Smiling faces

So what if I didn't get to go to fiber camp? Better,I got to meet Colin's lady Raquel who is a delightful young woman. They left here midday yesterday to get her home to Gainsville, FL in time for a singing engagement but she has happy plans to relocate here to the ATL. I think they will be making great music together.

First Fruits

What's this, you say? Some kind of bread dough complete with mold? Nope. It's a yard of vintage cotton damask hatching out a sprinkling of rock salt (which actually had rocks in it!) coated with a variety of dye powder colors. Yesterday during a particularly slow Braves game I just couldn't stand looking at all that fabric waiting for color. I left it stewing in the soda ash solution since Tuesday as it has been just too cold and wet outside for dyeing. Wet is OK but cold is a no-no. Here it is after wash, dry and iron. I also gave the rusted pieces a thorough cleaning. I made two of each of these pieces with the intent of doing some further surface design stuff to them. Some soy wax, some overdye - who knows. Today is going to be the first sunny day in a week! Today the colors get mixed and the real fun begins.

harken back to days of yore

The recent acquisition of a ton of beautiful cotton prints has me thinking about the genuine blankets that I have made in the past. As with most quilters, my very first quilt was for my first child. Colin will be 28 in a few months. This blankie was used daily as much for dragging around as sleeping under and so was machine washed and dried almost every other day (for about three years) out of necessity. To this day, I'm impressed at how well it held up. Nine months is a long time to fiddle with one project. The only exposure to quilts I had then was casually examining a few dusty relics in antique stores. Even then they were undervalued. I think I took a book off the shelf in the library and put it back. No one in my family quilted. I was on my own with my own ideas about how a quilt was built. I saw it as a building process even then. The fabrics were all special except for the pink backing. I just can't remember where I got it but I know I chose pink to hedge our bets - this was before you could easily know the sex of your child before it was born. The rest of the fabrics were all family treasures in my eyes.Even then I was a fiber hoarder. The pale blue came from one of my favorite dresses back in sixth grade. The light brown print was a shirt that my husband wore when he was very young. The orange, green and yellow print came from a Mumu that my Aunt Jo brought me from Hawaii and the dark batik was a hand-me down maternity blouse given me my own of my longtime friends, Hilary. I can still picture her wearing it. She's a grandma now. I cut each two inch square by hand using a cardboard template and a pair of paper scissors. Once I had piles of squares, I decided that the design possibilities would be improved if I cut each square diagonally. Then came weeks of puzzle shuffling and then the hand stitching began in earnest. It's all hand pieced and was originally tied with cotton floss in the middle of each unit but in early use the knots weren't holding up so I went back and hand quilted inside each and every triangle. What else should one do while watching your baby grow?

Christmas in April

I have not mixed one bottle of dye and the temperature has turned sweater cold and greasy for lack of a better word to describe mist mixed with pollen. I have spent the entire morning paying bills, filling out forms and contemplating (just contemplating) getting our taxes done. Grim stuff. There's a knock at the door- it's the mailman with three packages and right behind him, the FedEx guy with a really big box. It's fabric from Testfabric by way of New Smyrna Beach, and an outfit I scored on Ebay and a really heavy box. Imagine, if you will, that you walk into a new fiber store. One that is stocked with the most amazing array of prints and hand dyed cottons. Drool provoking rainbows of light and texture.Generous cuts folded precisely, colors and patterns in love with one another, bundled together in tiny towers and tied with various exquisite lengths of iridescent ribbon and lace. Your eyes wander, your fingers fondle, you take mental notes coming back to your favorites over and over. Then, the gracious shopkeeper hands you a 20 inch square box and says "Pack carefully, fill it full and take all you can carry." How strong are you? What does it take to respond to such incredible generosity? I have an angel who has just made this reverie come to pass. Thank you A., from the bottom of my heart.

sum up - day 1

No hummingbirds yet but a fabulous Pileated woodpecker stopped by for a second. Got a nice new working surface. Rounded up all the tools including some new big fat brushes. No dye mixed yet. My little deck frig died over the winter so I'm going to stock it with dry ice tomorrow. I can't decide if I got more or less done. There were a lot of interruptions. Post office, plunder JoAnns and Michael's with 50% coupons. {{gasp}}} a Nap! About 50 pounds of miscellaneous cottons, damasks and linen soaking in soda ash solution. Some huge. Some not. I was tickled to find a small packet of alginate in the dye tub. Mixed up a gallon of goo. Here's the first fruits of the venture, I guess. I finally unwrapped those vinegar stinking frying pans. Some Rust. Now, what do I do about my husbands rusty camping cookery? I don't know if I am going to overdye these or leave them alone.