Join us from 9:30 a.m. to noon on June 7, 2025, at the Goleta Community Center! Visiting artist, Lucy Arai, will present a historical overview and share contemporary applications of the traditional art of Japanese Sashiko, including examples of her own works on paper. We’ve reserved the larger space at Goleta Community Center so we can extend a wide welcome to others in the community who wish to learn about sashiko. Feel free to invite your (non-member) friends.
Category Archives: Guild Meeting
April Meeting
We will hear from Guild member, Agnes Petruska, who received a Guild scholarship to attend a weaving workshop in Hungary last summer. Agnes will share photos and samples from the work she did and talk about traditional Hungarian weaving and embroidery.
Goleta Community Center, 5679 Hollister Avenue, 9:30 am meeting, 10:00 am call to order.
March guild meeting: The Red Dress
We will gather together at the Goleta Valley Community Center on March 1st, for a Zoom presentation with British artist Kirstie Macleod. She conceived of a project with an expansive vision, involving skilled artists from around the world who each contributed their embroidery skills to execute her award-winning global collaborative embroidery project. In the artist’s own words she says:
“Initially the project sought to generate a dialogue of identity through embroidery, uniting people around the world across borders and boundaries. However, over the 14 years it was created, The Red Dress also became a platform for self- expression and an opportunity for, often marginalized, voices to be amplified and heard, initiating vital dialogues on important and frequently uncomfortable issues.”
Stitch Circles
Continuing from our January meeting! Do you have progress to share on a piece you brought?
If you missed the January meeting, bring a project to work on at the meeting. Come with technical questions and we will match you with someone who has a skill to share; Come with an unfinished project that needs the input of others and you will find willing thought partners for an exchange of ideas to help you move to the next level with your project.
And you may find that you have unused materials at home that someone else could use for their project. Bring those materials with you to the February meeting and see if they are useful to others. Let’s see if this process over the course of a month or so can help us feel more connected, renewed in our excitement about fiber arts, and recommitted to making the Fiber Arts Guild a place for the exchange of ideas, materials and techniques.
We’re meeting at the Goleta Community Center; 9:30 am meet, 10:00 am call to order.
December guild meeting
We will be meeting on December 7th for a presentation on laking by Anna Bower, as well as some hands-on time afterward! Following Anna’s presentation, we will be having a potluck. Please RSVP for the potluck by emailing Robin or SBFAG1 @gmail.com. Bring brunch foods to share, and plan on labeling common allergens.
Introduction to Lake Pigments with Anna Bower
Have you ever wondered if there was a use for your leftover dye baths? Rather than pouring this precious liquid down the drain, you can “lake” your dyes and turn them into an insoluble, shelf-stable form. Lake pigments can be used to make watercolor, gouache (opaque watercolor), oil paint, tempera, ink, pastels, crayons, or for any other application with dried pigments such as paper marbling. Join Anna at our December meeting for a lake-making lesson and a chance to mull pigments prepared from the Guild’s 2024 Dye Day into watercolors.
Anna is the Assistant Curator of Living Collections at Ganna Walska Lotusland where she maintains records for all living plants on the property and runs the onsite nursery. She also tends a community garden plot filled with a variety of dye plants and a few vegetables.
September Guild Meeting – Dye Day share!
Gather for our monthly meeting to share results from our natural dye day. We can be inspired and learn from each other’s work. Meet at our usual place at the Goleta Community Center at 5679 Hollister Avenue! We’ll also have our ‘un-raffle’ and snacks!
August Meeting is our Annual Natural Dye Day
This members’ only meeting will be at Tucker’s Grove Park on August 3rd.
Details will be emailed to all members who are signed up (there is a space limit for our site at the park) but plan to spend the day 9-3 outside under the shade of the oak trees. There will be multiple dye vats going, indigo, weld, cochineal, mushroom and red onion skins. This is always a fun event!
The photo above is from the 2023 Faulkner Library Group Show and is a compilation of dye samples created by members over the past two years’ Dye Days.
July Guild Meeting – the 13th !!
Guild member, Annie Guillemette, will give a presentation on embroidery on Saturday, July 13th, at the next Fiber Arts Guild meeting. Annie will share her knowledge of embroidery through a power point presentation that will survey a range of embroidery skills and designs including her own work. She also plans to teach some basic skills and give members an opportunity to begin a hands on project. Annie will supply needles and some materials but feel free to bring your own embroidery supplies.
We will be meeting in Room 7 at the Goleta Community Center, 5679 Hollister Ave, Goleta, CA.
June 1st Guild Meeting is a Get Together and Share
Goleta Community Center, 5679 Hollister Ave, Goleta – Room 7
9:30 social, 10:00 Meeting and Presentation
CHANGE OF TOPIC!!! Unfortunately Jan has fallen ill and has to cancel her talk. She will reschedule when she is better. Jan was going to speak about Chumash Basketry and we look forward to her recovery! Check back on coming events for a new date currently TBD.
June 1, 2024 – Guild BYO (bring your own) Multi-crafts Get Together. Goleta Community
Center, 5679 Hollister Ave., Room 7. 9:30 Gather, 10:00 meeting call to order.
In the meantime, this Saturday’s meeting will be devoted to working together on portable crafts that you bring, and sharing our work and about ourselves, as well as Show and Tell and the Un-Raffle table
May 4th Guild Meeting
LEARN, SHARE, CREATE, INSPIRE
Enthusiasm could be felt in the room during our April meeting. I was glad to see so many people engaged at their tables in creative exploration. Building on that enthusiasm for creative exploration, in this next meeting we will be dipping into the talent bank of our guild membership. A number of guild members will share their expertise in certain techniques and lead a small creative activity or exercise at each of five stations/tables. Join us! Try something new, perfect a skill, or get questions answered by an expert – OK, so none of us are comfortable calling ourselves an expert, but we all have certain talents in which we excel and those among us who excel at a skill will share that talent with the rest of us. (Laurie Gross-Schaefer, Programs Chair)
Stations:
1) Tim Cardy – knitting
2) Julia Ford – rope making
3) Krista Rhodes – spinning
4) Linda Kollofski – eco printing
5) Lorelyn Eaves – embroidery
You will choose your own path next Saturday when we meet. Begin at one station and move on to another or stay in one spot the whole time, it is up to you. We hope to create an environment in which you will learn, share, create, and inspire.
We will meet at our new location in the Goleta Valley Community Center at 5679 Hollister Ave, Cafeteria Room (look for signs!). (9:30 social, 10:00 business then CREATE!).