switching gears smoothly

 I went out on the deck last night around 3am and caught two shooting stars scratch across the night sky like matches being struck. signs and portents.



While I was at HoAnn's yesterday couple of batik fat quarters leaped off the rack and grabbed me by the throat and forced me to used my coupons to spring them from the store.  I went there for a yard of white polar fleece and a giant cookie cutter and came home with degenerate cloth!

Once I came to my senses, I plunged them both in the black dyepot and later worked them over with softscrub. This morning it was evident that they take part in the WIP via the Machine now that I am confident that I can integrate both kinds of stitching in this one.

Now it's back to the dyepots - the humidity has lifted and the sun is hot - it's going to be a beautiful day and I want to wring the max out of it.

lashes

2:45am and I'm wide awake in anticipation of several hours worth of thunderstorms passing through the area.
 If I am tired enough, maybe I will sleep through them but I doubt it. The air is so thick outside that the freight train announcing itself in the distance sounds more like an ocean liner bellowing for a tug out past the lights of the harbor.

I've found a way to stitch many marks, bold enough and quickly enough to use on large pieces - this passage is roughly six inches across - was done with six strands of floss, doubled  in a split chain and then wrapped with the same 12 ply..it really sits up and signals.

I stitched this while listening to/watching an hours worth of  "America in Primetime" on PBS. A dialogue about the nature of storytelling. It has me thinking of ways to bring the sprawl of this piece under control, get it talking.

a mad hand

"Memory's Feast"  2009

I've been working on the large  black and white piece and find myself getting grumpy and unsatisfied with my hand stitching. Twice I've sewn long passages only to spend an hour picking the stitches out. Mulling it over, I looked back over some other pieces with hand stitching and found some reminders about Keeping Things Loose, Not Getting too Trixie and few other examples of the exuberant hand...hard to maintain when you are looking at Acres of work. Every day I have to take it out of the hoops and get it up onto the design wall to make sure that the stitching isn't getting too precious.  other lessons...don't forget the last minute shreds and white fleece makes great batting if you need it.

riot on the wall

yesterday's graduates...a cheeky lot. Now I'm not going to be able to sleep until I get them dancing.

gambol and cavort

 

 I think I need to find some real live baby goats to draw. Still pictures are just not helping. They move so fast and seem to be going in several directions all at the same time..capturing that kind of energy is going to take some first hand observation.

There are heaps of cloth to cull, iron and stow, more raw cloth steeping in the sauce and there are a bunch of deadlines for venues that I am going to have to get serious about.

So what did this slacker do with her enforced idle time?  Updated my "Buy Art" page since I'm getting a lot of traffic generated by the show.

and across the deck

color playing the boundary game. pieces poaching in the heat and humidity.

more B&Ws

Some B&W experiments this morning  didn't turn out as hoped. Too much dye creeping on dry cloth but still interesting.

And then discharging brings in a whole new way to look at things.

transparencies

four different weights of silk and two of cotton waiting to become transparent wisps of color...vinegar for the silks, soda ash for the cottons..



I'll leave them until tomorrow and tend to the batch from yesterday. It needs some TLC - Aquasafe, a gentle wash out and rinse, drying and ironing. Enough for one day.

remember that white linen dress with the little shell buttons on the bodice?

timewarping vintage cloth

A little research and I found that the Colombian Line operated between NY and Colon in the mid 30's.

This piece had a few holes and when I made the mistake of hanging it, the weight cause the wet cloth to tear in a few places. Tender as the night.


More tomorrow.

The new palette  has some surprises..

practicing for Los Dados

the cat house

After Friday night's excitement all I wanted to do this weekend was hide away and do the work - and so I did.

Had lot's of help in the studio. The words stitched into her quilt say "You can help by sleeping here"...of course it's the first time any cat has done what it was told since I made it five or six years ago.


She's being more than the usual Mommy's girl because a stray is lurking in the wings. We are putting up signs today because last week a tearful little girl bravely knocked on the door asking if we had seen her cat..at that point, no. But two days in a row a pretty little longhair with turquoise eyes has poked her bold head in the front door and eaten dry food from Juicy's bowl. With a cat door, for all I know, Little Stranger has been sleeping on the couch.

but right now...we are preparing for a DYE DAY!!  

 

Did you know cat hair is an essential ingredient!