For those of us in Eastern Washington, the regional show at the Gallery in the Park in Richland, part of the Fiber Fusion SDA exhibit, is just around the corner. With the entry date in mid-April, we are feeling rushed. We are all excited about having a show of this quality make its first stop in the Tri-Cities in June. And since a number of the members of our group are new to surface design, we are excited that a component of the show is the regional, non-traveling, section that will not be subject to the rigid judging process. It will give those of us with less experience a chance to try our wings. We are fortunate that the Allied Arts Gallery in the Park will be large enough to accommodate all 25 of the regional designated pieces.

In the hopes that your group will get as excited as we in the South Central Group are about entering a piece in the regional part of the Fiber Fusion exhibit, I am sharing a few of our works “in progress.” Mardine Campbell has a beautiful piece of silk which she screen printed while still living in Florida. Mardine grew up here in Eastern Washington and says the colors remind her our beautiful sunsets. She intends to embellish the silk with beads, silk thread, stitching, and perhaps foil.

Barb Sherrill, who is retiring after having spent the last twenty years of her life supporting her family by selling her hand painted cottons and quilt patterns at quilt shows, now has time to use some of her unique hand-painted fabrics in stitched and embellished fabric collages. In the photo at right, it looks like the piece is almost complete, but everything is just pinned on for photo purposes.

Barb has two more pieces she is considering submitting.

Judy Rice, who is a master weaver as well as dyer, has several “in progress” pieces she is contemplating entering into the regional show. One is a tapestry, one is a weaving project, and one is a hand dyed piece using resist methods which she is in the process of embellishing.

For each Regional show that coincides with Fiber Fusion, there will be space for an estimated 25 pieces which will not travel. Those entering the Regional show will have to submit an entry form and a photo so that the galleries will know how many pieces to expect. The galleries may have different maximum sizes according to space available. If there are more pieces than the gallery has available space, some pieces will have to be excluded. There will be a panel of three which will review the submissions and exclude pieces, if that becomes necessary. Each entrant will be allowed to submit up to three pieces into the Regional show. The deadline for submitting into the Regional show will be after the deadline for the Traveling and Juried part of the show. It will be staggered according to the opening date of the specific gallery. As of this writing, the submission dates are as follows: Richland 4/15/16, Redmond 9/1/16 and Port Townsend and Everett 11/1/16. We hope you all will consider submitting pieces in the Regional show nearest you as well as the traveling show.

Make sure to check out the Fiber Fusion website at: http://www.sdafiberfusionshow.org/