A Learning Experience

  A couple of days ago during the late evening before it became nighttime light I pulled out some of my fabrics.  It was also somewhat overcast with a slight threat of rain!   I set them up, set up the camera on the tripod and quickly started snapping.  This is the result of that "photo session".  I was rather pleased as the colors looked the same in the pictures as the fabrics do in real life.  Previously pictures that I had taken were in bright sunny daylight and always trying to remember not to cast a shadow on the subject. So I will have to remember to take my shots in overcast type lighting.
  All of these fabrics are 100% cotton and hand dyed by myself.  The method used to obtain this patten is called arashi, which translates to storm.  Fabric is wrapped around a pole, scrunched up and dipped in a dye bath.  I can be a little time consuming but it is well worth the effort.  

Look closely and you'll see ...

Well the day lilies have come and gone in my yard but, if you look close enough you can see that the weeds are flowering!  Thank goodness for the weeds, what would we do without them.  I'm not sure what this tiny blue flower is called but it is only about a quarter of an inch across and very delicate on a tall, thin stalk.

Indigo Moon (renamed)

This is a favorite of mine.  It is dyed in my own indigo vats and machine stitched and quilted.  The design is hand stitched onto a blank fabric and pulled very tightly.  The area that does not receive any of the dye is "capped" off with plastic wrap and also tied very securely so that no dye seeps into that area.  Indigo dyeing is very interesting to watch as the items being dyed come out a very saturated emerald green and change to the familiar indigo blue as the oxidation process occurs.  It is also a very time consuming process as the indigo dye builds upon itself, so the more times that a particular item is immersed into the dye vat the deeper the blue color result.

Memorial Day, May 31, 2010

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.   The Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln - November 19, 1863  Remember all those who have given all for the freedoms we all share here in this great land of ours.   Photo above is a view from the Lincoln Memorial overlooking the reflecting pool in Washington, D.C. The reflecting pool is surrounded by various monuments  dedicated to the men and women who served our country.

Artichoke Heaven

This small machine quilted piece is created using the Rozome (row-zoh-may) resist method.  Using molten wax to draw the design onto fabric, in this case cotton.  Allowing the wax to cool and harden creates a barrier for dye medium.  This was my first attempt at this method.  The areas that I was not dyeing were covered over to avoid spilling drops of unwanted dye in them.  This piece has been sitting waiting for some attention for some time as it was stowed away in a box of other items waiting to be completed.  Now it is done, maybe . . .  I think. Anyhow, it is finished with a binding of my own hand dyed cotton and a purchased yellow ticking for the backing.  It measures approximately eleven inches square.  The swirls are yellow beads.  The artichoke seems to me to be floating - therefore the title of the piece - "Artichoke Heaven".

Water, water everywhere" and "Sunset in the Tropics"

     So with all the recent flooding in large parts of the United States, including areas like my own that don't normally flood, I remember that I had another unfinished object sitting in wait for a finishing touch and a title.  Well it came to me and now I am ready to complete "Water, water everywhere" and "Sunset in the Tropics".  They are two pieces that are strips of cool and warm colored fabrics that I thought looked good together.  The strips are random widths and they are sewn together at random as well.

      "Water, water everywhere" has a soothing feel to it - quite the opposite of what many people are feeling right now considering that some of them have lost everything.  While "Sunset in the Tropics" is warm and relaxing - can you see your feet at the end of the lounger that you are laying in?  Sipping something with an umbrella and ice in it?

  The photo on top is "Water, Water Everywhere".  The one on the bottom is "Sunset in the Tropics"

Spring is here!

and here's the proof .....

Happy St. Patrick's Day

There's a little bit of green everywhere - all you have to do is look around you. Happy St. Patrick's Day.