BAFA Meeting August 6, 2016

We had a great meeting with lots of work shown.  First due was the Selfie Challenge, all selfies measuring 11"x14".  Several members rose to the challenge and results were fabulous (Figures 1-8).  Jeanelle McCall visited and showed her faces and portraits work which coincided with the selfie reveal (Fig. 9-12).  Nancy Dickey also visited and brought her finished Ugly Fabric Challenge (see previous post for other member work (Fig. 13).  Our UFO Challenge consisted of finishing or altering the work of our members (whoever picked up someone's unfinished work from the pile supplied by members).  Photo of Beth Mayer's work showed a photo of the original by Susan Cornell - Fig. 14.  Sherry Walker did a very reflective and poignant work began by Sylvia Weir about the Dairy Barn.  She said she saw it as a dark piece but I didn't see it that way at all.  The back contained headstone obits and photos of fenceposts where individuals are buried.  I thought it a wonderful tribute (Fig. 15-16).  Jerry Lynne Domingue reworked my 4 sashed traditional applique blocks into something wonderful (Fig. 17).  Kathy Risinger took one of my strip sets from a class and cut it into blocks and sashed it, beefing up the blocks before sashing (Fig. 18). Dot Collins took a background piece created by Christine Schmelebeck and created a seascape (Fig. 19).  Melissa Tweedel expanded on a half-square-triangle set by Sylvia Weir, cutting it apart then reassembling it with some of her own h-s-t's.  She then put some leaves on top of it, thinking to take it to another level so we shall see what she does (Fig. 20).  I took Melissa's block based on her children's drawings and am playing with adding my grandchildren's girl drawings, focusing on "making it grow" and using black/white notan to illustrate the point.  Don't know if it will come to anything...we shall see (Fig. 21).

So much other work was shown, classwork, Dot's stacknwhack teacher samples, and other fabulous works-in-progress, that I will post it in another post.

Sherry Walker                         Fig. 1  

Jerry Lynne Domingue Zentangle-Fig. 2

Jerry Lynne Domingue                      Fig. 3

Kathy Risinger                               Fig. 4

Dot Collins                                      Fig. 5

Beth Mayer                                  Fig. 6

Connie                                          Fig. 7

Sylvia                                       Fig. 8

Jeanelle McCall                              Fig. 9

Jeanelle McCall                        Fig. 10

Jeanelle McCall                                     Fig. 11

Jeanelle McCall                                       Fig. 12

Nancy B. Dickey                               Fig.13

Beth Mayer   (Susan's Block)               Fig. 14

Sherry Walker     (Front)          Fig. 15

Sherry Walker  (Back of Quilt)      Fig. 16

Jerry Lynne Domingue                               Fig. 17

Kathy Risinger                                        Fig. 18

Dot Collins                                                 Fig. 19

Melissa Tweedel                                        Fig. 20

  cmf                                                             Fig. 21

Selfie Challenge

One of my fiber art group challenges for this year was to create a self-portrait from a Selfie, using any technique method - our choice, the finished work to measure 11" x 14".

I began with a color photo (fig. 1).  In Paintshop Pro, I went to greyscale (fig. 2) and then decreased color saturation (my computer said the greyscale version consisted of 254 grey colors) to two colors -  black and white (fig. 3).  I worked it up in black and white cotton.  I added a little grey to change up the bottom of the composition, keeping it as simple and graphic as I could.  I quilted it with 100 wt. silk and 40 wt. cotton thread.  I loved doing this so much I wanted to do the whole family.  My next selfie work using the same photo will be a color fabric collage.  This will be like painting with fabric so it will be a lot trickier.

                                                 fig. 1

                                               fig. 2

                                                fig. 3

                                 

Selfie             11" x 14"                              fig. 4

BAFA Meeting June 2016

All members were present today in spite of flash flood warnings for our area.  Beth brought her sister visiting from Florida.  We added a new member, Barbara Evans.

We showed our design exercise, Creating Design with Numbers shown below (fig. 1-7).  Everyone had fun with this one.  Of note were Dot's various designs using a different number each time, Sylvia's use of both Roman and Arabic numbers working with removal of lines to achieve design, Jerry's Zentangles, and Beth's work with paper and the number 1,  No design exercise was given for our upcoming August meeting.

Various works in progress were shown (fig. 8-18).

                                                                                                                                                       fig. 1

                                                                                                                                                     fig. 2

                                                                                                                                                     fig. 3

                                                                 fig. 4

                                                                                                                                                     f.g. 5

                            fig. 6

                                                                  fig. 7

Jackie's Resist Work                              fig. 8

Beth Mayer         Grandson's Quilt Top         fig. 9 

Susan Cornell - WIP                                     fig. 10

Kathy Risinger WIP             fig. 11

Kathy Risinger                          fig. 12

Barbara Evans- WIP-Oil Stick   fig. 13

Dot Collins                                                 fig. 14

Dot Collins                                                  fig. 15

Sherry Walker                                              fig. 16

Jerry Lynne Domingue -Wool Quilt in Progress

fig. 17

Connie's Scarf reworked                             fig. 18

UFO Finished 2016

My first finished UFO for 2016 was inspired by the second Gee's Bend exhibit at the MFA Houston several years ago.  A child-size table and chairs were provided to children to play and create after viewing the exhibit.  Matboard and varying sizes and colors of tape were provided for this creative effort.  I sat down with the kids and created a design (Fig. 1).  This became the quilt top (work-in-progress) shown in Fig. 2 and the finished quilt, as yet untitled - Fig. 3.

Gee's Bend Quilter's often created what they called a housetop block which was a variation on a traditional log-cabin block.  I used it as a border around an improvised pieced work.  My idea at the time was sort of an oxymoron, Containing Volatility  - Fig. 4.  Friend, Mary Ann Littlejohn, is using this quilt top for practice on her long-arm quilting machine.  I am excited to see what she does with it.

"

Tape Design                           Fig. 1

 Work-in-Progress                                          Fig. 2

Untitled                                                           Fig. 3

Containing Volatility                                   Fig. 4

BAFA Meeting May

The Beaumont Area Fiber Artists met the last Saturday in April.  The design exercise was another positive/ negative-type exercise called Notan, a Japanese word meaning Light/Dark  (See Fig. 1-3).  Mine was was grouped around my UFO block from our group UFO work/block exchange (Block by Melissa Tweedel) due in August.  See Fig. 4.  Susan added another border to her Border Class work-in-progress and attended a Big Block class.  I showed my Minion quilt work-in-progress.  Fig. 5-6.

Susan Cornell - Fig. 1

Dot Collins                                                Fig. 2

Beth Mayer - Fig. 3

Connie                                                   Fig. 4

Susan Cornell  Another border                 Fig. 5

Susan Cornell Big Block Class                 Fig. 6

Minions for Elizabeth WIP         Fig. 7

BAFA April Meeting

BAFA members met in April.  Our design exercise was one by Susie Monday.  We were to pretend we were an animal, making the sounds of the animal, then collage a paper interpretation.  We also created a foam-plate stamp and rubber stamp to use on our collage (See Fig. 1).  Sylvia showed her positive/negative design exercise from the previous month (Fig. 2) 

Show and tell was impressive as always.  Dot showed her thread trash work (Fig. 3-4), one of them worked on a base I began and never finished.  I showed my thread trash scarf (Fig. 5).  Various Classwork and other work-in-progress was shown - Sylvia's portrait of her nieces (Fig. 6), Susan's work from online classes (Fig. 7-9).  Members, Dot, Jerry and Kathy showed classwork from a Shibori workshop with Debby Maddy (Fig. 10-14).

Susie Monday Design Exercise                    Fig. 1

Positive/Negative Space              Fig. 2

Classwork-Dot Collins                              Fig. 3

Classwork-Dot Collins           Fig. 4

Thread Trash Scarf-Connie                        Fig. 5

Work in Progress-Sylvia                            Fig. 6

Classwork in Progress-Susan                       Fig. 7

Classwork-Susan                                            Fig.8

Classwork-Susan                                  Fig. 9

Fig. 10

Fig. 11

Fig. 12

Fig. 13

Fig. 14