2023-2024

2023/ 2024 Meeting Dates and Programs

May 7th Meeting

Our May meeting has you, our member, as the “star of the show”. Be prepared to ooooh and ahhhh over your colleagues’ beautiful works and interesting activities! Highlights include:

• WAGS Raw Silk Challenge,

• Art Quilt Pass the Envelope Challenge

• Traditional Show & Tell

• Other Passions

April 2nd Meeting

• Our April  presenter is Jennifer Sampou.

• Jennifer is a local gal that has family ties to The Cotton Patch in Lafayette. She does fabulous work with Ombre dyed fabrics.

• Jennifer will share a trunk show of her products and finished quilts, using these beautiful fabrics in various ways to enhance all designs.

March 5th Meeting

• Bethanne Nemesh will talk about Yarn Couching.

• Yarn Couching: Freemotion to Fine Art Pictorial yarn couching is a fast growing and creative art form! This one hour lecture is a dynamic presentation with a trunk show of yarn couched quilts and garments, combined with a digital presentation introducing the audience to the basics of freemotion machine yarn couching, tips, tricks, and uses.

• Beyond Bethanne’s wearable art, the audience will explore her use of yarn couching in upholstery, accessories, and sculpture.

February 6th Meeting

• Our speaker is Kena Tangi Dorsey. Kena shares her story about how she became obsessed and fell in love with quilting through her journey of being a Broadway stage actress to becoming a professional quilt artist. 

• She demonstrates through pictures and a slide show how her love for portrait quilting and the use of African Fabrics come together in her Art quilts and other projects.

January 2nd Meeting

• Kicking off our New Year, our January speaker, Vicki Assegued has a lecture called, "Taking our fabric beyond where we've been." 

• In this talk, she will share her ideas for stretching ourselves, as artists and makers, to go beyond what we usually do, and to explore new way to think about, and to do fiber art.

December 5th Meeting

• December is all about our members (no Speaker) so let everyone see what you have done for the Holidays! Don’t forget, this includes your mini challenge project pictures, as well as the usual categories. Let’s all share our 2023 joys, travails and successes.

November 7th Meeting

• Welcome to our guest speaker Hannah Carlson, Author of the new book - “POCKETS: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close.” 

• This is a fabulous insight into how “Pockets” carry so much more than than you think!

• Who knew the humble pocket could hold so much history? In this enthralling and always surprising account, Hannah Carlson turns the pocket inside out and out tumble pocket watches, coins, pistols, and a riveting centuries-long social and political history.

October 3rd Meeting

• For October, join us as we welcome Kassia St Clair, the British author of The Secret Lives of Color and The Golden Thread, to discover the hidden histories of five unusual shades. 

• This talk explores the power pigments and dyes have had in shaping human creativity, culture and even politics, from a green implicated in the death of Napoleon to the yellow beloved of Vincent Van Gogh via a purple made from sea snails. Add to your experience by grabbing a copy of her book, The Secret Lives of Color, prior to the October meeting.

September 5th Meeting

• The topic is "All About Fabric Dyeing" with Lynn Koolish.

• Lynn’s presentation is an overview of dyeing fabrics and fibers for quilting and other fiber arts. As a fabric dyer for over 20 years, Lynn presents a non-technical view of the dyeing process using hand dyed fabrics and fibers.

• She is a fiber artist, teacher, and author. She is most known for her bright colors of hand-dyed fabric and mixed-media fiber art. Based in Berkeley, CA, Lynn teaches online and in person throughout California and nationally. In her current work, Lynn uses her hand-painted and hand-dyed fabrics to create improvisationally designed and pieced art quilts. In her work, and her teaching, she always maintains a strong focus on applying basic design principles while maintaining the spontaneity of the improv process. Lynn was an editor at C&T Publishing for almost 20 years, working on books ranging from traditional piecing, applique, and embroidery to art quilting, inkjet printing on fabric and more. 

• She has written 5 books including Fast, Fun & Easy Fabric Dyeing, The Wonderful Colorful Wonder Wheel of Color (with Kerry Graham and Mary Wruck), Innovative Fabric Imagery for Quilts (with Cyndy Rymer), and More Photo Fun (with the Hewlett-Packard Company and Cyndy Rymer).

August 1st Meeting

• For the month of August, IT’S all about you!

So please, everyone, share your projects (complete and underway) along with your passions. Remember, it's ALL that you've done or been involved with that show your creative juices are flowing in all directions.

July 11th  Meeting

• Our speaker Bridget O'Flarety, comes to us from Canada. She will speak to us about Sustainability with all of our fabric projects, and what to do to make projects more Earth Friendly!

• Bridget is an avid quilter and textile enthusiast on a mission to blend creativity with sustainability. With a profound appreciation for the
  art of quilting and its environmental impact, Bridget captivates audiences with inspiring talks that explore the intersection of quilting, textiles, and sustainable practices. Through engaging discussions and practical insights, Bridget empowers quilters to embrace eco- friendly techniques and materials, enabling them to contribute to a more sustainable future, one stitch at a time.

June 6th Meeting

Bobbi Baugh (mixed media artist), will talk to us about the combining of fabric and paint to make art.

The following is a preview...

Work that is an invitation to see beyond the surface... What does that mean? It means that once upon a time, I was not a questioner. I have not always looked deeply at what was going on around me or inside of me. But life changes. Now, what is most interesting to me is what is not immediately visible. I am especially intrigued with seeing internal and external events in layers, and with depicting the internal and the external in a composition together.

When the subject matter is a person, my role is artist-as-storyteller. The story may involve dreams, memories, and states of being.

When the subject matter is the natural world, my role is artist-as-archaeologist: digging for things unseen to place alongside images of nature.

Mixed media artwork is the perfect vehicle for such explorations. There is a pleasing rhythm in monoprinting . And, through collage, rich textures and layers of paper and fabric emerge.