plotting

I have been captivated by this quilt on the cover of Susan Beal's "Modern Log Cabin Quilting" and spent part of my evening doing my own version of Jude's "what iffing" but I've always called it "spoze-yah" (go on, say it out loud) .

It involves some things I have been warned against, like sewing dyed and painted but unrinsed cloth. Speculating about some of Mary Anne Jordan's pieces like this one and thinking about what the dye will do if you just let it.

no time for tea

I doubt this teapot will ever see any liquid again. Maybe Sangria.  There was no top, so maybe it's not really a teapot but  I saw one just like it in a wonderful film yesterday.
 
Take the time, settle in, watch the faces and listen to the voices. Give yourself over to this one - "Dean Spanley",
  and I promise you will be delighted.

(a very photogenic teapot, here and here are some large, flashy images. my magpie brain is captivated with the reflections)

phase one, wrap up

It was a long day at the Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx...even the tools and the tablemoppers had a good time.






the theme of the day seemed to "extra-terrestrial hides" 

there is still a lot of work to do but it will have to wait until the weekend.

Goodwill

I love the Goodwill in Lilburn. There are many people of good taste and apparently great means who bring their barely used things there for me to scarf up on Tuesdays with my SC discount.

(I compensate for these trips by watching a couple of episodes of Hoarders and making up a bag of things to take back to them...)

2$ for a large silver plated teapot? Who could resist? It was dancing on the shelf before my eyes!

No one seems to use top sheets anymore - I scored two brand new, king-sized sheets of very high quality cotton with the intention of cutting them up for the dyepot. After washing and drying I discovered I like sleeping in luxury, especially for 2.50 each. There was also a tan cotton lawn skirt with acres of tiny pleats...pre-sewn shibori I'm thinking.

link love

A special thanks to "oh what a world, what a world.."
Lorraine has become my personal online curator.
I keep  coming back to these artists:

Kathleen Cammarata
Mary Zeran
Brian Belott
Michael Cutlip
Elise Wagner
Emily Mason
Julian Hatton

the commonalities to my eye - freedom, drama, confidence and love of color & shape, and joy in the making. What do you think?

and don't forget to add "Lines and Colors" to your daily blogreads, it's always worth the time.

change of face

And here I was all fuzzy brained and uninspired after just dunking six pieces that I quit and slept for two hours.
Woken by Samuel Jackson going on about his "M*Fing Snakes on a Plane!" I decided to do the washer woman thing and see what transpired while I dozed.

Miracles and Mysteries!


The hot soy wax loves the vintage damask and the dyes love the damask too. It's a love fest out on the burning dye-deck at the Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx!

I wonder what's going on in here?

storm waiting

I took today and tomorrow off from work hoping to break in the new dyes but we are under a thunderstorm warning which is supposed to pass by noon. Might as well collect some free water...

In the  wait time, I have a huge stack of books from the library which welcomed me back into the congregation warmly once I paid a year-old fine.  I scored "Autobiography of Mark Twain" and hesitate to settle in with it. I am smartass enough without encouragement from the ages.

There is also stitching galore.  "Rêver 2" is well underway. I am so impressed with folks using complex embroidery  in their work but my stitching is much more about construction than decoration. Going back and making a cross stitch out of a running stitch is a big deal for me. I call them staggering crosses. Nailing bits of silk organza down to aging damask is like putting decals on bee wings.

Many years ago I embroidered a huge linen tablecloth that I given. It was supposed to be done all in ecru silk with cut-work which seemed to me (and the original owner) like a prison sentence.

I bought 20 or so different colors of DMC floss and proceeded to cover all the printed lines with every imaginable color and stitch trick I could find in the book. It's a riot cloth that I trot out only for holiday meals. I may not have mastered every stitch but I can say that I have been there, and stitched that at least a dozen times.

These little staggering crosses are hard at work holding every thing together.

dye day preparations

 You can tell by the names which colors were internet specials....and the purists out there will be freaking at my mash-ups.

Could there be something special about dye stock mixed on a full moon? You will have to admire my restraint that no cloth was involved in the days festivities. That party will be this coming Wednesday and  Thursday.


I ran out of bottles though, there are more colors waiting, turquoise, avocado, black, chino, raspberry.....

I needed a tablemopper but accidentally picked up a piece of damask that had been waxed. There will be more wax and discharging for this piece soon.

antimacassar redux

These were built on bases that used to be the armrest covers of a couch. The backsides were relatively pristine. The fronts, not so much. I like the fabric so much that I have idle fantasies of taking a razor to the side that faces that wall.

I will certainly skin it like a beast when we are through with it, boil it clean and make great things.

I like doing this one so much that when I found the other  armrest cover in with the "to dye" bunch, I pulled it out and started a twin, fraternal, not identical.  Call this one "Brave beat the downtrodden Mets, double header". Yes, there will be more french knots.

Yesterday was so cold and blustery, Jim was inspired to make chili and I was forced to postpone making new dyestock.

Instead, I wasted the morning trying to master Jim's old cell phone (mine came over on the Ark and is failing). I was happy to be able to stitch anything after all that useless thumbing. Useless because later in the day I was told that, through a chain of loved one's upgrades, I would be given a gently used Blackberry. Just what I need.

We'll see what the day brings weather-wise after lunch.

Giving Thanks

You know who puts off doing the tax boogey until this morning, those who owe. Still, the filthy deed is done and as I pressed print there was a thump on the doorstep. FedEx!

My boodle from Prochem arrived chock full of wonder. I love buying (cheap!) the discontinued, heinous colors no one else seems to want. What a challenge! There's Curry, Loden, Pumpkin Spice, Grape, Azalea Pink, Golden Yellow, Sapphire and Intense Blues, Raspberry and Superblack!  I feel a day off coming on.

Here's a hasty pot of Forget-me-Not which I have rechristened "Fuggedaboutit" Blue. Results tomorrow.

For now, I give thanks once again, for being so easily amused. 

back to the wall

Remember this one?

I was so in love with it at first but I left it hanging on the design wall, sideways (as it was built) and only pinned in place - I could not take the next step of basting it.

Deep down, I knew it was fatally flawed.

Thanks to E, who clarified what I knew to be true, there really was no way to unify the two disparate halves and what I really had here were starting points for two separate pieces.  Here's to heading off false starts before they become groaning disappointments.

You know what I am supposed to be doing at this moment, don't you.