August in Falkland

 Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves on Tuesday and it was good to get out and do something for fun!

Our August meeting was held at the Falkland Historical Museum.  

Jeanette had been contacted by the Guild about next year and the vote seemed to be that we would all continue to belong to the Guild but not physically attend until such time as things improved - re Covid. We had also been asked if we would want to use the church facilities but we are feeling cautious about any commitment at this time for obvious reasons as we want to be flexible as to venue and whether we will be able to meet or not.

We discussed alternate venues for next year with Gallery Vertigo as a possibility, particularly if we could find somewhere to park without having to feed the meters.  Alternatively, Brigitte's community room could be available for use.  It was proposed that we would charge everyone $20 for the year and depending on how many times we were physically able to meet then possibly asking for further was and when required.  A sign up sheet will be available so that we have up to date emails and phone numbers at our September meeting.

Colour with a Twist

The idea of colour for our next season was presented to the group and most people seemed to be on board. It was suggested we could use Zoom if needed to present a workshop or even a video.

Rather than look at colour as we have done before with complementary, triadic etc. schemes we would look at colour in a different way.  Some examples of ideas are as follows:

Light

Meaning of colours eg. red, blue

The role of neutrals

Effects of substrates on the piece

Gold

Historical aspects of colour eg. purple

Indigo

Transparency/lustre

Each month we would made a piece inspired by the demo with the idea that eventually it could be turned into a concertina book. Therefore each individual needs to decide on a size at the beginning.  A sign up sheet will be available next month for individuals to present a demo on colour and the workshops.

During the year we would aim to have 2 or 3 workshops. We are open to any ideas but as a suggestion we could us Quilting Arts and/or Art Quilt Studio magazines for ideas. This way we could experiment with new techniques.

Our next meeting will be at Sandi's.  More information to come.

Sun Printing

Christine gave us a quick reminder of sun printing and Cath showed some pieces she had done together with some new techniques for sun printing.

Check out Lisa Walton on YouTube her Dyes and Sun Printing video

https://youtu.be/nIwTD2UCdh8                        https://www.lisawaltonartist.com  Lisa Walton website

     

And some of the results!

Acrylic Pouring

Jeanette gave a demonstration of her method of acrylic pour using fabric.  This was a lot of fun to see what we produced using this method.  As the paint takes awhile to dry we were not able to use the foils we had hoped but some of us did use the stamps. 

We were challenged to make something from our 'pour' results and bring them to the next meeting!

 

Stamping 

Rusty objects

As we were taking pictures we found some really interesting rusty items.......... whole sheds filled with them..................hmmm maybe a day of playing with rusting fabric in the future?

July get together!

July 2020

We could finally get together and catch up!  What a treat for those who could attend.

Gloria invited us to her patio so we could still social distance and work outside.  The weather even cooperated and gave us a warm and mostly sunny day.

Show and tell

                                                                          Gloria

                                            Bright colours and an array of hand stitching.

                            Elisabeth showed two brown bag challenges and her symmetry study.

Christine and Linda brought their brown bag challenges and Linda's book made of papers and textiles.

Cathy has been working on an art journal highlighting San Carlos.  

Sandi has been very busy!  Practicing free motion quilting and trying a New York Beauty.

Jeanette's art journal  The Faces of Vernon

                                             

                                                   Scissor case, an idea for a workshop?

Brigitte's study of symmetry.

                                                            Masks, an art journal.

A sunny morning to play with paint and rocks from Gloria's yard.

Artists in Residence

 May 2020

We are all spending a most of our time at home, staying safe during a very different winter and spring.  It can be very difficult to keep our spirits up these days.

Our first Zoom meeting was this week and it was so nice to see most of your smiling faces again!  And to be able to share what we have been doing to keep busy and sane.   The little peek into your sewing rooms was a treat as well.

We will post pictures of your work here on the blog, not just Quartz projects but general show and share as well.

Remember - We are not in Quarantine, We are Artists in Residence!



Starting with Sandie

     

These two pieces are the result of the paper bag challenge.  The yo yo piece did not use all three fabrics, the wallet did use all three fabrics.  Still have a few bits and pieces left over from the bag that I know will find their way into future pieces! 

                         

Christine

The hexagon design was taken from our last actual meeting and I cut up the fabric to make these.  I then attached them to the background using thread painting stitches which made them look more circular.  Beads were added here and there to create more movement swirling around the circles.  I also used a piece of texture magic for the background left over from a previous project.  Incidentally I also used some thread I won as a door prize when I attended Catherine Nicholl's workshop back in Feb.  This project turned out to be quite useful in using up stuff!

Brown bag challenge

Judith

Hidin’ with Hayden

I decided to go with the Covid 19 theme, given that both the fabric and the virus are quite ugly! The musician I received was Hayden, so the name of my piece is Hidin’ with Hayden. The virus’ are to the left, the isolation squares are to the right and Hayden is in between playing sweet music to stave off the virus and keep the isolated people calm.

Cath

Mozart and the Sound of Symmetry

Most of us are attracted to symmetry spiced with some element of surprise.

That combo is the essence of Mozart’s music.

He was fascinated by mathematics as well as music and used symmetry in various ways in his compositions, transposition, translation and rotation.

“When I listen to Mozart, I hear the language of symmetry.”

            Mario Livio, Astrophysicist and author of The Equation that Couldn’t be Solved.

Mozart early composition, he was 8 years old, ca 1764 - Molto Allegro, Concerto in G

Photo transfer to fabric, fusing, beading by machine and asymmetrical finish.

Cathy
  

           Who has been very busy! 

Brown bag challenge

Symmetry

Art Journal

Postcard for Journal

        

Reverse side of postcard

Brigitte

They were all created using paper piecing.  There are 16 units for each of the "blocks" for a total of 96 units  (16 x 6)

 Individual units:  The one on the left is the original; the one on the right the mirror.

P1 uses the original unit in a standard "quilting block" setting

P2 uses the original unit but each second row is rotated 180 degrees

P4 uses the original unit where each unit is rotated 90 degrees

PM introduces the mirror unit to the equation where each row is arranged Original, Mirror, Original, Mirror

P2MM  arranges the units in groupings of 4  where you can see the mirror effect running vertically as well has horizontally.

CM although similar to PM, the mirroring of the units is staggered from row to row.

Okay this is all very theoretical, but the object of this exercise for me was to discover how many different patterns could I create with my simple little original and mirror units.  I hope to be able to work with a different shape to see what can develop if I use a diamond or an equilateral triangle.  I suspect there will be some very interesting patterns.

Individual units

      

P1

P2

P4

PM

P2MM

CM

Jeanette

Memories of Birmingham: 

This is my tea bag project. I find gathering the materials to make the piece is almost more fun than actually putting it together and I had a lot of fun with this quilt. The inspiration came from the photo at the top left corner (see close-up) with the metal grate. The grate had round holes in it and I just thought of round holes and round tea bags. I was going for an industrial look with this quilt and found the perfect fabric for the border at Fabricland. The binding is made from fabric with a leather look that I picked up at the Birmingham Quilt Show. The embellishments are various industrial-looking items I found in my wanderings: metal buttons, mini keys from an antique store, washers from my tool box and various items found on the streets of Birmingham.

Memories of Birmingham

  

Close up

   

Fantasy Garden

Again I had a lot of fun preparing the materials for this quilt. I started off being quite anal about making it symmetrical during the entire process until all the appliqué pieces were down.That was such tedious work that eventually I'd had enough and just started eyeballing the placement of pieces. At that point I hoped that the symmetry police wouldn't be measuring the work. To start the process I went through my fabric stash looking for fun fabric to use. I decided to step out of my comfort zone and use colourful fabric. I settled on purple because I hate purple but love purple, yellow and green together. A fun new technique I used on the pieces was bubbling, whereby you wet a piece of fabric, puts the fabric through a grid(like a metal basket), let it dry, iron a piece of fusible interfacing to the back and then pop the fabric CAREFULLY out of the grid.  See the Closeup.

A fun find I used on this piece was the circle to the left of the bubbled fabric which was a wooden earring from Value Village that I painted purple.

Fantasy Garden

Close up

Liz


Liz continues to use mixed media to express her creativity.  Two lovely pieces to enjoy.

Junk Journal

Made with 4 envelopes and added embellishments of paper and fabric.  The embellishments were made by myself.

Junk Journal

Brown Bag Challenge

Mounted on corrugated cardboard that had gesso added.  Burlap on top of cardboard and then the elements.

Challenge

Linda

Art Matters, Create!

Knitting

Brown bag challenge, Symmetry

Franz Schubert, famous classical composer of 'Ave Maria'

Junk Journal/repurposed book

                       




Elisabeth



Elisabeth enjoyed creating with the Brown Bag challenge and what a great job!  Love the backing fabric.


   



Her take on the Trend Tex Challenge.