Everyone has called and sung me...

 ..."Happy birthday Mrs. Hood..."

Here I am sitting in the almost dark, waiting with my coffee for the sun to come through the front door and light up the room so I can stitch a while. It's chilly but worth the wait. It's my birthday...today I give cats their worm pills! Yee ha!

the devil's in the details

The devil being trixie element of the work, the thing that pulls you in and make you go "jeeze" or "yuk" or makes the hair in your arms stand up.


It could also refer to the pitfall of of focusing on the tiny things and letting the big picture get lost in all those details.

I was just reminded by these colors of Taken by the Night and the need to loosen up, take an unexpected turn or two and slow down.

It's a good thing there are only 24 hours in a day.

and speaking of details, remember the bead show I went to awhile back?

I cobbled these earring together myself. Sea opals, freshwater pearls and silver and I am satisfied. 

full moon measures

I found this little moon wandering around the studio and decided it was an appropriate day to put it work in the new piece. Now I'm off to snag some embroidery thread and needles, fresh for this project. Stitching has begun!
I also discovered ACRES more of the woven, gridded cotton that this piece is based on...lots of plans for others in a series.

the chase is on

Sometimes the horse bolts and you have to chase it down with saddle and bridle.


It's raining and cool here for the first time in ages. Contemplation time. No more false moves..the stage is set.

the following studies were done with an ancient paint program, PSP5 if you can believe it. I will be sad when it stops working.

I could do this all day but a handful gives me an idea of how I want to go with the stitching. As much as I may like or dislike any one of these, the finished piece will only refer to the digital image, not copy any one entirely.

1

2

3

4

5

a good sundays work

I've been up before the sun putting little bits of cloth together until I decide I liked the way things look.


The bristle of all the pins is distracting so my next step is to baste the whole piece with great leaping jumps of a single strand of blue thread..easy to cut and pull out as I need to along the way.

It's very easy to lose sight of the whole picture during this part of the process. Strokes for the sake of taking them won't add up.


All the cloths I've chosen are loose and open - the thread and needle pass through with almost no resistance - quite probably more than one of those little red spots is my blood.

So easy to be sidetracked by the juicy splendor of the individual fabrics but it will be easy to make design revisions before settling in the stitching that ties everything together, the marks that will make it whole.





1300 posts. really? 
Should I throw a party?

making do do

I decided to start working with these (and cloth from some previous batches) as they are, which is outside of my comfort zone in hue, tone and other attributes. Having been creatively stagnant for a while now I'm going to think of these raw materials as if they washed up onto the beach of my desert island- and there's that little creepy dude in the pointy shoes serving drinks again.

humbled by the process

I guess I will never learn.

"Never crow about hand dyed cloth before it's been washed and dried" should be up in neon on my design wall.

Here's a link to a large image so you can see all the texture in the cloth. I can't decide if I want to continue working on this batch with other techniques or let them rest as is.

I also have to remind myself that nothing spectacular comes easy and that the best pieces I've made came from very humble starts.

she sheps naches

My friend Jan's son Ryan moved to Taiwan right out of high school to learn the language. I think it's been a little more than a year. Makes me think about what I've accomplished in the past year.

Here he is starring in an entertaining promotional video for Kaohsiung, the second largest city in Taiwan. Um, he's the tall guy with the guitar. I don't know what they are saying but the message comes across clearly.

October Glory

Well, if I can't have October baseball at least I'll have hatched out what may be the very best fabrics of the year - so far. Seriously, I was driving home from the grocery store with my ancient Ipod plugged into the car stereo (thank you Steve, you will be missed) and the theme from "The Natural" started playing and I started to cry.

I bought a leather purse the other day because it reminded me of my baseball mitt. You get funny looks carrying around a baseball mitt when you are not at the ballpark.

These are all shots from the first "reveal" when I open up the rolls of cloth and grains after 24 hours.

I can tell by the rinse water that the dye took pretty strongly . All the grains get shaken out onto the lawn and these entire batch is in the washing machine right now.





There won't be any time to take and post any finished pictures before I have to go to work so we will have to wait until tomorrow.

Que Sera, Sera    (my mother really did sing this to me)

It's seriously messy and labor intensive process but the results are worth all the trouble to me.





 

I have decided to name this entire set after the late, great Steve Jobs....they are the October Jobs.

wild assistants

While I was inspecting the tubs with cloth rolls, I tripped over this...I left a few pieces bagged up and in the sunshine to poach. They pulled it off the railing and checked on the contents for me, rather inelegantly.

From all appearances they did not approve of the contents.



update...the cable guy gave us a new remote as the service magically restored itself.

Here's part of what was in the bag shown above...you cant PAY for help this great!

waiting

I'm waiting. For the sun to come through the front door so I can see well enough to stitch on this piece for a while. And waiting on the Comcast guy to tell him I don't think the trouble is at our house because whatever was wrong seems to have cleared up since other Comcast trucks were shuttling up and down the block the past few days.

And waiting until it's warm enough to get those cloths out of the tubs and see the magic!

more texture! more color!

A fiber scout in the wilds of Georgia/Alabama left a bag of potential on the back deck yesterday. Boiled, bleached and soaked overnight in soda ash, I'm not entirely sure all of it is cotton but there's gambling in the air.

I'm taking advantage of a warm afternoon and letting these rolls poach in the sun for the rest of the day. We'll see who or what drops by to investigate the grains in the night. On the menu, some brown rice, very old oatmeal and a box of cornstarch that's at least five years old.

fun with technology

"Sunny Jim"

We spent the morning at the hospital yesterday, as scheduled,  getting Jimmy's heart back to beating a normal sinus rhythm..it got out of sync somehow a while back.

After a load of paperwork and the usual BS sugarcoated with smiles, they manscaped his chest, promised to wake him when it was over and then put me out of the room while they gave him the Frankenstein zap.
He "converted nicely" as the doctor put it.

All is well and I am deeply grateful..after all, his heartbeat is mine too.

a step or two further

Add caption

I picked out about a dozen pieces that were pretty flat an uninteresting and put them into treatment. They spent the night bundled up with rice, oatmeal, grits, orzo and dye powder.

Something came to investigate a possible food source and knocked over one of the containers.

They pulled a log of cloth across the deck rail but were interested in it enough  to find out what was inside.

The fabric got the next step this morning and I'm pretty excited about the results.

I've been asked about techniques...nothing new or extraordinary here that I haven't used or written about in the past.

Natural fibers that have been dyed with Procion MX dyes, colors of my own mixing.

Over dyeing using a mechanical means of carrying the dyepowder; old dry cereals that are usually infested with bugs.

Discharging too much color using bleach, a stop watch and a practiced eye.

None of my techniques would meet the approval of the manufacturers of the ingredients. Kinda like taking a Honda Civic with grain alcohol in the gas tank and running it at Daytona...and winning.

sweater weather

Sweater weather took us by surprise here in Georgia. I dragged this brutally overdyed cotton sweater out of the bottom of the closet to use as a guinea pig to see if and how much it would discharge with softscrub.  

See my little favorite bugflower resisted in the middle?  I hope it works as well on the black one, my favorite, when I can find it.

Just Maybe you know them...

Jeez, it would drive me around the bend to spend a day at a fiber show buying treasures with my hard earned cash only to absent mindedly leave it at a booth where I was momentarily captivated by something else shiny and new...it's happened to me for real.

I know I have a few readers in the UK so they just might know who it is...see

this post at Purple Missus

passing things on

Back in March I donated two unfinished tops to Quilts for Quake Survivors. It was very gratifying seeing what has become of one of them so far. Thanks to all the volunteers who picked up where I left off.  Thanks so much for posting this, Susan & Daniela.

  

shop update

 
Mission (part one anyway) accomplished.


I updated the store this morning with SEVEN new magic cloth burritos from the fall equinox dyefest.

I'll be making more over the next few days and taking out things that I can't bear to part with to keep for my own stash. Before I do this I always make a point of watching an episode or  two of "Hoarders" just to maintain a sane perspective.

It's a good thing that studio assistants work cheap but I did remove Sweetie from the scene after this one glam  shot turned into a wrestling match over the fabric when I tried to rearrange things.

MCD update

 I'm a little sad this morning now that the Atlanta Braves have gone down in flames and our baseball season is over.

I had agita for thirteen innings last night and losing the pennant bid that way was a bitter pill. I will miss baseball.



This is a little element that will go in the center back of my MCD shirt. Zoom in on the picture so you can examine this freaky little drink server closely. It was stitched onto a tiny little rectangular cocktail napkin. Each of the six of them wound up a different color.

I kept a feather for myself.

fall equinox cloth

Just some of the finished pieces from the fall equinox dyefest. No ironing this group...there's just too much wonderful texture to appreciate.

I'll be making a few of these available in the store over the next few days.

Madam enjoys her cream

 
Karma turned sixteen this past spring and for a while this summer I feared she wouldn't see another birthday.  Sometimes I wonder if she wasn't just working us, her fans and supporters, with her drama.

Here she is enjoying her morning bowl of half and half out on the dye deck working hard to maintain her svelte 7.5 pounds.  Her coat seems to be coming back in now despite a tail full of nasty jujus that she won't let me groom. How sensible it was to shed 75% of one's fur during the hot summer months. If I had taken her cue, I would have shaved my head.

Over the past few days I have begun to suspect that she may be deaf and blind on her left side.
Still, she does exactly what she wants, whenever she wants to - or you hear about it. We should all be so fortunate.


Here are the mystery mobys turned out of their jars onto the table to drain a bit. Once the sun comes out, I'll hand wash them and see just how much dye will stay. I suspect a lot will flee.

warning - wet spoils

but not spoiled at all. Much more like b00ty but using that in a post will get all kinds of unwanted attention these days.
Rather than waste time and water rinsing these by hand, I decided to just turn them out of the containers this morning right onto the work table like so much dough. NEXT time I use something 100% natural for a table cloth and make sure its ready with soda ash before I get crazy like this again..
The clear glue did not resist the discharge.


A very clear call came this morning regarding the use of these fabrics. I'll be taking a break any further raw material making to see if I can bring the vision around to reality.




and the Moby cloth + vinegar test is finally underway.

crystal clear

how did I miss this amazing post.?

just a fraction

This is all I have time for this morning. A few were rinsed and little dye was lost...a good sign. Then I realized.why bother? Just lay them out on the work table and let them dry there. Some of these have been treated with clear school glue as a resist in preparation for other processes later on.

I'm letting these have their way with the white sheet that's covering the work surface. I have a stack of them - a cotton poly blend so not much of this excitement will stay when I wash it out.

If I wash it out.

these were suspect in that I was not able to determine if they were going to take the dye or leave it. the white markings are from discharge gel.

I forgot to take off the Grace note but I remember it said "what were they thinking?"


I can't imagine what those three badly stitched XXs were all about...