Complex Cloth Club Chrstmas Party

We had one of the smallest turn outs for our annual Christmas Party this year but we still had lots of food, fun and conversation! Back row starting from the left is: Karen, Carol, Mary, Marty; front row left is: Joyce, me and Elsie.

Here's Jocye knitting away even after drinking a margarita! And this is Karen modeling a felted scarf Mary made.
















All in all we had a nice afternoon...well, with the exception of missing the wonderful soup that Mary made!! Seems Mary spilled the soup under her car seat shortly after she left her house!! I don't think any of us will be riding with her in the near future!!!

Making Paste Papers

Our CCC fiber group met on Thursday and we played around making 'paste papers'. That's ok..I didn't know what these were either! One of our members who teaches every art technique you can think of did a demo and brought most of the supplies need for us to each make some of these great papers. I'm posting a video at the end of this post which shows Joetta's hands at work! You basically use a print paste mixture; add pastels if you want; cover with acrylic paints and have fun!
The paper above is one Joetta made and used to cover a book with. She also teaches book making and I'm not talking about your paper bag books! Joetta makes books from leather and her own papers that are fabulous!

Here are some of our papers drying. Joetta's are all the larger pieces at the top. The rest of us worked in smaller sizes but I think they all turned out great. It was a fun evening and learning something new is always entertaining.
Today is Nick's 1st Communion and we'll be heading out soon to attend the service. It's decent out so far with temp in the low 50's and sun is out. So hard to believe these kids are getting older! Kayla is already 20, Ian will be 15 in May, Amber 12 in Aug. and Nick will be 8 in Sept. Yikes!!!

Poetry Challenge Art Work

The Happy CCC Fiber Group

Front row starting on the left: Elsie, Michelle & Joyce
Back row starting on the left: Me, Karen, Carol, Debra & Chris

A talented group for sure and we had lots of food and inspiration to keep us talking for several hours! We were missing a few members due to other commitments, but we did SKYPE our member who now lives in Italy, Lois Ann! LA sent me her Inspired by the Masters - Van Gogh piece. Isn't it beautiful!!!
LA is so, so talented and she just had 11 of her art pieces on exhibit in Italy! She also does beautiful watercolor cards which she's going to be selling soon. You can see some of her pieces on my blog post here. I'll make sure to have the link to her Etsy shop when she is up and running which should be after the 1st of the year.

Now onto our 2010 CCC Challenge. This piece is by Mary (she wasn't able to attend our party). It was actually a picture of her Inspired by the Masters - Van Gogh art quilt (which is currently on exhibit) that she adhered to a large cardboard piece.
Mary placed the poem on the back of the cardboard in the leaves of the tree. Very clever and her actual quilt is beautiful! It's currently on exhibit with the rest of our exhibit.
This piece is by Michelle (my margarita friend!)! She had this dyed, muslin piece from one of our past dye camps and said she had the piece finished within a few weeks after the announced 2010 theme!
I had to show the back of Michelle's piece as well. Very nice job. Her poem was written by Mattie Stepanek. If you don't know about this young man, read about him here. Most libraries have some of his writings..check them out.
This piece is by Karen! And the most interesting thing about her piece is she made it yesterday morning before she came to the party!! It's based on the poem 'The Duel' by Eugene Field. OK, so I was raised in a cave and I didn't know of this poem but several others did! Talk about feeling like an outcast! geezzz Anyway, Karen did a great job..it was SO cute! And actually a lot of work to do that morning! Each section was attached to 8 1/2" X 11" cardboard.

This is my piece based on a poem about butterflies (author unknown). I quilted the piece (8"x8"); then attached with hand stitching onto a gallery wrap canvas; rolled acrylic paint over the piece; painted the butterfly and extended painting leaves outside the piece; printed the poem onto Extraganza then attached w/ gel medium to the bottom of the canvas.

This piece is by Carol! She's been taking an online watercolor class by Jane LaFazio on Joggles.com. Her piece was around 5" x 7" and very nicely done. She has several layers of tracing paper/tissue paper for the lettering.

This was a journal size quilt done by Debra. I won't say much more about this piece but will send you to her web site here instead. Some of you may recognize Debra's stunning work and winning quilts! Her piece was based on a poem 'Bird of Paradise'. This piece looks like a photo doesn't it.

Joyce's piece was based on....Mary Had A Little Lamb. It was actually a basket as you can see here. So much work involved in this! And so clever!!

Our challenge this year was so unique, we were unable to vote on the winner as we've done in the past. So, we put all the entries in a box and Elsie drew the winning name. Our winner was, TADA..Chris!! Now the sad part is I didn't get a picture of Chris' quilt! Yes, I got sidetracked yakking! It was really nice with pieces of pages from a book and quilted. I asked Chris to send me a picture and I'll make sure to post it. Chris was the one who gave us the suggestion for this year's challenge. She also won the book, Taking Flight:Inspiration and Techniques to Give Your Creative Spirit Wings by Kelly Rae Roberts for her entry.
So that was our challenge for this year. Michelle gave us some 'inspiration' by providing cardboard tri-fold pieces for next year's challenge! That should work out to be another interesting and unique challenge. So now to watch our beloved LIONS!!!

The tree is up

The tree is up....

The fireplace is on...

Now just waiting for friends to sit and enjoy each others company!

Our annual CCC Fiber group Christmas Party is today. I'm all ready and just sitting here with the dogs (Cody came over to visit for an hour or two). This is our last get-together for the year so it's always a relaxing time with food, drink, conversation and of course show & tell! We also have a yearly challenge and this year is no different. The challenge is to make an art piece based on a poem. I know there are going to be lots of different techniques and I can't wait to see what everyone did. I'll post pics tomorrow before the Lions play of course!
And, yes, those are golf clubs beside the fireplace. Our downstairs family room is decorated in golf items Bob has collected over the years. Those particular clubs in the picture are quite old and I believe are made of wood. I leave a lot of the golf items up as that's our room and I don't mind mixing Christmas with our hobbies. Heck, my quilts are hung all over the house!