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.