Friday, June 13, 2014

Creative Friday

Periodically my FiberWorks group will have a little workshop at one of our Friday meetings where a member will share some special skill or talent. We have covered ice-dyeing (Andrea), Geli plates (Paula), zip-lock bag fabric dyeing (me), paper art (Gwen), two types of Kumihimo (Barbara), and needle felting (Carolyn and Paula).


Last summer Paula and I spent five glorious days at a Shibori workshop with Jan Meyers-Newbury and today we gave a mini (two hour) workshop/demonstration of some of the techniques we learned.
Paula came up with the brilliant idea of having everyone do a mini pole scrunch in a tennis ball can. We sat them in red Solo cups to stabilize the cans, filled with two cups of soda ash/salt solution and some navy blue dye.  Members took home the fabric in the cans to batch and wash out later.



We showed several ways to fold and clamp and had an array of clamping supplies for them to use.  Here they are busy at work. These were put into zip-lock bags, again with two cups of soda ash solution and navy blue dye, also to be taken home to batch and then wash.

We briefly demonstrated how to pole wrap on larger poles on the diagonal, straight, folded, string wrapped, rope scrunched and others.  We showed examples of some of what we had done in class.  Stitched resist was also covered with examples shown and brief explanations.

Beth was so kind to let us use her big unfinished basement.  It was great spot to work, with large sliding glass doors to let in light.  She had plenty of plastic covered tables, extra lamps and a nice deep sink.  And we had a delicious spread of goodies upstairs to enjoy before and after the workshop. This is the second time she had hosted us for a messy workshop.  Thank you, Beth!

I think everyone enjoyed it and many were excited to go home and try some on their own.  They promised to bring their finished works to the next meeting.



Paula also had some very exciting Show and Tell.  She is so very talented.  She bought these plain canvas shoes at Walmart's for a pittance and turned them into masterpieces that she is shipping to family members today.  Aren't they fabulous?!


Hand painted.  My size, but alas, she had to ship them off.

Marks made with a Sharpie

Another fabulous design

These are child sized and she used the wrong end of a paint brush to make the dots with acrylic paint.



3 comments:

andrea@danglingthreads.com said...

Looks like you all had lots of fun...Fridays just aren't the same in Pennsylvania...miss you all lots.

Cindy Green said...

Yes, what a lot of fun! The shoes are incredible! Talk about making a silk purse out of a sows ear!

Hilary Florence said...

I love the fabric of Jan Meyers-Newbury and I love shibori. I haven't got around to doing any myself yet, but it is definitely on that 'to do' list (along with ice-dyeing). What a wonderful 5 days that workshop must have been. How much fabric did you come away with and what have you done with it?