Focus Fiber Art Meeting

I was asked a few weeks ago to send some information to J. C. Campbell Folk School for them to post on their Blog. (http://blog.folkschool.org) Just went to the site and see that it is posted. Have a look.

Yesterday Focus held it's monthly meeting and invited three guest. Donna Barnhill, Sybrina Myers and Sibil Radius. We met in Moore, SC at the home of Veronica Moriarty. Many of the Focus members brought finished pieces that we had made in order to show our guest how we work. Several of us brought works in progress and the guest brought pieces of their work to show as well.

Focus is not a structured group, we meet around 9:30 and start with FOOD.

After that we get down to business with Show and Tell. We often bring work in progress, especially if we have questions. Yesterday I brought this piece.

If you read the previous post "Play Date" this is the piece for which I was working on the border. Barb Tennyson, who always has such good suggestions, thought I should add a smoky/blue piping just before the binding. I had planned to add piping there but was going to use the light brown. I have lots of work to do on this but came away with some good ideas.

Sabrina Myers brought several interesting pieces.

Sabrina's son, who is an aspiring artist, helps his Mom out with suggestions from time to time.

More of Sabrina's art work. I admire an artist who can work both in realism and abstraction. Wish I could do that.

Barb brought this piece that was a Focus challenge several years ago. We had a photograph, taken by Pat Kilberg, at the old Pickens Railroad Yard. We could use anything in the photo as inspirations. Barb took individual sections and separated them into blocks. On Barb's morning walks she is always picking up (art scraps, such as metal nuts) she used some of these in the art work. Barb says she is always finding nuts and wonders where the bolts are.

Over twenty years ago Barb cut out these pieces of wool from old skirts and silks from ties. She's just getting around to piecing them for a bed quilt. This may be a record for UFO's.

Barb makes the most wonderful shadow boxes. These usually consist of water, fish and rocks. This little miniature has a dragon fly on a twig as well. Everything but the box is fabric or covered in fabric. Most amazing!

Marge Edie also brought her railroad piece. Marge used a very interesting technique on the construction of this piece. I will be discussing this later in a post for HiFiber. Marge is a planner, she knows design, color, fabric etc. before she starts a piece. Because she wanted to make sure the fabrics she had chosen was going to work she made a small piece first and then the larger piece.

We have watched this piece grow during our Focus meetings. Marge is such a wonderful technician. This piece is so full of various size diamonds and she is machine piecing them. This is going to be a king size quilt. I am in awe.

Too much happened yesterday to get in one post more to come.