspot.com/2015/10/large-balls-and-fun-with-tea-bags.html?m=1

http://www.rubysilvious.com

https://www.curbly.com/9932-10-marvelous-examples-of-tea-bag-art

Catherine will be doing the December presentation.

October Meeting

Linda started off the meeting with a fun JOLTZ.  Lots of scribble writing with a variety of felt pens, no looking though!  Then rubbed with Inktense blocks and finally some smearing with water.  Add your motif in black felt and you have an interesting background.

Brigitte gave us a recap of the tea bag project for those who missed the last meeting.

The show and tell of the first pairs of tea bags was truly inspiring!

There are still spaces open on the calendar to sign up to lead a JOLTZ and two spots left for a presentation on the subject of your choice.

Linda would still like some more work done on the QuArtz banner, stitching or beading are some suggestions.

Catherine has submitted our Water quilts to the Canadian Quilter Magazine and they will appear in the Spring issue! 

After some lovely show and tell of a bag, some pillows and a shawl we had our presentation.

Kay and Endy - Javanese Art & Wayang Shadow Puppets

Wikipedia describes it this way:

Javanese origin art forms are among the best know in Indonesia and the whole archipelago.  The famous Javanese Wayang puppetry culture was influenced by Hindu and Buddhist traditions.  The Wayang repertoire stories, lagoon, are mostly based on epics from India; Ramayana and Mahabharata.  These epics and stories influenced wayang puppetry as well as Javanese classical dances.  The art of batik is also of Javanese origin.  

Endy brought along a wayang puppet for us to look at and explained about the puppet shows put on at festivals.  It was made of buffalo leather and very intricately cut.  In some area's they make the cutting tools from bicycle spokes.  

More information on Wayang can be found here.  

https://disco.teak.fi/asia/wayang-the-world-of-shadows-and-puppets/

Wayang puppet 

Detail of cutout's

Kay's suggestion was to use the cut out technique for your tea bag this month.  She brought along cork fabric end cuts, donated by Cottage Quilting, to share with everyone.  Her tea bags were decorated with butterflies cut from the cork fabric.

Cut out motif. 

Kay's butterflies.

Cork Fabric

September Meeting

Welcome Back!  The guild season has started again and we had our first regular meeting of the year.

Brigitte introduced us to the idea of making art on used tea bags.  Two each month, one for yourself and one for the group project.  The group project will be a large collaborative piece for show.
There have been a variety of theme's chosen for the project including dandelions, leaves, circles and the word Joy.

Quilting Arts Magazine has two articles on tea bag art:

Issue 87  (June/July 2017)
Issue 94(August/September 2018

Libby Williamson is the author of the articles and she has an interesting blog as well.

https://libbywilliamsondesigns.blogspot.com

Example of Libby Williamson's tea bag art

To get us started on the project  Cathy Gaetz-Brothen  gave a presentation on Steampunk! and Tea Bag Folding.

Steampunk is described as:

A genre of science fiction that has a historical setting and typically features steam-powered machinery rather than advanced technology.  

Cathy had done her first two tea bags in a Steampunk fashion with metal gears as the embellishments.  One thing you will never see in Steampunk?  Plastic!

For next month, two tea bags inspired by Septembers presentation. 

Joyce showed her wonderful tea bag art! Inspiring!

Cathy showing us how to fold tea bag covers.

A beautiful rosette.

ArtWalk!

September is here and that means ArtWalk in Lake Country.  QuArtz was excited to be included again this year.  Our Water quilts were displayed and it was the first show for the QuArtz banner.  Making the banner was a group effort led by Linda and Christine.  Thanks to all who helped.

Cathy's water fabrics

The Banner

Cathy Gaetz-Brothen collected fabric during a trip around the world last year.  The four selections shown here are from New Zealand, South Africa, Hong Kong and India.  The challenge was to use them in a quilt with 'Water' as the theme.  The results were wonderful!

Toni and Sandi G

Elisabeth, Cathy G-B, Joyce

Linda, Betty, Val, 

Jeanette, Shirley, Christine, Cath

Brigitte, Catherine, Judith