FASTURN

Do you know what FASTURN is? When I first moved to southern Oregon I kept driving past this building and had no clue what it was all about.

The signs in front said SEWING, QUILTING, CLASSES and STRIPPERS WANTED. "What is this FASTURN place?" I asked myself.
It took awhile before I found out. But when I finally got around to going there, I knew I had found a new sewing home and community. Fasturn (http://fasturn.net/) is the manufacturer of one of the top twenty five sewing notions of all time. They produce all sizes of metal tube turners. I can't tell you the number of times I've sewn a skinny strip, attached the safety pin to the end and then struggled to turn that darn thing. When I saw that tool, I was thanking the universe!
But I was more thankful for finding this wonderful welcoming place. They offered open sewing (just come and sew!!!) every Friday and this sounded great to me. Living in my little mobile that happened to be torn apart with remodeling just didn't offer me the sewing time and space that I needed, so an open door session with other like-minded sewers sounded fantastic to me.
I've met a wonderful group of fun, talented and generous sewers. Everyone comes with their own agenda, maybe to make a bag, a table runner, a quilt, or a machine-embroidery project. For me, I was there to work on a "diamond" quilt that I started at a class on Quadra Island in September.I had hand-dyed the fifteen pieces for this quilt, and the 60 degree "stance" of this quilt really challenged my mind. But there was help and support surrounding me at FASTURN.

Open-sewing on Friday is not the only thing happening at FASTURN. There are classes held frequently throughout the month, and the facility is the home to the local faction of the American Sewing Guild. One corner holds shelves of folded yardage, batting, and hanging close-by are a number of completed quilt tops. In the midst of this area is a long-arm quilter, where ASG members take turns to put together quilts for local charities. And let's not forget the shop full of beautiful fabrics and notions (not to forget FASTURN products), and unbelievable samples that have been made up by the friendly staff. It's a great place and I thank the universe that I found it!

MATERIAL GIRLS

It was a bit of a blustery November day and with my friend Corrine visiting while on her yearly sojourn from Refuge Cove to Long Beach, we felt it was the perfect day to take a drive up to Shady Cove for a quilt show.

I had heard about this show, sponsored by the local guild Material Girls, from Christine who had a booth there to sell her beautiful hand-dyes. It was great to see her there midst all the amazing, very organic, screened prints that she and Cynthia have produced over the last year or so.

The show had some beautiful quilts, both big and small, traditional and whimsical, and a great collection of hospital quilts made by this active group of women. Corrine and I both enjoyed our visit to Shady Cove.

We topped off that event with wine tasting in Ashland. What a fun, blustery November day!

RETHINK EVERYTHING

This was the graffiti message that I saw on my recent drive from Refuge Cove to Oregon. Long hours of endless miles, passing streams of traffic, shopping malls galore, listening to NPR and my favorite music: the message of RETHINK EVERYTHING really jumped out at me.  My next quilt journal with the theme of “TEXT” had some content here.

What do I think needs rethinking? Our polarizing politics, overbearing religion, our endless consumption of stuff, stifling immigration policies, how we prioritize the environment, education, our out of control health care, are just a few items (not to mention the American tendency to get involved in way too many foreign situations). Even though I live in countries other than my own (United States), I still pay close attention and am very concerned about the activities of the US. Yes, Mexico and Canada certainly have their share of problems too, but the US just seems so CRAZY these days.  The problems we face are endless and I believe we need some major mind shifting, rather than the same-old, same-old ways of doing things, before we can make any sense out of our mess.

The bottom line for me is that this all seems so out of control, and I am once again reminded that my little world is all I have any impact on. My quilt journal for this month reminds ME of that message FOR MYSELF. Thus, my new favorite mantra is RETHINK EVERYTHING (rivaling my new favorite bumper sticker: DON’T BELIEVE EVERYHTING YOU THINK). On this personal level, it’s a call to challenge the beliefs that no longer serve me.

For construction, I chose to continue with a diamond pattern that I was using for a quilt, yet on a smaller scale. This diamond piece was certainly a thinking challenge for me, and I was hoping that making a small piece would help me with the larger quilt. When everything that is normally straightforward (90 degrees, etc.), is now cocked to a 60 degree angle, it can really mess up your mind (at least it did mine), so here was another situation where I had to rethink everything. I was hoping to have a full rectangle to work with, but my planning was poor and I ended up short. I added an oval frame which solved my problem. I then stitched in my words. I thought I had planned it well, but quickly ran out of room at the end and had to squeeze in my last letters. I bleached out my letters and the border and added tiny buttons for accent. I was hoping to find some in brown, beige or gray, but the store was out so, rethinking it, I settled for blue.

SCREENING

Now in Oregon, I have pick of activities to choose from: classes, groups, sessions and workshops, all fabric related of course. I'm like a kid in a candy store. Today's item on the agenda: screening with Christine. Once my neighbor in Alaska who I taught to dye, she now is my southern Oregon neighbor who has pursued this craft to the "nth" degree. She always has something new to show me.

This year it's screening. You know, like silk screening, but with a twist.

She set up the screens a few days ago with a thick layer of print paste and then imbedded all sorts of textured objects into the paste and let it dry. We pulled off the objects and were left with our screen for printing. The hardened paste was a dark color and I chose a ruddy brown as my printing color.

On the screen, the wet began to break down the dry and the pattern emerged onto my fabric as I sqee-jeed across the screen. I filled up my meter of soda-ashed cotton and set it aside to cure.

But there was more to show me. She pulled out her collection of textured goodies and high-density foam roller and set to demonstrating how to put these beautiful textures onto fabric. Not only could we place the texture under the fabric while rolling on top, but also roll over the texture with the high density foam and capture the pattern for a quick transfer. I loved every minute of this process and my mind started reeling with possibilities. I went on to try a few stencil transfers and of coursed watched Christine with her creations too.

At the end of our session we set up the screens with more print paste and a new texture design. They will take a day or two to harden and be ready for more printing.

Now curing, the fabrics will be ready for adding a background color in a day or two. For now, I am searching out online silkscreen frames to haul to Mexico to continue the fun down there. Muchas gracias, Christine.

ANOTHER JOURNAL PIECE: A FAVORITE THING

If by chance I find myself in the Seattle area, the region of my birth and upbringing, I am always hoping for a clear day in which to view Mt. Rainier. I am consistently awestruck at the sight of this majestic mountain. It truly takes my breath away. I am taken back to an infantile state, subconsciously a small child, feeling the emotional power of this iconic giant.

I not only grew up with Mt. Rainier at my doorstep, but also spent my summers during my college years there, working at Paradise Inn. My father worked there when he was that age too. First a maid, then a waitress, I worked hard during my shifts and took to the hills on my off hours. Four times I climbed to the top, and on that last ascent I was part of a research crew who spent an entire week living at the 14,000+ foot summit. On our last day there, we were overtaken by an electrical storm which really made things interesting. We tried to descend the mountain but our fillings (in our teeth) and pack frames were buzzing, and the lightning was feeling way too close for comfort. Back up we climbed to wait it out for another few hours inside a snow cave.
My last adventurous experience with Rainier was in 1980. I had been hired for the upcoming summer, so I was heading to the mountain for a training session on an early May morning. The closer I got to the park entrance, the darker the sky became, and then a dusting of something snow-like started to fall from the sky.  Darker and darker, with dust now billowing up around  the few cars as they motored along, I knew something was happening, but had no idea what it was. I arrived at Longmire, half way into the park and was pulled over by the ranger. Mt. St. Helens had just erupted, and all cars were detained there until the situation could be assessed. For four or five hours, we watched the sky turn pitch black, the air turn thick with ash and collect on the roads in a 6” blanket.  Slowly the light returned and we were allowed to leave, but only back to where we came from. My job was put on hold that summer, and I never returned to work there again. The next year I left the area, and since then my experiences with Mt. Rainier have either been from an airplane or from the highway, a long distance away.

Sometimes when I am mulling over ideas for a journal quilt, I gather possibilities for not only what I want to do, but also for what is possible. For example, with “favorite things”, I was leaning toward books or maps. That is, until I was looking through a tub of odds and ends and came across a scarf/handkerchief of Mt. Rainier. I can’t remember where it came from, maybe a second hand shop or a leftover at a laundromat, but there it was, reminding me of its importance in my life (and a bit map-like too!). So I simply sliced it up, added a border and called it good.  

SUMMER JOURNALING

Summer of 2011...it's been a good one. Lots of company, fishing, gardening, hiking, rain (early on), and sun (in September). The harvest was good to us. Refuge Cove once again comes through!
My creative juices were at a standstill this summer. At first I was worried, but now see my hiatus as a needed break.
Last week I conquered three journal quilts, long overdue!

#1 Prairie - Since I have never been to the prairies, I was a bit stumped at how to interpret this theme. But I have lived in a number of places that I have described to others as "Little House on the Prairie" type settings, and a wood cookstove has been a part of a few of them. ('Tis the simple life for me.) This was another bleach study, this time piecing together oddball pieces, dyeing this patchwork black, then stitching in the woodstove and bleaching out parts of it with Softscrub.

#2 Hallelujah - This is my interpretation of a U-Tube of K.D. Lang singing "Hallelujah". Beautiful song, amazing stage, but my internet connection was uncooperative that night and all I could watch was about 10 seconds at a time. I watched frozen scenes of lights on the stage, and decided I would try to capture that. I pieced together blues with white elements in them, then stitched in concentric circles with lines and bleached out sections. I was pleased with how this turned out as it truly was only an idea in my head.

#3 A Thin Green Line - This came out of no where, or maybe it was from my box of scraps that I was rummaging through one night. First I found the hand and the rest just followed. Yes there's some bleaching here: the hand, the forks, the lettering. I really love playing with bleach over patches of color. I was hoping that the vertical yellow would bleach out white, but it decided to blend in with the rest of the utensil.

MINI RETREAT

Two days away from home, hosted in a lovely setting on Quadra Island, with the focus being FABRIC...what more could I ask for? I left my family behind and my day-to-day chores to join my two friends, Terry (our hostess) and Ellen, for what we called our mini-retreat. I packed my tub with dyes, white fabric, stamps, and a collection of embellishment tools with the idea of creating fabric pieces in both new and tried-and-true methods.

Terry's new home, not yet completed to the stage of being move-in ready, was perfect for the 3 of us. Downstairs was our makeshift studio and upstairs were our living quarters. Her husband helped to rig up a hot and cold water sink, complete with a 5-gallon bucket underneath as our drainage system.

We busily tried a number of methods: wheat paste cracking, stamping and making stamps, carving stamps out of styrofoam trays, palette dyeing and folding. Using wheat paste was a new one for me. The sun cooperated by drying out the pasted fabric quickly, then I gently crushed it to get the "cracked" look. I painted over it with thickened dye to fill in the cracks. My results showed that I should have been more aggressive with my crushing, so I went ahead and tried it again. Terry drew a lovely picture into her wheat paste AND pressed lace into it which produced amazing results. This is one method I will definitely try again.

We stopped in time to spruce ourselves up a bit for a lovely dinner at the Heriot Bay Inn. What a treat to go out to dinner with friends.
Sunday was another day of more of the same. By day's end I was exhausted, but filled with a much needed burst of creative energy. We vowed to make it an annual event.