link love

A special thanks to "oh what a world, what a world.."
Lorraine has become my personal online curator.
I keep  coming back to these artists:

Kathleen Cammarata
Mary Zeran
Brian Belott
Michael Cutlip
Elise Wagner
Emily Mason
Julian Hatton

the commonalities to my eye - freedom, drama, confidence and love of color & shape, and joy in the making. What do you think?

and don't forget to add "Lines and Colors" to your daily blogreads, it's always worth the time.

change of face

And here I was all fuzzy brained and uninspired after just dunking six pieces that I quit and slept for two hours.
Woken by Samuel Jackson going on about his "M*Fing Snakes on a Plane!" I decided to do the washer woman thing and see what transpired while I dozed.

Miracles and Mysteries!


The hot soy wax loves the vintage damask and the dyes love the damask too. It's a love fest out on the burning dye-deck at the Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx!

I wonder what's going on in here?

storm waiting

I took today and tomorrow off from work hoping to break in the new dyes but we are under a thunderstorm warning which is supposed to pass by noon. Might as well collect some free water...

In the  wait time, I have a huge stack of books from the library which welcomed me back into the congregation warmly once I paid a year-old fine.  I scored "Autobiography of Mark Twain" and hesitate to settle in with it. I am smartass enough without encouragement from the ages.

There is also stitching galore.  "Rêver 2" is well underway. I am so impressed with folks using complex embroidery  in their work but my stitching is much more about construction than decoration. Going back and making a cross stitch out of a running stitch is a big deal for me. I call them staggering crosses. Nailing bits of silk organza down to aging damask is like putting decals on bee wings.

Many years ago I embroidered a huge linen tablecloth that I given. It was supposed to be done all in ecru silk with cut-work which seemed to me (and the original owner) like a prison sentence.

I bought 20 or so different colors of DMC floss and proceeded to cover all the printed lines with every imaginable color and stitch trick I could find in the book. It's a riot cloth that I trot out only for holiday meals. I may not have mastered every stitch but I can say that I have been there, and stitched that at least a dozen times.

These little staggering crosses are hard at work holding every thing together.

dye day preparations

 You can tell by the names which colors were internet specials....and the purists out there will be freaking at my mash-ups.

Could there be something special about dye stock mixed on a full moon? You will have to admire my restraint that no cloth was involved in the days festivities. That party will be this coming Wednesday and  Thursday.


I ran out of bottles though, there are more colors waiting, turquoise, avocado, black, chino, raspberry.....

I needed a tablemopper but accidentally picked up a piece of damask that had been waxed. There will be more wax and discharging for this piece soon.

antimacassar redux

These were built on bases that used to be the armrest covers of a couch. The backsides were relatively pristine. The fronts, not so much. I like the fabric so much that I have idle fantasies of taking a razor to the side that faces that wall.

I will certainly skin it like a beast when we are through with it, boil it clean and make great things.

I like doing this one so much that when I found the other  armrest cover in with the "to dye" bunch, I pulled it out and started a twin, fraternal, not identical.  Call this one "Brave beat the downtrodden Mets, double header". Yes, there will be more french knots.

Yesterday was so cold and blustery, Jim was inspired to make chili and I was forced to postpone making new dyestock.

Instead, I wasted the morning trying to master Jim's old cell phone (mine came over on the Ark and is failing). I was happy to be able to stitch anything after all that useless thumbing. Useless because later in the day I was told that, through a chain of loved one's upgrades, I would be given a gently used Blackberry. Just what I need.

We'll see what the day brings weather-wise after lunch.