LFAG March Meeting

 The Lakeshore Fiber Arts Guild presents “A Brief History of Underwear,” a presentation by Suzanne Eberle, Professor of Art History at Kendall College of Art & Design in Grand Rapids, on Wed., March 5, at the Holland Area Arts Council, 150 East 8^th St., Holland, MI 49423, starting at 6:30pm. Door opens at 6pm. Nonmembers and guests are asked to donate $5 toward speaker’s fees. 

Eberle describes her talk: “Underwear can add a soft layer of comfort and warmth to our daily dress.  But historically underwear also protected expensive outer fashions and, most importantly, shaped both male and female bodies into culturally acceptable ideal figures.” Join us for a fascinating look at the history of under garments by Prof. Eberle whose speciality areas are modern and contemporary art, with an emphasis on historical issues relating to the body, including the history of fashion.

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 lakeshorefiberartsguild.blogspot.com or contact jgould@JenniferGouldDesigns.com or 616-878-1526.

Arashi Shibori Swatches

Here's an image of the fabric that Pris Lynch ironed and photographed for our MLH swatches.  Looks really neat!

Dyeing the MLH Swatches: Arashi Shibori with Priscilla Lynch

Pris Lynch shows us the color of the
fabric/dye we'll be using.

Each guild that belongs to the Michigan League of Handweavers donates swatches to an annual swatch collection every 6 years or so, and our turn came up this year.  So, because we don't do much weaving like the other 20 or so guilds, one of our members who is an expert at dyeing and using the Japanese shibori technique of arashi (pole wrapped resist), Priscilla Lynch, led us through the dyeing process at our Feb. 5 meeting.  It took her a lot of months of preplanning to get everything decided on how we would do this in one evening, but not only did we dye enough cotton fabric for swatches, a number of members got to dye their own fabric.  We used a technique which gives a diagonal and very organic looking random striping for the arashi shibori.

The fabric was cut into long strips, sewn into tubes (for horizontal stripes) or for diagonal stripes, one corner was turned down along the opposite edge into a triangle, and sewing the tube/seam began at that point and continued along the edges creating a spiral tube.  Results of the dyeing will be another post soon!

Sue Vegter stands with pole that has
fabric tube pushed down into pleats
and ready for the dye bath.

Poles with fabric in buckets of dye.

Buckets and poles all lined up on
plastic ready for dyeing session.

Pris showed us this piece of fabric on which she had first dyed horizontal stripes; then cut the fabric and redyed the pieces the opposite way for a very dynamic and unusual look.

Guild Challenge Results

In November we handed out brown paper lunch bags to those who wanted to accept the challenge of creating a piece out of 5 items in a bag brought to the December meeting with final pieces due at the February meeting.  Since the winter has been so brutal and awful here in West Michigan this year, we didn't have a January meeting and so while our fabric was dyeing in the buckets for the MLH swatches (see previous post), we had time to look at everyone's pieces.  Not everyone was able to make it to the meeting but seven of us were there.  Here are the results:

Jennifer Gould's "Flower Seed Packet Book" of items
from Alexa Urquhart (dark forest green sweatshirt
fabric, green heathered paper cards, her fused lamp-
work beads, copper metallic cord, and blue seed
beads, and copper seed beads.

The full length of
the accordion
book opened.

A sample of work done in order to test out how to make the book.

The copper metallic cord is encased in freeform machine
embroidery of ferns (done on Solvy water soluble
stabilizer and Solvy Heat Away) along with Alexa's own
fused glass beads as seeds/fruit, and then wrapped around
book to close it.

Barbara Norlin made a doll from Jennifer
Gould's printed pink lame (dress),
upholstery fringe (hair), postage stamps
(eyes),  flower rosettes of pink thread warp
and printed/painted paper towels (shoes).

Here's what Barb started out with.

Jeannie Emery made a container for
sewing tools from Barb Norlin's items:
beads, fabric printed with zebras (from
DeVos Children's Hospital caps), buttons.

The surprize on the inside of the l id is the pin cushion
attached inside so that scissors, etc., can be laid on the lid.

Zebra fabric is the surprise bottom.

Jonetta tried hard NOT to make something functional
but this beautiful handbag resulted from Pris Lynch's items.

Jonetta worked with wet felted and shibori dyed wool, beads,
yarn, and lace.

Inside is the lace made into a pocket just for her cell phone
so it won't roll around in the bottom.

Pris Lynch worked with Wendy Rice's items to create
a book cover for her drawing journal: printed fabric
was hand stitched, UltraSuede was used as the book
over edge, yarn was unraveled to create a furry
adornment between the suede and fabric, cording
keeps the book closed, and the beads created a
book mark string.

Wendy Rice worked with Jonetta Brown's collection
of many different kinds of fabric.  Cutting the fabrics into
strips and weaving them into a colored warp created her
beautiful hallmark "mug rugs."

Sue Vegter worked with Arlene Tiemeyer's collection of
fabric, buttons, yarn, and pink Chinese frog closure to
create a pillow with cats and wild stitching.