New on the design wall

I've been doodling and dreaming with this group of fabrics since I got back from NY. So much so that they talked me into re-washing, drying and ironing them today as a group. What's up with that? So far they are hanging quiet on the design wall (the pale blue of which is really starting to aggravate me) but it's not quite stone quiet. There's a low hum happening. Yes, Debra, that is my voice muttering about keeping the skull blinking and camera rolling all at the same time. I sound like a bratty kid. The moment I clicked on Publish Post, this cold bugger leaped under the desk onto my foot and then up into the bookcase with Voodoo in hot pursuit. Note the dust bunnys stuck to his chin. He was released unharmed, but I suspect he has a deal with the catz that they bring him in over and over again without any wear and tear.

fun stuff

Look what came in my favorite cereal! When was the last time you got anything really cool out of a box of cereal?? CHECK THIS OUT.

Traveling

As you may have guessed, I'm away. How brilliant of me to be following this heat wave up the Eastern seaboard. Time and circumstance. Spent a lovely weekend visiting Jimmy in Bel Air, MD where he is working. We went to see "Pirates of the Caribbean" which has made me think seriously about getting a tattoo. Then we went to a fish joint where they served large platters of crabs that you had to eat with a wooden mallet. I watched and had a nice civilized crab cake. and shrimp. and oysters. and ....there were still lots of leftovers for a kitty bag. Next a quick rail trip into the heart of the Baked Apple to have breakfast with one of my oldest friends, Borin.We roosted over breakfast at the Stage Door Deli until the lunch crowd shooed us out. Finally, a short week with my family. That's Patty, Robb and Kitty at the restaurant where Patty is hostess part time. Mom & Dad are as ever.

New From the Dyeworx

Imagine - dyed, washed and ironed in one day? What's my rush? My point in doing this rather dark and murky batch was to make some pieces specifically for discharging. In most cases I got what I was after. This group started life as a huge cotton damask tablecloth I bought on Ebay. This group includes some overdyes and some yardage Jan brought over. We used salt in the dye solution this time which I think accounts for some of the interesting figuring on this fabric. This is the piece that had the soy wax. Live and learn. The black took more strongly on the back than the front. If I had stopped and pondered a bit before throwing dye around I would have considered a few laws of physics, like gravity. Because I didn't want too much cracking in the wax, I laid it out flat on a piece of vinyl, spewed a few cups of soda ash solution over it and immediately attached it with brushloads of black dye solution. I should have laid it face down. Better still, suffered the cracks and immersed it.

Go get some inspiration

I'm supposed to be setting up the Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx but here I am grubbing about in my old bookmarks, deleting and delighting. Here is a list of artists I would OWN if I ever hit the lottery.Some fiber artists, some not.Some of these people you will know, others will be a revelation. In no particular order - Lorraine Glessner Mary Anne Jordan Mary Stoudt Gwen Fox Natasha Kempers-Cullen Ann Brauer Pamela Hill Hu Yong Yi Amy Robertson Janet Steadman Jette Clover Quinn Zander Corum Sandra LH Woock Mirjam Pet-Jacobs Keisha Roberts Eleanor McCain Katharina Lichtman

Soy Wax & Homegrown Comedy

Here's a piece of fabric slathered over with some of the soy wax I brought back from Convergence. I don't want too many cracks so it's hanging from the design wall until tomorrow's dyefest. Things are going to get fairly dark if that Cotton black works the way I want it to. I'm still knitting my way through each nine innings of the Braves amazing comeback. This recycled silk is a bear to work with and I have to struggle to keep from knitting so tight that the wooden needles squeak. I can always count on Colin to be as un-PC as possible at every opportunity. Last night he stopped by to see what I was up to, took one look at the knitting and said "What's this then? Flayed hobos? Bum skins?" I laughed for an hour and every time I take that knitting out I will start snickering.

Stop me before I hurt something

(28 x 23) I lost track of the number of times I started sewing on beads, making marks with black thread, outlining the worms with beige thread, etc. With each attempt at embellishment I would recall the title "Atavistic Inclinations" and pick out the nonsense. It's finished. Now I can get back to the last thing I was doing before this sidetracked me...what was that?

Stitching on "AI"

It's a wonder I'm getting anything done these days - I can't seem to tear myself out of the pool. After doing the cleaning chores and the obligatory "I'm exercising" laps, I find myself just drifting. I have been reading the sunday paper in soggy sections laid out on the deckboards. There is no bigger waste of time than reading a week-old newspaper but the cooling antigravity of the water compels me to stay a little longer. Once I am pruned to the max, I settle into the studio which gets hot despite the fan overhead and the AC. The stitched mouths are too subtle to see beyond a few steps away. I may add a few black vertical stitches by hand just for emphasis.

Cascade Discharging

A number of people have asked me for a quick tutorial on using dishwasher gel for discharging, or removing dye from fabric. I'm no expert but I'll tell you what I have learned through experience.

My "Law & Order" law degree dictates that I give all the inane and obvious warnings up front - Don't drink dishwasher gel. Don't make it into meatloaf and don't use it to cure crabs. Being a carbon based life form myself, chlorine bothers me so I work outdoors and wear gloves and glasses. Duh. This stuff will kill you as quickly as most anything else under your kitchen sink. If anyone chooses to disregard common sense (so what else is new?) the gene pool thanks you for getting out.

Cheepo store brands work as well as the more expensive stuff but because they are thinner, I find the store brands easier to work with. I started out by putting the gel in a plastic hair color applicator bottle and squeezing it out where ever. On the last batch (pictures above) I painted the gel on with a fat brush which later died an early death because I forgot to clean it *

The gel is harder to see once you start moving it around with a brush. Putting gel on wet fabric will give a different result than on dry. I like the creeping halos that you get with damp fabric and used a spray bottle of water to keep things damp as I worked. Half the fun of discharging is not knowing what's happening under the gel as time passes. Time? Anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or more depending on too many things to go into. Remember, it's voodoo.

If you are deeply in love with the fabric (sick puppies, alla ya!) do some testing on a little piece of it and take notes. In the batch pictured above, I was working with PFD cottons that had been dyed and overdyed to death disastrously so the color came off in layers. I HAVE NOT SUCCESSFULLY DISCHARGED OTHER FABRICS! Warning - I did eat some cool holes in a silk velvet scarf a while back.

Some Procion MX dyes come away quicker and more completely than others. Some commercial fabrics discharge well while others seem impervious to the bleach in the gel. And finally, get a bottle of Anti-chlor or Chlor-out from the pet section in the grocery store for the final rinse. It's cheaper than the gel and it chemically cancels the chlorine. If you don't stop the bleaching action of the gel your fabric will ultimately resemble old underwear - gray & holey. Vinegar to cancel chlorine? No. Don't argue. The folks from the dyers list have already bitch-slapped sense into my head over this issue. Any questions? Feel free to ask.

Atavistic Inclinations

I cobbled this together from one of the discharged pieces I did last weekend. Added some details with a Clorox bleach pen and then broke out the paints. So far, so good but I see a lot of hand stitching in the near future, perhaps even some beading. I brought home about 4 pounds of juicy glass beads from Grand Rapids and they are heaped up on my work table just beggin' for action.

Committed Now

It must be our lizard brain that makes us think that machine quilting is easier than hand quilting. Of course I started out with some foolish metallic white thread that the Janome just hates so the backside of this quilt is going to have to be covered up like so many turds in a sandbox. Once I switched to rayon thread, Big J settled in and stopped fighting my moves. Now I feel like I am building a huge cheese and it's going to take a while.