wardrobe wreck

I dashed off to work today and left my big cozy blue sweater at home. Sweaters in Georgia in June you say? Oh yes, if you work at a call center. A never acclimated northern girl, the cold doesn’t usually bother me but lately (could it be happening?) I am freezing by 9pm and falling asleep like they say you will do when you die of the cold lost in a snowstorm…
 
ANYHOW, with no minutes to spare, we wheeled up in front of the big box bargain store which was the only option on my drive to work. The skies opened up just before we pulled into the parking lot and the rain poured down so I dashed through the fat raindrops (I’m really going to need a sweater) knowing full well I would be hard put to find anything with long sleeves inside but I knew where I was going.

I bypassed the womens department because I remembered a gorgeous display of brightly flowered Hawaiian shirts in the mens department. There they were, a bit picked over but rioting on the rack with their flowers and colors and ON SALE!

I snatched up the first color that hollered the loudest, checked the size and ran for the self check out. It's a wonder I wasn't a shoplifting suspect. I was in and out of the store in 6 minutes. Just before Colin dropped me off I pulled the shirt from the bag to find this…I swear, I thought it was flowers like all the rest of them...

Shreds, scraps and glimpses.

Must of us who share the art slice of our lives by blogging use a set of fences and filters as we write because we are mindful that family and loved ones are regular readers, following our online adventures in the context of how they are connected with us in real life. All we reveal are scraps, shreds and coy glimpses of our lives. Deep, dark emotional secrets are rarely spewed out alongside eye-candy images of work's in progress or piles of stitched cloth.

And then there are the writers who share their lives and situations more openly, more bravely, to our delight if not for our entertainment. We follow. We come back, and we think we know and understand the writer. Sometimes personal struggles are hinted at obliquely but more often we can "tell" when someone is struggling with life by the missing posts - the stories untold, the sorrows too deep and personal to share.

Then there comes the time when the story teller simply ends the blog with a cryptic "goodbye". Those of us who work with cloth often rush to see what we can do to help mend the situation, after all we are menders, savers.

I hope that this impulse to fix things does not further dismay the one who has decided to withdraw and stop sharing their story which has turned sad and dark for the time being. I, and many others, hope that she can find her way back to sharing her life and her art sometime in the future. Ciao4now, True Stitches.

results

Everything got a brief natural rinse in a passing rain storm last night. I hand rinse everything through a series of three containers of cold water. This gives me a good idea of which pieces might be casting off dye. I fear the six "flour sacks" (which turned out to have labels stating "Made in Bangladesh") that I picked up at Goodwill, might have a synthetic component which will refuse the dye. All & all there was very little dye in bucket #3...a good sign.

The "hot" load, the reds with fuchsia, are in the washer by themselves right now. I don't predict hours of ironing - That crazy, I am not.

Many of these pieces were cut and dyed for project of my own. After I take first pick, some of these pieces will wind up in groups over at the shop. Eventually.


PS.    As predicted by the magic 3 bucket rinse, the wash loads caused almost no dye down the drain... everthing is nearly as luscious dry as it looked wet!!

Senses be Praised

"Heaven" by the Rolling Stones (Tattoo You)

Dyefest Day 2

I don't know why I was thinking that I needed to run out and use my coupons at Joann's to buy fabric. Short on containers, every single cup, bowl, bucket and the rest of the lunch bags got pressed into service hold all the cloth I had ready to dye.
There's everything here; supergauze, heavy canvas, sheeting, more of that embroidered tablecloth, the Berry Experiment, that Pimatex cotton, a bundle of contemporary flour sacks, and overdyeing a lot of vintage quilting cotton pastels.

Yes, it's quite exhausting. And now to see if Reduran really works...