Reed and Green Wreaths

Almost forty wreaths in three hours!  Karen, Mary and Ellen had their hands full at Golden Abby and Indigo Nursing facilities.  The tables were laden with three kinds of fake candy canes, pudgy Santas and reindeers, flashy snowmen and women plus skiers, skaters and dancers.  There were poinsettias, tinsel drapes, golden beads, shinny snowballs and golden bells that actually rang. 

And the playmates had a delightful time picking out just the right pieces for their own wreaths for their doors or inside their rooms. The wreaths were supplied by the artists and Pioneer Fiber Arts Guild donations.  The supplies came from our closets, were bought at the Neighborhood Center and Goodwill, or were donated by friends.  Lots of fun took place just finding the items to use!

We can’t show the people at Indigo but do feature some of their creations.  They are wonderful to play with and most appreciative of any projects we bring to them.  Golden Abby fills the front room with many members either working or waiting to work or just looking at what’s happening.  We can’t say we have favorites anywhere, but the Golden Abby people are almost like family!

We found a new friend at Indigo. She and her niece and grandnieces played with us in the spring while their loved one was napping.  This time she stayed long enough to finish a wreath and to find out about our program.  So some days we might also have Dorothy playing with us!  Thanks for the offer – it’s a great ministry!  We do the work and get all the joy!

Here are some of  the playmates creations….

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Fairgreen Fiber Art Wreaths

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It’s an art project I’ve been playing with for two years…take small pieces of fabric and stick them to Styrofoam with chop sticks.  I thought it was something that almost anyone could do but I’m not the type to sit around cutting squares of fabric so we never did try the project out. 

However, yesterday we spent 3 hours making 40 wreaths in two facilities that took a lot of one-on-one work and frankly, I was worn out. So last night I pulled out a bag of 2.5″ quilt squares that Linda Matthews had recently donated.  I took a foam “wreath” and started poking in pieces of fabric.  Before long, I knew we had today’s project!  It’s simple, fun, no frustration level, yet it takes dexterity, coordination, a level of color planning and a sense of fun.  I was afraid it would take 2 hours or more to finish each wreath, but the playmates understood the procedure and were off to finish their wreaths as quick as they could.  Laurel didn’t like the randomness of the color squares so on her wreath she only used clusters of lavenders, blues, pinks and a dash of yellow.  She tried several bows on it but decided in the end that it looked great without one.  We all applauded her work which looked like a wreath of hydrangeas.

Bob was enticed to play by my statement that “even an engineer could do this” while I trolled the sitting room for playmates. He had a good time telling us about his life while he filled in the blank spaces on his wreath and said at least it wasn’t as hard to do as welding was! 

 Meanwhile, our constant playmates Maxine, Mary and Betty worked on their wreaths and had a good time.  Maxine couldn’t wait to show her mama what she’d done and thought maybe she might teach mama how to do it. 

Lois is  a day visitor at Fairgreen and this was her first time playing with us.  She  said she fell last year when Mr. Spanish Moss grabbed her and tossed her to the ground.  Now her children won’t let her stay home alone.  After her time with us, she decided Fairgreen wasn’t too bad a place to spend an afternoon. 

It was a pleasure to work with today’s playmates, and share lots of laughs along with funny stories and good art.  Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

November Holiday Projects

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To get items done by the holidays, we adjusted our calendars and did Christmas wreaths, cards and other items in November.  After all of us hunting through thrift stores in vain, Ellen went to the Neighborhood Center and was able to purchase a plethora of holiday items for $20 not put out on the shelves yet.  Now we know that being early doesn’t always get the worm but it does pay to visit friends where they work!

As you can see from the photos, there were plenty of items available to play with and small wreaths were decorated with many items.  We also were gifted with a box of colorful cardstock cut to card-size along with many printed and stamped papers as well as homemade papers.  We added our own card cutouts, decorator papers and pretty cancelled stamps to the collection and soon had what we referred to as the “card sweat shop” as playmates produced many cards from the wonderful supplies.

Thank you Barbara Charest, Joan Williams, The Neighbor Center, Pioneer Fiber Arts Guild  and others in helping us bring these wonderful gifts to the playmates.

October colors

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We started out with plans to do printing with the playmates but they were horrified when they saw me painting the colored silk leaves with inks.  They watched for a few minutes and then said, “We’d rather use the leaves as they are and glue them on the paper,” so the project to print was quickly abandoned.  Instead, the residents made beautiful cards and door hangings. 

They were right. The silk leaves were too beautiful to ink up.

September Chalk Art

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September’s project was working with chalk on black paper mimicking the school-house feel of September for the playmates.  When first suggested, there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm for “chalk drawing” but once those soft-as-pastel sticks touched the paper and left tracks of color that was almost three dimensional, the volunteers and playmates were delighted. The chalk is very old and was donated by a member of the Pioneer Fiber Arts Guild which has been wonderful by supplying us with various items as well as money when needed for a special project.

The playmates drew objects and flowers as well as designs and a few portraits.  For those who had trouble starting a drawing,   we drew a scribble of enclosing shapes and showed them how to make different patterns in the shapes to create textured blocks.  Between the textures and the glowing colors, they produced many beautiful art works. This helped them learn that they didn’t have to “know” how to draw to create lovely art. Late in the week, I took the design I was doing and added fringe like a rug.  I held it up and said, “I went to the thrift shop and bought this rug which turned out to be a flying rug and…..” and handed it to the person next to me.  She quickly caught on and added to the story and the “rug” flew around the table on different adventures till it came around to the person on the other side of me. She said, “and Mary visited all the national parks in America,” to which I replied, “That’s exactly what I want to do!”

While at the Riviera, we also brought out the drums and other percussion instruments to play some rhythms with them going from a slow beat to a very fast one.  By the time we finished, the blood was pumping and everyone was charged up!  It’s great fun and easy aerobics!