Annual Beach Retreat

I belong to a small group called STASH (some Thursday at somebody's house) sometimes, THE GRATEFUL THREAD sometimes and just THE GROUP most of the time. (It has taken us a long time to settle on a name.) We usually plan a retreat weekend in the late winter or early spring. This last weekend we went to Oceanside, Oregon and rented this house.

Last year when I blogged about getting ready to go to the beach with my quilting friends, Gerrie wrote in a comment:

"One of my fave activities, getting away with my quilting friends. Can I come next time?"

Well, what do you know? Since that comment over a year ago, Gerrie has moved to Portland, joined the group and yes, came to the retreat. Can you say, "life of the party"?

She spied the crab hat hanging in the hallway of the beach house and modeled it for us.

The house was very comfortable and had several nice quilts and other artwork hanging throughout. We especially loved the mosaiced glass window and the "Be nice . . ." sign over the back door.

The window seat was a favorite spot for handwork and enjoying the view outdoors. We could even see the ocean through a little opening in the trees.

Beth had expressed interest in making a house similar to one I made in January. So I brought some patterns I made for whomever wanted to try making one. Beth and I each worked on a little house. Mine are the orange parts on the right. Beth chose a great stone fabric for her little house.

We sewed, we laughed, we ate (very well), we shopped and had ice cream for lunch and visited the Latimer Quilt museum. We all posed for a group shot before we left on Sunday.

Left to right: Linda, Gale, Gerrie, Beth, Reva, Terry. We miss Terri who moved to Washington D.C. and Kathie who is now an editor for American Quilter, but are so pleased that Gerrie and Reva, also a newcomer from California, have joined us. I love this group.

You can read and see more pictures of our weekend at Gerrie's blog.

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A Walk on the Beach

You never know what the weather will be like on the Oregon Coast, but we lucked into a beautiful weekend and enjoyed a couple of great walks on the beach.

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I am finally mailing the Valentines and little quilt to people who won my Blog #300 celebration drawing. There are a couple of you who haven't emailed me a mailing address. I still have your Valentines and will send them if you send me your address.

We meet the Metolius River

When we left Black Butte Ranch Friday morning to head home from our retreat, we took a small detour off the main road to see the head of the Metolius River. Gerrie had been told she should go there since we were in the area, so we were all game. We parked at the information area. It was a fairly short walk through the ponderosa pines down to where the river emerges from the earth. The day was beautiful and the soft sunlight filtering through the dense forest took the edge off the chilly mountain air.

The Metolius comes out of the ground as springs in the dark area of the photo below, and quickly widens into a river that bubbles over rocks and winds into the forest.

From there we drove a few miles to the little community of Camp Sherman where the river rolls through. Here is the the Camp Sherman store. We bought supplies for a picnic for further down the road. It is a charming little store that is well equipped and has a large section of fishing supplies in the back.

From in front of the store you see beautiful cabins along the river.

We were all so enchanted by this little piece of paradise that we decided to check into renting a cabin here for our next retreat.

I love these yearly retreats. Now I am home, and glad to be, but grateful for that time with my friends and change of scene. I think we all need that.

PS  For those who are curious about such things, the white flowering bushes in the river photos are Syringa, also called Mock Orange, which is a wild relative of lilac. Also the state flower of Idaho. The tall trees are Ponderosa Pine, which are very fragrant, beautiful trees with an unusual patterned bark. The plant in the store photo with the red-tinged leaves and yellow blossoms is Oregon Grape, the state flower of Oregon.

In the Woods

Late yesterday I got home from three days with my friends at our yearly STASH retreat. This year we went back to the house at Black Butte Ranch where we were a couple years ago. I organized a surface design project for us just so we would not feel too relaxed! We experimented with paste resist on fabric, which we then painted. It was a good kind of project for a several day long retreat since there are steps that require drying time between. We could do step 1, then leave it to dry and go off on some adventure of sightseeing, or shopping or eating. Eating was big.


Step one: Mix up paste and spread it on fabric in a thin layer. We used a combination of rice flour and wheat flour. Some were left with a simple paste layer, others we marked into the paste with various tools. The unmarked pieces will, with any luck, become allover crackle patterns.

Suzy, Gale and Gerrie here, spreading the pancake batter-ish goo on their fabric. Then we took them out to the deck and spread them out to dry and went off to the Black Butte Lodge for an incredible dinner with the sun setting behind the view of spectacular mountains, lake, golf course and ponderosa pines. A couple of the group with foot surgery and medical issues drove to the Lodge and the rest of us walked. The walk was beautiful, but our memories were faulty concerning how far it was, plus we were confused about walking to a different restaurant two years ago that was a much shorter walk, so we were quite late for our reservation and dragging our butts by the time we finally arrived, but were soon refreshed by wine and really just wonderfully memorable food and good conversation and lots of laughing.

Step two: The next morning we "cracked" our dry pasted fabrics, then painted over the tops with acrylic and fabric paints—the plan being that the paint seeps into the cracks and marks onto the fabric and the rest of the fabric is protected from the paint by the paste resist.

 

Reva and Beth are painting over the dried paste resist.

Again, we spread them out on the sunny deck to dry and headed into Bend for another adventure. We found Starbucks and then a beautiful quilt shop that we had never been to before. We were happy to leave a few dollars at Quiltworks and bring home some beautiful fabrics and threads. Our lunch at the Pine Tavern turned into a marathon. We waited for more than an hour for our food, but it was outstanding once it arrived and they apologized for the delay with complimentary desserts. Again, plenty of good, often hilarious conversation. We do the eating/conversation part so well!

Step three: When we got back to Black Butte our creations were dry and we began the arduous task of cracking and scraping the dried paste off our fabrics. The paste can be removed more easily by soaking the piece in water overnight and then washing the remaining paste out, but we did not want to make a big gooey mess in the rental house or try to dispose of all that gummy, sticky wet paste. And—we wanted to be able to see what our fabrics looked like before we left. So we scraped with a spoon and picked with our fingers and revealed at least some of each piece to admire. Soaking and finishing will happen back home.

Here are areas with resist removed.

Pretty great, huh? It was fun and exciting to see the results. I think we all got a lot of ideas about how to improve the process and inspiration to try variations. Can't wait to see what we do with these fabrics.

It was a great getaway with friends—wine, good food, laughs, stories, games of Draw Something and Mexican Train and the beauty of the pines and the aspens and the mountains of the High Desert country of Oregon.

I feel refreshed.

Cracked!

Last week I proposed to the STASH group that when we go on our annual retreat next month that we do a surface design project. I suggested flour paste resist on fabrics, which we have discussed before as something we wanted to try. Our retreat will give us the time to work through the process with plenty of drying time between steps. I volunteered to coordinate the project so I have been doing some experimenting to narrow down our options.

Here is my first experiment:

I have done resist dyeing using wheat flour and wondered if rice flour might yield different and interesting results. I found several recipes online. The first one I tried involved cooking the rice flour with water until it boiled and thickened. I spread it on a couple of pieces of white fabric. The first, above, I did nothing to. The second, below, I used a bamboo skewer to draw in the wet paste. Then I let both pieces dry thoroughly.

When they were dry I scrunched each one up to crack the paste, then I painted a layer of acrylic paint over one side and let it dry. When the paint was dry I washed out the rice paste. The results were pretty disappointing. Neither developed an interesting crack pattern, though the one with the scratched away pattern did show the pattern. My assessment was that the cooked rice paste spread too thin and penetrated the fabric too much to allow for good cracks.

Next I mixed the rice flour with water to form a paste and did not cook it. The paste went on thicker and began to crack as it dried. Here's a closeup of one little section of the fabric with the dried rice paste.

Once it was really dry I painted this piece with acrylic paint and let it dry.

When the paint was very dry I washed the rice paste out of the fabric. The paint that was sitting on top of the rice paste also washed away. The paint that seeped into the cracks left a wonderful pattern on the fabric.

This is what I was hoping for! Love those crackles.

Closeup view.

Cracked: the secret sauce

Continuing with my flour paste resist experiments. I  tried both wheat flour and rice flour. They were different, and each had strong points and weak points. This time around I tried a mixture of both rice and wheat flours in equal quantities.

I pawed through my stash and found this lovely piece of fabric. I don't know where it came from—perhaps one of my dyeing or painting experiments, or perhaps something I bought.

It is laying on my painting board. I had a good feeling about this round.

I glooped on my mixture of half rice flour, half wheat flour, mixed with enough water to make it about the consistency of pancake batter.

Using my small squeegee, it spread nicely and did not pull up in sections like the rice flour paste did.

I let it dry for about ten minutes until it would hold a line when I marked into it with a bamboo skewer.

I let this dry well, cracked it a bit and then painted it and let it dry. It dried with some dimension as the all-rice paste had and was nearly as easy to remove as the rice paste. I removed most of the paste dry. Here it is with most of the paste removed. I really love it.

I will let it cure a bit, heat set the paint and then wash out the residue of the paste. This is my favorite. The combination of rice and wheat flour had the best properties of both—the spreadability and elasticity of the wheat flour paste and the bolder pattern and easier to remove qualities of the rice flour paste. I will take both kinds of flour to our retreat and let my friends choose. I will certainly recommend the mix.

Answering some comments:

1. In response to Gerrie, who commented that thickened dye might work better. (Unfortunately I deleted her comment accidentally—one of the hazards of moderating comments on my iPhone) Back in my batik days I used dyes with flour paste resist and they worked great! For this project I was looking for a way to achieve good results on our retreat without the mess and longer process of dyeing. With the exception of the paint that I diluted too much, I am pretty happy with what can be done with paint.

2.  Del wondered why I was using acrylic paint instead of dye or fabric paints. Regarding dye, see above. Regarding acrylic paint—fabric paints are acrylic paints. Fabric paints supposedly have some additives that keep them softer than traditional acrylics. I have both and mix and interchange them without noticeable differences. The paints I used for these experiments include both.

3. Jean S. suggested a bench scraper would be a larger working scraper than a credit card for removing the dried paste from the fabric. Since fabric is not a solid surface for scraping and dried paste is not as malleable as greasy goo, the scraping process is a little different. I found that even my credit card was a little too large to work very efficiently and the best tool that I finally settled on was a spoon, using the edge to scrape. It is a matter of finding something that will catch the edges of the cracked surface and pop those pieces off the fabric. Most tutorials and instructions I found recommended soaking the pasted fabric in water and scrubbing the softened paste off. I tried that and it was icky messy and difficult to get it out of the fabric once it was wet and sticky. The rice flour does not stick as tightly as the wheat flour, so it is relatively easy to crack off most of the dried paste, then scrape off the more persistent chunks.

Going to Ground

The internet is a mixed blessing. I often wonder what my life would have been like if it had come along earlier. The internet—it works really well for me! I joined the cyber world in 1993 when I got an email account and discovered the online quilting world. I have established, for myself, a whole community of quilters and fiber artists that have meant the world to me. And it is a blessing that I can't even fathom sometimes.

And still, there are times when it gets too noisy for me and I have to pull back. It's not you, internet, it's me. I posted something on the QuiltArt list a week or so ago about how I missed some of the great interactions that seemed to happen in the early days of the list and how lately it seemed to be more about self-promotion and less about art talk and sharing of ideas. And it's true I think. Sometimes the Me, Me, Me of the messages and  competitive nature of a lot of the posts gets me down and I just want to back away for awhile, hide out and do my own work. I don't need to know what I should be doing. I just need to do what I do.

Anyway, just as I was feeling all this I got an email from someone who had read my post and wanted to take it on. She disagreed. About everything I said. And didn't I think this and didn't I think that?  And weren't there different paths to enlightenment (yes, she really said that) and so wasn't her opinion as good as mine and couldn't we all be artists in our own way and who needed an education or any discipline when we could just all be artists in whatever way works for us. And really, my post she was reacting to was just about missing the really good discussions we used to have and my observation that no one wanted to talk about how to improve and grow as an artist, or discuss someone else's art besides our own, seemingly not interested in serious art talk in favor of promoting one's new video or what show they were accepted for. Her email made me tired. And a little sad. I did my best to respond, assuring her that I wasn't picking on her, I was just expressing a viewpoint. And she responded again, with more questions and challenges, apparently in the belief that we now have a dialog going. Sigh.

So I retreat. I painted cabinets in the new studio. I actually started a new small piece in the old, chaotic and messy studio. But it felt good to fiddle with the fabric and work on this Steller's Jay.

So, if you don't see me on the internet, know I am in need of a little break, keeping my opinions to myself, and I am busy in the real world for a bit.

Label

I am at the finishing up stage with several quilts for shows. One needs to be mailed off soon. This is the part of the process that is not that interesting. I got the hanging sleeves sewn on while on retreat last week. The last step is labels on the back. Some quiltmakers and artists make very decorative, elaborate labels. I don't. I tend to do one of two things—print on pre-treated fabric with my inkjet printer, or hand write a label using a permanent pen. I kind of prefer hand writing the labels, but sometimes they are pretty sloppy looking. It is hard to judge spacing, etc, when writing on fabric. Today I made a label and had an idea for making a hand done label a little neater.

I set up the information on my computer. I used InDesign, but one could easily do the same thing in Word. I centered the text, made the elements the sizes I wanted, adjusted the spacing and chose a neat, simple font, then printed it on paper. I cut a piece of fabric slightly larger than the finished label, pressed it flat and lay it on top of the paper label. I used a couple pieces of tape to keep it in place. Then I put the parts on my light table, so the printing showed through the fabric and carefully traced it with a fine tip permanent pen.

I touched it up a bit, thickening and darkening the letters, then I ironed a piece of fusible web (Wonder Under®) on the back and trimmed the label to size. Then I fused it to the back of my quilt.

 

Here it is, ready to go. And yes, I am just paranoid enough that I obscured my address in the photo. It is readable on the actual label.

Central Oregon

The STASH group went to Black Butte Ranch this week for our annual retreat. For quite a few years we have gone to the beach, but back when we first started "retreating" we went to Redmond, Oregon where my friend and one-time relative (she was once married to my cousin) Jeanine ran a fishing lodge on a bluff overlooking the Deschutes River. Jeanine is a trained chef and she fed us the most divine meals and the views from the great room and deck were spectacular. She and Dick, her husband, burned out on the lodging business and moved to The Dalles, so those wonderful retreats became a fond memory. While I enjoy the beach, I am, at heart, a mountain girl and thought it would be fun to head east again. The rest of the group was game and we easily located a house to rent at the Black Butte ranch resort.

We left the dark and stormy Willamette Valley hoping for better weather on the other side of the mountains.

At the top of the Santiam Pass we found snow. This area was burned in a huge forest fire several years ago, thus all the black trees. We arrived at the ranch in the late afternoon and found our little cottage in the woods.

Very pleasant and comfortable. Over the next two days we relaxed, did handwork, talked, laughed, read, ate, drank, savored the pine-scented air and filled our eyes with the beauty that surrounded us. On Thursday we drove into the little town of Sisters, visited the famous Stitchin' Post Quilt Shop, found ice cream and wandered the boardwalks of the kitschy, but certainly charming, wild west movie-set-like town.

The first evening we decided to walk the mile or so to the golf course restaurant. The weather was cloudy, but pleasant and it felt great to be outdoors. Gerrie took this picture of me taking pictures. Beth and Reva are up ahead.

I took pictures, but Gerrie took many more than I did, with her fancy new camera. She got some great photos that you can see on her Flickr site here.  Here are a few of my pictures.

It was a wonderful three days. I look forward to this time with my friends all year. I even got a little work done.

Hanging sleeves hand-sewn onto three quilts.