Looking back
Last day of 2018 I’m looking back at photos and recalling what I experimented with in the field of dyeing and painting fabric. One of my favorites is the plunge into ice dyeing. There are no “ugly” results and I love to pull out the …
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A Tribute to Pearl
My grandmother, a farmer’s wife, did needlework of some kind every evening. She kept a basket of embroidery by her rocking chair along with a hand-made bag of crochet or tatting thread complete with mail order patterns ready to be worked into doilies or edgings …
Pear profiles
Using Linda Ambrosini’s pattern to have some fun with different fabrics and textures as well as quilting designs. Her pattern reminded me of a design I did for a college art class using blue apples. I may have to create or re-create that design in fabric. Value and repetition we’re the two design elements I focused on although we were always graded on all the elements and principles. Though it’s been almost 50 years since my original design done in paper I can still recall it quite clearly!!! Wonder what grade I received.
Art Nouveau Poppies
Art Nouveau Poppy I have long admired the poppy. The graceful stems that hold that bright red flower have led me to acquire fabrics that include a poppy motif, to hone in on photos of quilts as I search internet sources, and to admire those …
Remembering
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place, and in the sky, The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard among the guns below.” My first memories of poppies (the Oriental Poppy) relate to the border along …
Ice Dyeing, New Addiction
I didn’t have to wait for the weather to turn cold to try ice dyeing but that is what happened and now I wonder why on earth I kept putting off trying it!!! While the ice was melting I kept tabs on the process and began fearing the worst—pastel colors, not enough dye, too much dye, totally muddied colors. Usually I dye with the primary colors in my own mixes but for this I wanted some autumn colors so chose chocolate brown, honey mustard, soft orange, light red and granny apple green.
Ice dyeing is not for those who want/need complete control of the outcome. I was blown away by the final product and totally love it.
As soon as the icemaker catches up I will be doing another batch. I put in my order for some additional pre-mixed colors so will wait for that delivery. NO, I won’t wait!! The icemaker has generated enough ice and the new colors won’t be in for another week so will just have to go with what I have and I’ll wager that the results will once again be spectacular. The down side is that I don’t know if I can cut up these luscious fabric creations.
Sunflowers
Take one dyed vintage linen towel, post it on the design wall for deliberation while other projects are worked on, see a bench pillow at Hickory Stick, dig out some sunflower fabric from #$&+ years ago and, voila, another project is born.
Just Peachy
I have been resisting the urge to get back to my fabric dyeing but today I could resist no longer. The creative urge won! I had my color choices in mind, again drawing from nature. The Calhoun peaches first came to mind but at a …
A Fun Marbling Class
It’s always fun for me to learn and to fine tune techniques and skills that can be used in art quilts. Today it was all about trying different manipulations of paint on the viscose surface of a carrageenan and water mixture and then transferring to fabric or paper. These photos show the steps to a final design but I could have been happy transferring to fabric after the first manipulation of paint. What a versatile technique!
Remembering Linen Towels
Remember those linen towels picked up as souvenirs from your travels? I pick them up in “trash” boxes at auctions, dye them in appropriate or related color schemes and then……And then they become something stitched, like this tote bag. What fun!!