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Archive for the ‘Columbia FiberArts Guild’ Category

Heidi Leugers – Zero-Waste Artist

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

Heidi Leugers is an artist who was way ahead of the times. She decided to have a zero waste business in 1998. But perhaps, once you have taken the leap from finance to graduate school in Renaissance portraiture, recycling wool is not so extraordinary!

Heidi moved from the northeast to the northwest around the time that I was president of Columbia Fiberarts Guild. I remember her first visit when she stood and told us about her zero waste work. I did not realize how devoted she was to this ethos until I saw her work on display and she had visuals to show what she does. You can see the felted ball with the opening in the photo above. It is filled with the scraps from that result when she is cutting up the felt to make her designs.

Here is her manifesto:

Here is some more of her work. She recycles hundreds of pounds of post-consumer goods every year. She also works with virgin wool.

Pin cushions:

 

A kit for making a floppy trivet.

Tree garland made from recycled waste.

Heidi’s sheep are breed specific – not sure which one this is.

Yesterday, she was member in the spotlight and then taught a class after the meeting.

You can see more about Heidi on her website. This link will take you to a video that was done about her reclaimed wool work when she lived in the Northeast.      Reclaimed Wool

I hope you enjoyed the photos of Heidi and hearing about one of the pioneers of reclaimed wool art. She plans to open an online shop soon.

Getting That Holiday Spirit

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

Some of my readers have wondered if I was OK. I have just been very busy. Last night we had a party for one of our priests from Trinity who is retiring. She has been with the cathedral for 18 years. Mr C was on the commission that worked with her. We had a sit down dinner for 20 people. Here are the plates!

Mr C and I worked very hard for a few days getting the house spiffy and decorated. I made chicken breasts stuffed with spinach and goat cheese, salad and brown rice. The rest of the food was pot luck.

Today, I had back to back meetings  — Columbia Fiberarts Guild in the morning and SAQA in the afternoon. I am just about done in tonight.

I got my Christmas present to myself yesterday — a 50 mm lens for my new Nikon camera. I am loving playing with it. It is the lens that Steph uses in her work, and I now see why she uses it so much.

Here are some photos that I have taken so far.

The pretty morning sky:

The Scooter Man:

And some of our Christmas decor.

The tree lights detail:

The tree without lights turned on.

This last photo was not taken with the new lens. It is Scooter impersonating one of Santa’s reindeer. He had a good time at the party last night and got lots of loving from every one.

Tomorrow, I am going to do a profile of one of our guild members who does felting. She has had a manifesto of no waste since the late 1990’s. I think you will enjoy hearing about her work and seeing what she produces.

Duh!

Friday, July 29th, 2011

This is my Felted Fantasy which I have been working frantically to finish. My guild, Columbia Fiber Arts, has been asked to do a special exhibit at the APWQ show in Tacoma next month. We were asked in part because we are guild that embraces all the fiber arts, not just quilting. With that in mind, I wanted to enter some non-quilted work. I have really enjoyed doing felted work with some embellishments. I made 12 of these pieces in a rainbow of colors.

When I did the Twelve by Twelve piece, I used a silk organza for the background — the color was similar to colors in the felted pieces.

I got it into my mind that I needed to do the silk organza background so I went looking for something neutral that would work with all the color. I ended up with a goldish yellow. I was stitching the felted pieces on to the background and ick! It was not working.

So, I decided to give up. I didn’t see how I could find a new background to show off the felted pieces. I had my duh moment after I went to bed and was drifting off to sleep. It was so obvious — all those colors needed black to set them off. I found a piece of black felt and then fused the pieces and voila!

Here are some of the individual pieces. I was rushing to get this turned in so some of my photos are pretty blurry.

I know many of you probably think I have lost my marbles with these pieces, but I so love making them. I almost can’t stop once I get going. After the show, I plan to mount them individually for sale.

The other piece that I entered is the painted silk water piece that was in the SDA Member’s show.

The deck is almost finished. We will be moving back the furniture this week-end and I will get some photos taken. I will be doing some housecleaning this week-end as I am hosting the guild new and old board meeting luncheon on Monday.

This and That

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

These are three of the quilts that Jane Sassaman brought with her for her lecture at Columbia Fiberarts Guild tonight. She is so talented and a genuinely funny woman. We had such a great time hearing her artistic journey. Here is a bad iPhone photo that I took before the meeting.

Before the lecture, we had a SAQA gathering for dinner and lots of chatter. Here are Terry Grant and Suzy Bates waiting for the guild meeting to start. I will be seeing them tomorrow morning for STASH. It is my quilting friends week!

I finished cleaning up my studio and office. Now, I need to have some inspiration strike. I need to get a studio practice going once again. I have been in a slump. Wish me luck!! It would help if I stayed home. LOL!

Life’s a Beach

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

And a bitch! The early morning burglar struck again. This time he got my purse. I had to spend Tuesday from 4 in the morning until I went to bed, recreating my life and preventing the theft of my identity — driver’s license, checking account, credit cards, etc. And, yes, he/she got the new electronics. The insurance company is not happy with us and I can’t blame them. I have been so vigilant about locking the back door without any help from anyone else who lives here. Monday night, I was exhausted from the week-end festivities and getting up early to get Lisa to the airport. I went to bed early and forgot my routine of hiding my purse and locking the door.

In all of our other recent houses the garage was connected to the house so if the garage door was shut, we didn’t worry about the back door into the house. Here, it is detached and there in lies the problem.

Yesterday, we had a state of the art alarm system installed which we can put on a timer. It makes a very irritating and loud sound when the house is entered and the alarm is set. The police are also notified. I hope this works. Enough is enough.

Wednesday, I left for Seaside, on the Oregon Coast with my STASH friends. The houses we stayed in are next door to each other and on the promenade, a walk way the goes for a couple of miles along the ocean front.  So we had beautiful views of the ocean. The views included copious amounts of rain and some sun breaks — all beautiful. The photo at the beginning was our first day. That evening we had a brief respite from the rain and had a sunset.

Thursday morning, the rain stayed away for awhile and people headed out to walk. You can see a couple with their black labs in this scene.

To the left, we could see Tillamook Head. We drove up there in the afternoon. There are some gorgeous homes and a hiking trail.

On Thursday night we drove up to Astoria for dinner at a Bosnian restaurant. The food was great. As we left, we could see another beautiful sunset.

The six of us had such a fantastic time. We visited a wonderful quilt shop in Canon Beach. We sat around and gossiped and did hand stitching. Terry finished fusing her next Twelve by Twelve quilt. On Thursday night, we played Apples to Apples accompanied by a couple of bottles of wine and much hilarity. It was all very therapeutic for me.

Today, I helped with the Columbia Fiberarts Guild booth at The Gathering of the Guilds at the Convention Center. We were rented space from the Handweavers. There was so much beautiful stuff — glass, beads, metal work and ceramics, in addition to the fiber stuff. I had sold a couple of shibori scarves by the time I left today.

 

So, now you know why I have not blogged this week. I hope you are having a nice week-end. It is really beautiful here in Portland.