Friday, February 16, 2018

“Our Exquisite Pollution Through Papermaking” with Sandra Hansen







– The Lakeshore Fiber Arts Guild’s next program meeting is on Wed., March 7, featuring Sandra Hansen on “Our Exquisite Pollution Through Papermaking” at the Holland Area Arts Council, 150 East 8th St., Holland, MI 49423, starting promptly at 6:30pm with social time beginning at 6pm.  Guests are asked to pay $10 toward the speaker’s fee. (If the Holland Public Schools are closed due to bad weather that day, the meeting will be cancelled and rescheduled for the following Wednesday.)

Sandra Hansen’s art flows around the topic of water and plastics in the water. After becoming an Eco or environmental artist, she began making large scale papers in an ecologically sustainable way. Common motifs in her paper are waves, rivers, and bubbles. Sandra will bring a small papermaking set-up to show how she makes her unique paper which fuses natural and artificial materials together.

Sandra Hansen is an international, Environmental artist, optimist, and world traveler. She is the founder and CEO of Artists’ Cultural Exchange, a non-profit organization to bring artists of different nationalities together.  Her primary medium is paper making, but she also enjoys drawing with colored pencils and oil pastels.  She began making journals using her own art and handmade papers and other media on the covers, with handmade cotton papers from India inside.

The Lakeshore Fiber Arts Guild invites anyone interested in the textile fiber arts to their monthly program meetings held the first Wednesday of each month at the Holland Area Arts Council.  For more information, visit the guild’s blog at http://lakeshorefiberartsguild.blogspot.com or contact at jgould1526@gmail.com or 616-878-1526.


Sunday, February 11, 2018

Pam Crosby brings her Wardrobe of Serged Garments

The Urge to Serge is certainly an appropriate title for Pam Crosby and all the wonderful clothing items she brought to share with us.






Pam's pattern and fabric favorites are from: 
The Sewing Workshop
www.sewingworkshop.com

Cutting Line Designs
www.cuttinglinedesigns.com

Casual Elegance Fabric, Loes Hinse patterns
www.casualelegancefabric.com

She also buys fabric locally when she can, from Fields and
Fabrications.

Fabrications, great place for fabric and classes
http://www.fabricationsonline.com/


The following pictures show all the different types of fabrics she uses, while using only a few different patterns.







This lacy bottom was made by stitching around once with the knife engaged and then stitching around again with the knife disengaged.

This is a chain stitch trim, using 12 wt sulky in the looper and regular thread in the needle.
















A couple of the tips she gave us include, using 5 threads on the serger for most garments.  Pam uses 3-4 threads for t-shirts or heavier fabric. She uses a narrow 3 thread to finish the edges when she wants to make a seam to press open.  She uses the wide 3 thread on knits as it is a very stretchy seam.
Pam uses a flat locking technique on the serger to attach lace to a garment.
To attach elastic to the waist of pants or skirt, Pam seams the elastic together, opens the elastic seam, and attachs it to the right side of the pant with a normal zig zag on the sewing machine. She then flips to the wrong side and secures at each of 4 seams. She uses 1 1/2" elastic, a soft elastic but not non roll. She often buys the elastic from Louise Cutting or the Sewing Workshop.
Most of her hems she just folds up and stitches on a regular sewing machine.
It is important, especially with knits and slippery fabric, to test your machine on the fabric, adjust the tension if need be and then keep samples of what you did for next time.













Listening Intently

The Brown Bag Challenge

We each put 5 items in a bag and then randomly took home some one else's items to challenge ourselves to create something. Great challenge.


Jennifer from Jeanne

Alexa from Susan
Alexa from Susan


Sue from Jonetta


Sue from Jonetta

Pam from Sherry

Wendy From Jennifer

Susan from Alexa



Sue J. from Sue V.

Judy from Pam

Sherry from Judy


Show and Tell



Barbara is making adorable dolls for a charity overseas.


Judy made some wonderful handwoven towels

Wendy made this fabric Highland Cow for a present for her son.


Alexa has been very busy making smaller beads.