Opening Day at the Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx

It's a good thing I have really tolerant neighbors. All they have to do is step outside and look left or right to see what I'm up to but in all the years I've been doing this there's been nary a peep, bless 'em.The deck reminded me of a few scenes from "Slumdog Millionaire". This stuff is all wet of course but since these pictures were taken, the sun has set and the dryer has tumbled and everything is very nearly as bright and intense as you are seeing it here. Not everything was perfect as is (see some murky looking buggers up there) and other "things" will be happening to even the perky colors. I'm not in an entirely perky mood design wise but I'm grateful to have all of these as a starting place. The Chino came out wonderful after I gave it a healthy dose of Golden Yellow. Jude sent me a piece of gauze like cotton weave that came out glorious with that blend. I even overdyed a blouse from last year that was disappointingly and unbearably minty...now a rich leaf green.

Oh Baby!

Linda look! These are still wet, but Yowsa! Even though these dye powders were over 5 years old, they still seem to have most of their steam. I rinsed and washed these little tests by hand but won't commit to larger pieces until after a good thrash in the washing machine. The Scarlet is the first red I have ever dyed that I really liked. Follow-up. Here they are after machine, dry and iron. Very tasty.

What we need & when we need it.

Is it my imagination or is a certain famous brand of crayons seriously lacking in pigment these days? Maybe it's the smoothness of the paper in my Picadilly but there are three or four layers of color here trying to reach for the kind of intensity I like best. Still, this one was enough to ring the bell and remind me that life is short and since when did ever I wait for perfect anything, especially when it comes to dyeing fabric. The first load is in the washer getting prepped with Dawn and tomorrow it will go into the soda ash solution for at least a 24 hour soak. Saturday, I'll go with the colors on hand, fresh mixed and if it's not warm enough I'll be bagging stuff into a black trash bag greenhouse. I almost forgot, "Hope Rising" is home safe from the exhibit and I have a page in this book.

scribble Wednesday

I keep dreaming about great floating drifts of fabric on the wind. Great flags of fiber flapping and snapping. Elizabeth has recently written about knowing one's own taste in art. Her posts always provoke me into paying attention to my thinking (or lack thereof) about my work and I traced my notion of motion series back to my very first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art when I came around a corner and was knocked flat by "The Horse Fair" by Rosa Bonheur. I almost hesitate to link to it because nothing you can see here on a computer can compare to the incredible reality of it. Over 16 feet wide, it's a river of motion and vigor.I might have been 12 years old at the time and I think I've been looking to capture the motion of life in my art ever since. It's a wonder I didn't become a sports photographer. In place of getting Zone A work into play, I'm lucky to have the time, materials and headspace for the Zone B stuff like crocheted scrap rugs and free pieced lap quilts in simple, MARKETABLE color schemes all set for some Art fair someplace in the future when folks are out stimulating the economy, buying local and appreciating slow cloth (well, slower than store bought) and hand made by artists.

still fiber going on

Yes, I'm still farting around with these little make believes but that's just how it's going to have to be for a while. I don't think I have a piece of hand dyed fabric that's big enough to wrap a grapefruit anymore. Until I can rev up the wet studio, I'll be composing with scraps...hey, just remembered that's how I got started with fiber in the first place. Some excitement - this piece that I made for an early Quilt Art Challenge has been requested for a Day of the Dead exhibit planned for later this year at the Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science and Art in Scranton, PA Guess I better get busy and finish the edges somehow and get a sleeve on it. And tack it down a few places on the skull. Finish the thing for it's public appearance.