Fiber Frenzy Color Challenge

Now that the October meeting is well past, I guess that it is time to blog about it!!!

Two months ago we issued a color challenge where we each picked a color from a hat. The original idea was that there could be no trading, but that didn’t work out quite as planned. There were a few trades (including myself and Deb), but the results were wonderful….

We started the show with Sue’s grey piece. You will need to enlarge it to see it well, but the wood nymph is great!!

Cleo presented this pink quilt with fabric beads that were made in a previous FF meeting…….

We all felt that Madeline’s offering was one of the best……. She said that a Burkha was the first thing that came into her mind when she saw that she had picked Black. It is a really stunning piece!!

Faye channeled her Yellow inner child with “Sponge Bob”…..

Jodie picked White and is making a snow scene inspired by a tree photo… Pat’s green and cheery pink was a great addition to our color wall…..

Nancy had this great red fabric and jus started cutting out shapes until she came up with this rose bush….. Francyne is a self-professed “non-purple” person, but she did a great job with this quilt…..

This is Deb’s brown offering that was inspired by the leaf fabric on the left. She has used wonderful textured fabrics and 2 fabric beads…..a great start!!!

And this is my orange offering….

I wanted to try doing a piece with only thread, and it looked great….from 2 feet away. Unfortunately, if you got any further way, the quilting just disappeared into the fabric!! I decided to use a pen to accent the design and went to Hobby Lobby to buy one. As I looked at the $7.00 pens, I noticed an orange Sharpie for $1.99 and decided that it would work fine….and it did!!!!

I hope to finish the piece with some additional quilting patterns as a border!!

You may notice that many of the pieces were not finished and that is one thing that I love about our group. We are all busy people and have agreed that there is NO pressure to finish any of the challenges.

Fiber Frenzy – Part 2

At our last Fiber Frenzy group the program was about making Deconstructed Screen Printed fabrics and was presented by Anita and Mary Ann.

They started out by showing us how to make a screen. First step is to place objects under the screen, only using things that are fairly flat…..

Next you use a squeegee to cover the screen with a thickened dye……

Lift the screen up, remove the objects and allow the screen to dry.

Next, place the dried screen on a piece of PFD fabric and squeegee it with print paste…..

Lift the screen and see what has happened…..

Move the screen over, apply more print paste to release more dye…..

As you keep going, more and more of the dye releases, causing the print to change……everyone is a bit different from the previous one!!!

Here are two more examples….this one was made with thin spaghetti underneath the screen……

…..and this one showed the progression as more and more of the dye began releasing from the screen……

THANKS Ladies for showing us such a fun technique……

Fiber Frenzy Report

Last Friday was the meeting day for our Fiber Frenzy Group. We had a wonderful 2-1/2 hours together. As a matter of fact, we all looked at our watches and realized that we had over-shot our ending time by 30 minutes!!!!

The first thing that we did was present our “Leaf” challenge projects. I did not prepare a challenge piece this month, but had a wonderful time seeing what everybody else came up with.

Mary Ann was first to share and brought out this delightful piece….. Anita showed this piece that was made by stamping the fabric with a leaf that had leftover paint from a deconstructed screen printing project…..

Nancy prepared this thread painted fern leaf….cant you just see it unfurling…..

Jodie wasn’t there but sent in her fused leaf collage……

Shirley (who never makes anything small) brought in this delightful applique. She is debating about adding more to it and turning it into a queen size quilt. I love the fabrics and colors….makes me think of Autumn and cooler weather!!!!

Finally, Madeline blew us away with her leaf…..

She said that the piece used a smorgasbord of techniques ranging from paints, paintsticks, thread and anything else that she could think of!!!!

It is such fun to see what everyone comes up with!!!!!

Fiber Frenzy – Thread painting tutorial

Mary Ann M. (check out her blog here) gave a short demonstration for how to work a piece with thread painting.

Specifically, she talked about how to make embroidered pieces and then cut them out and applique them to our quilts.

The first pieces that she showed were sewn on tulle that was sandwiched between two pieces of Solvy. When the Solvy is soaked out, the tulle holds the stitching in place…..

This top one uses a straight stitch making small overlapping circles, while this one was stitched with a free-motion zig-zag stitch.

She then showed us some of the wonderful pieces that she has been doing some thread sketching on…..

I absolutely love this piece…..but you know how I am about sunflowers!!! She suggested several books for us to look at……

– “Thread Magic” by Ellen Anne Eddy

– “Thread Painting Made Easy” by Terry White

– “Threadwork” by Effie Mitrofanis

She also mentioned Laughing Cat Design Studio blog where there is a wonderful tutorial for doing thread work.

Thanks Mary Ann for inspiring us to try something new…..

Fiber Frenzy – Going Green

At the Fiber Frenzy group on Friday, we all shared our “Going Green” challenges. The were wonderful!!!!!

Sue T. made this wonderful piece using recycled men’s ties. I love the texture that she was able to achieve and we all laughed about the tie with the houses on it. It was the perfect addition to her piece……

Shirley E. made two challenge pieces. This first one was a reminder that we have to be careful with the way we treat our water…….

The water was made with layers of organza and netting.

Her second one was a reminder of the railroad tie garden that she has. She fills it up with all of the compost bits from her kitchen and then grows wonderful vegetables ……I particularly liked the 3-dimensional garden with her quilting “scraps” on one end and the plants growing on the other…… Mary Ann M. showed her jalapenos. She is not happy with it because she thinks that they look too much like pickles, but pickles ARE green….

Jodie S. showed her piece featuring a 3-dimensional lunch bag filled with painted vegies. She used Inktense pencils to draw and color the vegetables……