vibrance

I know that a lot of artists who dye their own cloth are experimenting with the natural dyeing process these days but my magpie brain still craves to be gobsmacked by color when I go to the trouble of cooking up my own.

This recent batch delights me on so many levels. Aside from wonderful, rich color there's an array of glorious texture here too.

This is a piece of a woven tablecloth that I picked up for a smile at a yardsale. There was a burned hole on the corner. You can't see it in this photo but the raised cords were colored thread that bled during the dye process.  It shows better in the paler pieces but this cloth loves the dye.

A quick Google  yields a tantalizing clue as to the origin of the owners of these hand towels. There are also several damask napkins with VE embroidered on the corner. 


Do you think they ever imagined what could become of such prosy things?

Even the 79 cent towels I picked up at IKEA the other day didn't disappoint. I wasn't even sure they were cotton.

it's Dutch for "towel" ..it too has the trixie little hanging loop like the one above.

No small wonder that the majority of these treasures came from grace.

monday morning washout

It was a blue Sunday...due in part to a mason jar disaster with a half quart of turquoise (see below). No pictures of my blue ankles, for once I had on shoes. I was just stirring the dye with a spoon when a hole popped out of the glass! Do jars get old?

This piece of woven, gridded cotton picnic cloth is getting discharged right now. Those dots are about 3/8 of an inch and I think I have that out of my system for the day!

making the day count

Family and friends in the NE are still struggling under the lash of Irene so I could not let this hot, clear and beautiful day go to waste.

I've been feeling the need for some vibrant color so I had a mini-dye day and put all the recently collected treasures in for a long soak. 

Today I am besotted with color but yesterday it was furnishing  at IKEA and later, a pitcher of Sangria at On the Border in Buckhead. After tramping all over design heaven nothing ever tasted so good.

It's a good think I don't drive a pickup truck or these would have been coming home with me.  The chair put me in a coma every time I sat in one (they are strategically all over the store) . Did you know that IKEA has a Scratch and Dent room!?  It's destined to be my new office chair and ergonomics be damned.

excursion & giveaway

I'm off to IKEA to see what there is to see. It's been some time since I was there.
 
Don't miss out on a chance to win two of these Magic Cloth Burritos...dive in and leave a smart remark over there and you could get lucky!! I'll post the winner on Monday morning and get it off in the mail that very day!


PS...As most of my family and who knows how many friends and readers are still reeling (without electricity) from hurricane Irene so I've decided to extend the deadline of the drawing to Sunday, 9/4.

happy if anxious Friday

My stitching is taking on a nervous, time passing feeling. I know so many people who are in the path of Hurricane Irene now making it's way up the east coast I feel guilty being under hot blue skies here six hours inland.

Yesterday, the computer track of the storm put the eye of the hurricane passing directly over the Lower Hudson Valley region where my family is and the beach camp at Point Judith, RI. I can only hope the weather pundits are over reacting to cover their collective asses as they seem to be doing regularly.

This is the center back of the shirt I'm working on..no one will be sneaking up on me when I'm wearing it.