Making A Piano Hinged Book

– The Lakeshore Fiber Arts Guild’s next program meeting is on Wed., January 3, featuring Alice Breese on “Making A Piano Hinged Book,” at the Holland Area Arts Council, 150 East 8^th 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.  

Holland resident Alice Breese is a charter member of the Lakeshore Fiber Arts Guild (1979) and has been making handmade paper for over 30 years.  A former member of the long ago Black River Gallery artists’ cooperative, she created vessels, torsos, fish and masks for her annual shows.  Her work is owned by many West Michigan residents as well as having a torso in the permanent collection of the Holland Area Arts Council.

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. 

The list of supplies will be posted next week.  Should be a great project.

Holiday Party and Ornament Exchange

We jumped right into all the great food members brought for our Holiday Party.

                                            We certainly had a great variety. 

         We exchanged ornaments and techniques on making them.

 Priscilla received a special pin cushion made by Jeanne out of a sweater Priscilla started knitting and never finished.  Jeanne bought the sweater at our auction.

Show and Tell

Jonetta made this wonderfully designed piece with several techniques and lots of french knots.

Susan made this Stack the Deck quilt, great use of colors.

Jonetta used ink to embellish this box, and she felted the faces that live in the box.

Carol did quite a bit of experimenting with rust dyeing, using springs and nuts etc. 

Alexa is trying something new making barrettes out of fired copper.

Priscilla showed us several of her 12 quilts, one a month, each with a theme for an online class

she took from Elizabeth Barton.  Quite a committment.

The trees she did with rust.

Note the letters in the lighter stripes.  She printed these letters on fabric.

The following pictures are examples of the crafts that Martha brought back from Central Asia. The silk rug is beautiful.

Just to see the different examples of crafts in another country was great.  Thanks Martha for sharing. She spent several weeks in Turkmenistan and Ubekistan.

Ikat fabric

Silk Papers

Pottery bowls.

Dyeing with all Natural Substances

Sue Vegter gave a wonderful presentation sharing her knowledge and experience of items dyed with mushrooms, ferns, lichens, black walnuts, pokeberries, prickly pear cactus and many other natural items.

This is a sweater she is working on using all natural dyed yarns.  The colors just blend together.

Pieces of fabric that have been dyed.

Pokeberries give a beautiful reddish color but are not consistent from year to year. Which is true for any natural dye.

These strands of yarn have all been dyed with different mushrooms.

This is Sue with one of her dyed pieces of fabric. On to another fun phase, what to do with the dyed fabric?

Show and Tell

Priscilla is wearing a vest she felted to give a textured look to it. 

Above she is showing her Eco-Dyed pieces with different leaves, she does use a lot of Eucalyptus leaves though. The buttons on the jacket are a natural seed.

Carol is showing examples of yarn she dyed in a class using all natural dyes. Beautiful colors.

 Here we see the many expressions of Jeanne.



And below examples of the wonderful wool felted pincushions she is making and putting in fun, found objects.

Wendy made a purse that turns into a backpack.

This is an example of a book cover we will be making in January, taught by Alice.