glass wonderland

My neighbor and former fiber dye partner Jan T. took off into the realm of hot glass sometime back. Her focal beads are lush with both exotic and natural color themes.
I started picking out favorites and realized it was like eating really good potato chips....you can see more here

your Monday, my Friday

Even though I had to be there over the weekend, it was a great day at the Whine Mine. The calls that come in over the weekend (and after hours) tend to be more interesting. Things like "parked car rolls across three yards, causing 20k in landscaping damage and falls into brand new swimming pool. no witnesses" and
"employee falls asleep in walk-in cooler and claims his head cold as an on the job injury". The human parade, never in step and always hilarious. "WTF?!"  has become my mental mantra.

I didn't have time to enjoy the Sunday Times but it usually takes me all week to get through it anyway. The newest small hand stitched piece fell into place - the base cloth is a roughly woven linen, rust and gold with red flecks - I'm sad it's almost all gone. I'm going to take a stitch primer with me today to think about new things to do with the needle and thread. My embroidery repertoire is pretty limited. Got to hear the Braves on the radio, always fun even though they lost last night in San Francisco. AT&T park sounds like Hell's back yard to hear our announcers describe it.

I really miss my camera...so many things are gorgeous in the morning light.

scribbling

Thanks to Terry G. for reminding me about ZFranks Scribbler which has uncovered a new, more flexible black hole for my time, V2.

You'll curse me for following those links.

Left is a scribble that sketches the bare bones of a small piece that came together on the design wall at the WhineMine last night. No denying it's representational. Suburban landscapes, a series perhaps.

The central element, a pool, came from the  last batch of hand dyes -  a wonderful bright teal from something ProChem called "Bonnie Blue" over some pale yellow cotton, another gift that's full of promise. I think I finally used the last of all that vintage linen and coarse sack cloth, all wonderful in greens, gold and rust. A grove.

family

Baby sister Patty and her daughter Kim, now grown, married and soon to be back in the US with her hubby and Babu-Rio on board! We are all looking forward to their safe return.

Will trade fabric for digital camera?

That's right, my poor Canon A95 has shuffled off this mortal coil. Well, mostly. I just read about a recall and fired off a pitiable email to the Canon powers that be to see if they will indeed fix it including the round trip postage. Time will tell.
Every single picture  I have every posted anywhere was taken with this little gem.
Can't say I didn't get my money's worth, for sure.

Until it's been repaired or replaced which would be high on the list of luxury items I don't give a lot of thought to, there won't be much heard from these parts. I've taken pride that my blog has been equal parts eye candy and nattering. Lately, I've not had enough to say that was fit to be published so posts will be few and likely archival.

Faithful readers, just pretend off I'm vacationing somewhere with no internet connection. Someplace beachy and serene. I'll be back when the time is right.

PS---Hold the presses and pass the popcorn. An Angel has come to the rescue again. I'll be back in picture taking business before the movie is over...well, maybe the trilogy. Can you picture happy?

studio archaeology

I don't want to start anything new right now - there are so many UFOs, false starts, and bad actors laying around the studio I just have to take each as they come. Some things will go through drastic changes, some will be kitty hammocks at the animal shelter (not the first time). I found another fling, this one only wanting several hours worth of hand quilting - that I can do. It may take weeks but oh well.

This piece called "Needleturning at Sunrise" goes back to 2005 and was one of the first pieces I ever exhibited. I was nervous about sending off something so small with just a sleeve and little green stick for hanging. I'm thinking  it's going to be a different thing once mounted and painted in.

It was a great monday - my dyes came from Prochem and my team, the Atlanta Braves, opened the new baseball season in fine fashion.

Ocean Going

There's nothing like having a good studio assistant!







I painted this one into it's ocean yesterday. I finally gave up on the stained and dirty linen that it was stitched over. What was I thinking? Even after embroidering over dozens of little spots of rust, it still just looked dirty. I like this so much better.   You can see some closeups here, and here.

Safe as Houses

Here' the fling that I kept for myself - my nap blankie these days.

Some history here, here and here

The Stars Out of Place

This one is finished. I sat with it in my lap for an hour last night trying to choose the next color thread. There were no answers.

I'm going to set it aside for a while before I decide whether to mount in on canvas like the other recent pieces, or leave it soft, in the cloth.

Easter/Ostara

Ostara - Goddess of Renewal. I like better than chocolate bunnies and peeps.
We haven't done much about this holiday since the boys have outgrown thinking it was a sort of mini-Christmas, minus the tree and wrapping paper.  Oh, I'll still bite the ears off Jake's bunny and put it back in the box and of course, I love to dye the eggs if I remember.

This one kind of looks like Easter colors. Untitled and about 42"x42" from back in 2005 I think.  I was disappointed at how several pieces of very soft muslin refused to take the colors the way I was expecting. That's how I learned that the even the cheapest muslin from HoAnns had to be boiled in prep for dyeing.  Once I got over the color failure I hand appliqued these bars and hand stitched the whole thing. There was a lot of music involved.

last large work

"Front Runner"
is the last of the large pieces that I completed early in 2009.
I think its 7 feet long.

The real trouble comes when it's finished - trying to find a place to display and photograph the piece.

Spring & Summer flings

I've decided to sell this series of unlined, "summer" quilts . Most of them are machine pieced, hand appliqued and hand quilted. Just enough cloth to keep off the chill.


I've add a new page  called "Flings for Sale"
That should add an element of excitement to the spam I already get.

They might as well be living a useful life somewhere, as I intended.

the crayons that got left in the box

I've just ordered a batch of clearance priced dyes from ProChem . Given the way monitors will distort colors, who knows what these will look like in person.

I've never wandered far from the primary, basic colors before preferring to mix up my own mayhem, but these prices were irresistible - and I can't imagine I'd be using them straight from the jar anyway.  Strange, wonderful and new.

spring

 
Spring comes all at once to Georgia and lasts about a week before the heat and humidity set in.

I like to go to the big box store and pick over the plants that they left out to die in the unpredictable overnight chills. They get thrown into a basket, priced down to 25 or 50 cents. If rescued in time they manage just fine. These were all on death's front porch yesterday afternoon including the grape tomato plant that will soon take over the whole pot and give me tasty little treats all summer long as long as I remember to water it each day.

Sweetie has learned that the cat door is her key to the outdoors and she gradually learning the bounds of her territory. Unfortunately she thinks that the squirrels next door are somehow more interesting that the ones that live in our yard.

They are good neighbors and accustomed to our cats lurking about in their yard but I'll bet they think they are seeing Jinxs' ghost doing her usual thing.

Put & take

I'm really taken with the quality of that sheet that I dismembered.

Yesterday I put several of the less than stellar pieces through several other surface design techniques - some  kitchen chemistry involving Elmer's Glue, Soft Scrub and more dye, this time with a little heat boost. 

the more I look at this cloth the less inclined I am to cut it up.  I've been admiring Jimmy McBride's quilts and hammer & tongs way he goes about it.

Once I finish torturing the 8 different sections I may just put this sheet back together like Humpty Dumpty and make a bedquilt out of it.

dye results

Not so fierce anymore. It's hard to say if the intensity loss was due to the advanced age of the dyes or the temps outside which were chilly at best.

All subtle and interesting. Some destined for other treatments. You can see the woven pattern in those pricey sheets and the coarseness of the linen. You can click on the picture for a close up.

cleanup

It occurred to me that letting these dry completely and then shaking out the grains of cream of wheat and the bug carcasses would be much easier than trying to rinse it all off the fabric. Fortunately it's not sticky at all and is blowing off like so much colorful sawdust. If the sun would only come out for a bit I could have this bunch in the washer and dryer before I leave for work. Maybe. Remember, these are wet pictures. It remains to be seen if this old, old abused dye powder will take to the cloth for real but a preliminary rinse and wash by hand showed almost no dye run-off!

the early returns

I just couldn't wait until morning. Around midnight I was rinsing this one out in a bowl out on the deck, in the dark.

I did not examine the cream of wheat closely but it looks like the bugs (and their eggs?) took up the dye particles  and redeposited them according to their size - you can see the ghosts in blue here. the brownish lines came from the radiator where I draped this to dry for just a few minutes. Live and learn with that one.

It's a mystery!

It's the first dyefest of the season here at the Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx and new mysteries are afoot! I've had a batch of vintage damask napkins, a length of coarse linen, and a swanky 600ct stripey bedsheet from Goodwill soaking in soda as since, umm, Sunday (I think)

 There was no kosher salt in the cupboard and I couldn't justify wasting any sugar with hummingbird season about to open. Lurking in the back of the pantry was an old box of COW complete with mealy bugs - a charming protein boost that happens when you don't seal your flour and cereals in plastic. Is it just a southern thing or did I not notice them when we lived up north? It remains to be seen how the cream of wheat and bugs will interact with the soda ash, dye and cloth.

One thing is for sure, I won't be rinsing these in my washing machine. I'm out of time this morning so all of this will get to poach on the work table until this time tomorrow. We'll see what comes of all this mess.

Stitch heroics

Sometimes I sit with needle poised and wonder "Now what?"

Gerdiary continues to remind me that stitch really doesn't need to do much more than hold things together quietly. No heroics or gyrations are really called for.