Sometimes the Blues

As I surveyed the proceeds so far I noticed a distinct lack of blue so first thing this morning I brewed up some blends, readied the cloth and made the plunge. The greens you see above are some over-dyes and a few commercial prints that needed some help.

I'm  making an attempt at replicating some of the nicer buggy oatmeal pieces from last summer..still have a large box that now sports some dead moths in it too.

There is also little pot of sunshine to balance everything out.

putting it all together

This is what I'm doing with the new cloth. Ironing damask completely changes the character of the cloth and brings out an iridescent quality that is hard to capture digitally.

This stitching is purely functional. It's a good thing that every one is a pleasure because this piece is 48x60 inches.

I'm afraid to admit to myself that I'm making up as I go, one piece of cloth at a time, as they relate to one another and not to the big picture.

The good thing about this technique is that it's pretty easy to snip a few stitches on the backside and remove or reposition an element. The cloth is very forgiving and there's lots of it.

First Fruits!

Thanks to everyone who commented and the private emails I received about these fabrics and my process. I'm taking the good advice and making up these samplers so you can try it out in your own work. I'll be working my way through the alphabet to name them - this is "Amphora".  The pale blue mottled piece, left center is linen, and everything else is vintage damask.

The ruler is up so you can see the scale and I've gone to some trouble to make sure this looks to my eye and my monitor as color correct as I can make it. That big golden triangle is a piece of the Butternuts from day before yesterday - the crew from yesterday are tumbling in the dryer right now and will be well represented.

I'll be posting these groupings for sale over at Random Acts of Dyeness and hope to get a half dozen up this morning.

To the far right, you can see a piece of a direct print of one of the Reveres -  a good example of what I do with my hand dyes -

here's a better look. Printed on card stock, 11"x17"

All this from just three colors. These are pretty wet but if the butternut results are any test, these won't be all that different when dry.

dyedeck action

I cut up more fabric than would fit in just one pan  (methinks this studio minion is planning a mutiny) so two other colors were called into action.

I will follow the rest of the rules for the processing.

The Butternuts are about to hit the dryer after a thorough thrashing with synthropol in the washer. I'll update this post with pictures in an hour or two.

Now it's stitching time....


ps...as promised...and a portion of all of these will end up in the store..

for JB

Dear JB.
    I just couldn't bring myself to take scissors to your beautiful tablecloth so different things are going to happen here.

There is no more satisfying stitchery that a new sharp threaded with a double strand of 12wt Sulky cotton biting effortless through four layers of supple vintage damask. Once the tension is applied the two pieces become one. This must be what stitching flesh is like, healing.

I'm just going to allow the colors and the cloth have their way with me for awhile.

Thanks again JB where ever you may be.

butternut break out

I'm going to let them all just hang there in the rain for today - save me the water and energy of doing it by hand. The ones with other colors going on are overdyes.

This is a pleasing method..mixing up enough of The Color of the Day in one of those deep steel hotel tubs, tumbling the fabric chunks altogether then letting them stew for a few hours until another good tumble with a  dose with soda ash sauce and then an overnight soak.

Looking for Sheep

There is nothing like a few hours of sun (we got about three)  and a win for the home team to improve my mood. A herd of sheep is in order for the front yard.

I spent the better part of the morning picking space herpes out of my son's laptop. It remains to be seen if the surgery was successful.

Finally,  to the task of the day, finding out just what I had by way of white goods in ever hopeful preparation for a few consecutive, warm sunny days so I can officially open the Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx. It's been propagating in the closet like bunnies or wire hangers.

There is such an amazing array of cloth, most things I don't even have a name for. A little cloth bag made of cotton so fine and delicate, I think it was a five pound flour or meal sack. Huck tea towels, thick damask dinner napkins, a 14 foot wide round tablecloth that is a blinding white with lilies all woven  through it. My arms got tired of folding.

So I put a few pieces of color up on the wall just to see what was making all that noise in the baskets.

After a little bit of rooting around I felt the need for some warmth so I took sample chunks from  many of the larger pieces and set them out in some home brewed butternut special.

I can wait.

rainy day doings

I am testing some natural remedies for the tinnitus that has been plaguing me for a while now. The list of prescription drugs that have been trialed for the purpose is frightening - evidence of how far people are willing to go to solve this issue. No doubt many of the researchers were sufferers too. At its worst,
 I have the stereo sound of jets preparing to take off inside my head. Quiet contemplation is a distant memory.


It's raining so hard here that much of the state is under a flood watch and the power keeps flickering. We are going to have to hire a flock of sheep to cut the front lawn, it's gone so lush. My Goodman is cooking chili so there was nothing to do but push cloth around for a while....

On todays menu - WORMS!

Ah there's nothing like a big fat rejection email (five pieces "not invited") to further deepen the ditch of creative inertia and frost the cake of a creative funk.

This would have been a local show so I went all out and entered five of my most recent large pieces springing for the extra entry fees reasoning there'd be no shipping costs. No kidding! No gas even. 

"But I like worms" I tell myself. I'm in the right line of work to get plenty.

What I need most is a sunny day so I drummed one up for myself this morning without even thinking much about it. (water color crayons)

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is nearly finished (is that me swatting at a severed head?) so I think I will just set the whole cloth mess  aside for a while until the spirit moves me to something other than teeth gnashing and tail lashing. 

You know it will eventually.

drear

It's chill and damp again, but I flew in the face of the elements and painted/dyed that great expanse of vanilla that has been moaning on the design wall for so many days now. I mixed the dyes with warm water and hoped for the best. The least I could do is leave it overnight so no pictures yet. But here are the cleanup cloths!

 I don't know how much is dye and how much is dirt because before I could start working I had to clean up after the deck gardening.

Grace, these are yard square chunks from one of the large tablecloths that arrived yesterday. Wait until you see my Naughty Amish Cap!

starting over

Nothing from me but the blank wall where it used to be. It was on the fast track to Aggravation by way of Boring so I've taken it all down and will put it away for a while. My head is all mushy from hitting it against the wall.

I'm going to break out the crayons for a while today and sniff around for the spark.

And speaking of fresh starts. {{SNAP}} take that WordoPressors, Arlee is up and running beautifully here.

I am wondering aloud here if her alleged TOS violations had anything to do with her vociferous complaints lodged against that den of thieves who coyly call themselves "pinners".  Could it be that WP and pinshit are in bed corporately?

still shuffling and WTF Word(OP)press!

Gonna let this one perk a few days before I consider adding any color. It will come but at the moment I am both burned up and anxious.

Arlee Barrs blog has been suspended by Wordpress for some imagined TOS violation. If you have been following this blog for any length of time, you probably follow hers too and know she's not some kind of sleazeball entrepreneur pill pushing hacker, or whatever they are trying to brand her.

Like me and many other artists, she primarily uses her blog do document her process. Imagine one morning trying to log in to your blog and finding it GONE -NADA-ZILCH..with no explanations, warnings or easily apparent appeals process.

Makes my stomach roll over just thinking about it and I will spend several hours later today downloading my entire history here, just in case blogger decides to get its knickers into a knot over some imagined shit or other. All I can  say is WTF?

I've written to WP on Arlees behalf..if you want, here's the link for you to do the same but if you are a WP user I'd worry that the bastards are casting some kind of net...

monday wipping

little by little, gnitaerc< >creating the current WIP. As much as I loved all that gold edged lavender, it just wasn't working here.

more in a bit...sleep overtakes me.

big bad voodoo daddy

I'm having a good time with this one as pesky as it's been. There is no batting because most of the elements are a very open damask which is prone to bearding when you stitch with doubled six floss.

There's no freebirding this one..it has to stay locked in the hoops or the pieces wander all over despite the basting.

I may tuck the basket into the trunk of the car tomorrow and bring it along. If there's poker game and no room at the table, I'll take myself outside for some wilderness stitching.

WIP update

This one  has been peering over my shoulder for a week now and it's not making a good impression. It's time for radical dismemberment. First I focus on the passages I like and ask myself  "Why?" These will be saved. Then I go after the parts that I actively dislike and again question self.

There's rarely ever any middle ground.

Then I get out the Big Knife, er, I mean, scissors...

We will be away from home for most of the day tomorrow...there's a big housewarming party up in the mountains. This one will have to wait.

rejects and rescues

the motley crew of the upper deck garden 

I don't know whether to call it a hobby or gambling - it's not really gardening.

I buy the plants that have been pronounced dead by grocery and big box stores. They have a high mortality rate there and a lot of plants wind up in a heap and marked down to a quarter. 

I bring them home, put them in fresh soil, give them a little water and sun and hope for the best. More often than not, they come around. The bleeding heart was a bag of dried sticks that never made a peep or showed a poke of green at all last year. I thought they were truly gone. This year, flowers!

This lush beauty is a bougainvillea and I suspect the entire shipment was not really intended for Georgia. I have never seen them for sale here. The wiki info makes me think they may take over the way Kudzu has if given half a chance and I put one up by the mailbox - the desert of dog piss and neglect. Some thrive, some don't.

The magic invisibility cloak revisited

 I've been doing a lot of hand stitching these past few days and spent some time looking over the Magic Invisibility cloak to re-clue my eyes and fingers.

My stitch repertoire is limited in the first place so I didn't want to miss any tricks and keep from getting bored with the current project.

I wear this often and some of the elements have suffered and need some attention.
The base shirt was a very worn, thin chambray workshirt. I'm thinking I may have to salvage the elements I like the best and relocate the onto a sturdier base..maybe something in a smaller size.

Book Review!

If you are a regular reader here chances are you have more than a dim notion about how to go about making an art quilt but how many times have you been asked by the uninitiated to explain what an art quilt is and how you actually make one?  Now you can point them to a valuable resource.

Some of us know that grabbing fistfuls of cloth, clenching scissors in your teeth and running howling into the woods at night will not get the job done. Like any endeavor worth pursuing, it's good to have a guidebook written by a master.

I'm please to have been asked to review such a book. “Inspired to Design – Seven Steps to Successful Art Quilts”, by Elizabeth Barton, is a comprehensive overview of the process of making a successful art quilt written in a user friendly voice with clear emphasis on good design.

Petergate (36.5"w, 53"h) 

The first time I saw an art quilt was at a solo show of Elizabeth Bartons work hanging in the gallery at the Hudgen's Art Center. I had been making crazed bed quilts and I was stunned by the idea of textile art being afforded all the respect due any painting or sculpture in a contemporary art gallery. I was hooked hard then and have been fumbling my hopeful way every since.

This book is a distillation of her years of experience and success as an internationally recognized artist and teacher. Liberally illustrated with selections from her amazing body of award winning work, “Inspired to Design...” will do just that  and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a light on the path. 

You can buy an autographed copy direct from Elizabeth for $35 (which includes priority mail delivery inside the USA)  by emailing her directly.  

You'll thank me later!

A Summer Day, Long Ago (46"w, 28"h) by Elizabeth Barton

The Sunday stitchery

I spent the morning working on the little piece that Sweetie was sleeping on yesterday after sticky-rolling her fur off of it.

It's clear to me that time spent with my hands busy at something familiar and comforting like this leaves the mind free to think about other new things from different perspectives.

 






There was also this very timely post about size  by Altoon Sultan

new WIP

The more I work on it the more I like it. Big, four by four feet and could get bigger. So far it's all pins and possible paths.

The past six hours have been blessed escape from the world and technology - the madness in  Boston, please be over.

And I'm coming out of the stone age phonewise going from a pre-blackberry to what I call a Pokephone. All this poking and swiping reminds me of cats in a sandbox. The learning curve is very steep.

And speaking of them, Sweetie looks like she is trying on a new pair of legwarmers this morning. She is seriously aggrieved with the weather going from the overcast 80s to the brilliant 50s overnight...springtime in Georgia.

cloth sketch

I extended my studio time last night by taking the scrap and tool basket to bed to do some cloth sketching while listening to TV. It helps me loosen up before working on  bigger pieces on the design wall

This one is only 22x25 - I like having a small piece to hold and work on at the same time that I'm designing something large that will most likely will be worked on the machine.

But today there's a homecoming to prepare for - my Goodman is headed back to me!

studio day finally

Who else do you know gets all excited about finding a box of oatmeal that has bugs in it?

I set out a few pieces of cloth this morning sprinkled with dye laden oatmeal but switched up the soda ash application to after-dye rather than before-dye and I'm not entirely convinced it's best for the buggy oatmeal approach to dye delivery.

and down here we have some broad strokes on the design wall. nothing carved in stone or even loose stitches yet...I've already hacked open two of the larger bound by black pieces..They are not sitting well with me at the moment but I'll leave this up and tinker on it later.

more players arrive

I reworked the white areas with dishwasher gel this morning, standing over them watching, checking, the garden hose ready. Then they were hustled into a rewash with antichlor and Synthrapol.


No sooner did I get them on the line when it began to sprinkle so I brought them indoors still damp and pinned them up on the design wall...all the previous fabrics dumped unceremoniously  into the river basket. Now to see if and how things will work together.

sunday escape

JR and I broke out of stir yesterday and paid a visit “uptown” that is, Phipps Plaza. In your average American mall they have the latest Ford or Chevy on display- here there was a Maserati.

It was Fendi, Gucci, Versace and the rest of the gang at every turn. Everywhere seemingly intelligent people were spending money like the government. I examined a 90$ straw purse in Belk that was the identical twin of one I saw (and rejected) at Walmart for 18$. Seriously people, how the hell does any mass produced item become so highly prized that criminals will kill you in the parking deck for it? Nothing is that well made or essential and I don't care whose name is on the label.

I do have to say that, at least in this particular mall, all the sales people have apparently been trained NOT to judge the books by their covers. I go out in my usual everyday duds which, for me, means a denim work shirt, jeans and eight year old Sketchers 'cause they fit and they are comfortable.

In every shop we went into we were greeted by the staff in a friendly and respectful manner as if I very well could have walked into Arhaus or Bang & Olufsen and waved my arm and said “Have this entire room delivered to my palace by Thursday and take that old crap with you when you go”. Why not? They are operating on the assumption that it's entirely possible that, despite my retired rodeo clown appearance, I could be filthy rich and fresh in port.

The real reason we were over there was to catch “The Place Beyond the Pines” which I won't talk about much because I suspect (and highly recommend) that a lot of my readers would rather go see this than say, Evil Dead or the Croods. 

I don't want to be a spoiler. Just go see it soon.

Let's just say I found it to be about what happens when people cross paths and how some of them make lousy choices because they have limited their thinking about life's possibilities and spend too much of their headspace wrapped up in the moment of “me”. It was intense and emotionally compelling watching actors doing it all with their faces, eyes and body language - no curtain chewing or special effects needed.

The movie was filmed in and around Schenectady, New York at the upper reaches of the Hudson Valley. Homesickness washed over me repeatedly as the camera followed the two lane blacktops through green tunnels in the lush woods. I'll see it again for sure.