WIP...finally

What's tech-wiener speak for spilling a cup of sugary coffee into the keyboard?  I did it  while working the other night and had to quick swap out the keyboard from my main machine and pray it worked..it did.  On half recalled urban legend, I rinsed the coffee flavored one in the kitchen sink, and gave it overnight to dry out. Not quite enough.  I took the whole thing apart to see what was affected or still damp.  Very interesting what goes on under those keys. Swabbed everything with alcohol, gave it another 24 hours and it's back...well 99%. Who needs the 2 or 0 on the number keypad anyway?  

    

I need a better lamp at my workstation so I can actually see what I'm hand stitching. Appliqueing bits of rusted crochet cotton to cusspots is like putting decals on fly's wings. Now I notice the resemblance to those Mayan scribblings.

Meanwhile, I've finally committed to a design for this piece and have started to machine quilt it. So far, I'm not enthused. Somehow, by backing, batting and machine stitching this piece I've fell like I've killed it by eliminating it's potential as something of utility. The artist in me seems to have left town in favor of the working stiff.

freemotion warmup

After tinkering with Elizabeth's Janome yesterday (we both have 6500s) I decided I had better give mine some attention and was appalled at the crud under the throat plate.

I have NO needles and NO oil. Quilting on anything will have to wait on a trip to HoAnns but here's a little test Mayan graffiti. I think it's the symbol for agita.

the bitter fucshia lesson

It took several hard lessons before I learned that anytime you dye with the color fuchsia, it's imperative that you rinse, rinse and rinse again before you wash them, and when you do wash out, DO NOT WASH OUT WITH ANY OTHER COLOR FAMILIES!

Not if you don't want those other pieces tinged with pink where they used to be white or other pales. I have ruined entire weekends worth of dyeing by mixing those hotties into the washout loads so carelessly. This bunch will go by themselves but the piece below, a hand appliqued and embroidered vintage hankie (and the three jacquard scarves) are getting the hand treatment!

Halloween Dyefest

I had an amazing day yesterday at Elizabeth Barton's studio helping her use up the season's end dyestock. We worked and talked, talked and work all day. I tried to teach her Janome to like metallic threads to no avail and got to be the first to see her latest work which I will only describe here as awesome.

I know it can be folly to post
"wet" pictures (before the washout) of dyed cloth but I have a good feeling that most of this bunch will stay strong.

 I hung the buggy oatmeal bunch outside to dry out first - I don't think I want to run oatmeal and bugs through my washing machine.  These three spectacular pieces are a cotton jacquard that has a patterns of leaves and flowers woven in.

This is one fourth of a king sized sheet that I picked up at Goodwill. Gorgeous but I suspect that although the label said 100% cotton, there is some manufacturers process that may be resisting the dye. This one may be a lot paler after washing. 

There are also a whole lot of miscellaneous cotton scraps of all types bagged up and waiting their turn. No trick or treating for me today. I'll be washing and ironing!

frantic friday

In an effort to avoid the ceaseless zombie and vampire nonsense on every TV channel we spent yesterday with back to back episodes of Ancient Aliens on the History Channel.

Only a few steps removed from nonsense, the show is hypnotic in it's effort to be sincere and scholarly.  From the looks of this Mayan alphabet, they watched too much TV too.

I've always found Mayan imagery very compelling. The balance and proportion of line to shape, the boundaries all appeal to me and some of the images of ancient wall constructions got me to thinking about how I want the machine stitching on this piece to look. 


But that's down the road some.

I've gone back to using the original instigator, that golden tongue. Still working it out.

















Meanwhile, last night between customers, I got busy with what was  merely within my reach. My grandma really did use to say

"Idle hands are the devil's playground!" just before she set me to doing something like cleaning out the parakeet's cage. I can remember looking at my hands for the playground and thinking I was missing something.



Now I have to kick it into high gear and round up whatever I am taking to Elizabeth Barton's studio tomorrow.

There is cloth to drown in soda ash because we are having a Halloween Dyefest!