Bandon Art Retreat

Eight talented artists went to a textile art retreat, on the Oregon Coast. We stayed at the Retreat Center above Forget-Me-Knots Quilt Shop. I organized the event with our Fyber Cafe members. There was no organized program, just work on whatever you want to. I started out by setting up my painting area. I was going to work on Gelli Plate mono prints. I had an 8 x 10 Gelli Plate and an 8" round homemade gelatin plate. A bunch of new stencils were exciting me, and I played with some of them. I was not really happy with my results, my white acrylic was not opaque enough, and others were dried up and just did not want to print. I was frustrated with paints I think are just too old and cheap. I want to buy a better quality of paint, instead of the bottles of liquid acrylic. I had several different brands, and they just don't have enough pigments to cover well, when making multiple layers.

I did make about a dozen prints, and later went back and embellished these five with more stenciling and printing. They look ok now, with more layering.

My niece is pregnant and wanted a baby quilt with penguins, in black and white. Fortunately I already had flannel fabric with penguins, I was planning for a different project. The penguin fabric is quiet a large print, so instead of cutting it up, I made just a large panel. The panel is surrounded by black and white pinwheels. I was going to add a penguin border, but it is already large enough to fit my backing fabric, I will bind in it the gold color.

Needing another project, I went downstairs to the quilt shop and bought two sets of pre-cut hexagons. One is a Moda, spring prints collection, the other Moda's fall solids. They went really well together since it was the same manufacturer.

The hexies came with a plastic template, with holes in the quarter inch seam point on each corner. I made a small dot with a Pigma pen, then sewed by machine from point to point. They went together real well, I would only sew by machine hexies that are 4" or larger, these were six inches. However they are not really my colors, so I don't know what I am going to do with them. It only took me the afternoon, to put them all together.

After lunch at the Bandon Bakery of wonderful sandwiches on home made bread, 4 of us went on a road trip to the Langlois Wool Shoppe, about 15 minutes South of town. She has a great selection of fibers for needle felting and spinning. Lots of sample of needle felting too, in pictures and 3-D sculpture. I got a set of individual needles, and a couple of small packs of dyed wool. I have a lot of materials at home. Meredith bought some material for her granddaughter to play with.

Cheryl showed Annaka how to needle felt and after watching them for awhile I decided I wanted to make a rabbit. His head took the most work, and he is made with wool, then covered in a silver white angora rabbit fur.

He was lots of fun to make, but my hand started to cramp after holding the single needle for so long. But I did get him mostly finished, I want to add more angora to a couple of spots.

Cheryl was making little mouse baskets, for class samples.

Lorrie and I snuck away early one morning to go walk on the beach, the tide was out enough so we could walk all the way to the rocks at the South end of the beach, the weather was also beautiful, no fog! If you want to see what other members of Fyber Cafe made during the retreat, read their blog here. I am also linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" so click on the badge in the right hand column, to see what other talented artists are doing this week.