...faces come out of the rain...

Jude's recent post about faces got me to checking into my image files, stuff that I created, not photos, and I came up nearly empty handed. Now you know why. Seems like whenever I set about making faces there's a strong current of menace and mayhem just waiting to manifest. I find most of them hilarious. I brought some embroidery thread to work to see if I remembered how. This feels like a throw back to "Atavistic Inclinations" going back to 2006, one of my first experiments with discharging. Thanks to everyone who wrote and gave input regarding the feed sack material. It's all been prepped and some of it will go into a soda ash bath tonight for a dyefest tomorrow. It's toasty here in Georgia. Seems like we've skipped spring and gone straight to summer - great weather for dyeing.

archaeology and treasures

Wonderful things come to light when you start digging. I need to get new containers as all these charming little baskets are too small by half for each colorway and you cannot put 14 pounds of cat in a ten pound basket for long. The red pieced thing is "Picnic In Hell" a top that has been missing for more than a year. All this industry was provoked by the arrival of a large box of vintage fabrics passed on to me by my friend Rosemary Claus-Gray. An incredible trove of fabric that may prove to be from the turn of the century. I found a barely visible stamp on one piece that said "Made For A.D.Pierce, Brooklyn, Conn." A little research tells me that this company was a hatchery of some sort. Wonder what they used all this cloth for. Chicken blankets? I also came across this piece of embroidery that used to grace the whole back of a denim coat that I wore until it was pitiable. Then it was on a couch pillow for years. next?

shawl revival

For lack of anything else to do (besides muck out the Aegean stables that my studio has become) I nailed these dyed damask flowers on the pointed ends of my favorite velvet shawl. My seat at the office is close by the wall of glass (for the light) and the door breezes so I mummy up with this when the evening turns blue and cool.

under one flag

Yeah, there's no denying that they are flags. Even hanging across the opening of the laundry and backlit with a 75 watt bulb. I've always loved stained glass and was really thinking about that Tiffany window when I reshuffled the pallette after a false start. Even though I seamed a few of those pieces together, they were dumb as posts and just not happening. A few fabric substitutions and some transparent Setacolor and this one is starting to hum. It's fixing to get grizzly outside so my idea of painting/drying/painting on the deck is now going back and forth between 1/2 of my sewing table and the laundry closet opening which is 60"x80" and covered completely by this piece. I don't know why I think this is a big deal. People routinely made bed covers bigger than this. Here's a shot with flash and half dry so you can get an idea of what's really going on instead of the glowing wishful thinking happening in the first picture. You can bet I'll keep coming back to it and try with paint and other techniques to make it happen for real.

the process

Thanks to everyone who commented on "Front Runner" and the way I documented it's manifestation. Keeping track of my work was my original purpose for keeping this blog. Time to toe the mark. Ever timely, Elizabeth has posed the question "where d’you begin?" I gave it some thought and decided to pay closer attention this time as I'm anxious to start the next piece in this series. There've been plenty of pictures in the past of my studio, almost always looking post-apocalyptic, but pieces of ironed fabric, all stacked and racked, just don't speak to me. It's as if they already have a job - presenting the illusion of order - and have an imaginary DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging on them. I think this is where some folks get carried away with their stash. It does look all nice and orderly all folded and sorted like that but how would you ever know how this red, that nasty, murky piece of table-mopper and that swath of golden damask would look together unless you flapped them off the shelf and threw them about a bit? I started rounding up these likely suspects yesterday. I overdyed a few laggards and recalled one or two items from the wrinkled depths of the closet and heaped them in the Chair. I'm feeling intense. Cat posted this amazing photo a few days back that perfectly captured my color mood much better than my crayons have in the sketchbook. You can see I've already deviated wildly.