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.

Giving Thanks

You know who puts off doing the tax boogey until this morning, those who owe. Still, the filthy deed is done and as I pressed print there was a thump on the doorstep. FedEx!

My boodle from Prochem arrived chock full of wonder. I love buying (cheap!) the discontinued, heinous colors no one else seems to want. What a challenge! There's Curry, Loden, Pumpkin Spice, Grape, Azalea Pink, Golden Yellow, Sapphire and Intense Blues, Raspberry and Superblack!  I feel a day off coming on.

Here's a hasty pot of Forget-me-Not which I have rechristened "Fuggedaboutit" Blue. Results tomorrow.

For now, I give thanks once again, for being so easily amused. 

back to the wall

Remember this one?

I was so in love with it at first but I left it hanging on the design wall, sideways (as it was built) and only pinned in place - I could not take the next step of basting it.

Deep down, I knew it was fatally flawed.

Thanks to E, who clarified what I knew to be true, there really was no way to unify the two disparate halves and what I really had here were starting points for two separate pieces.  Here's to heading off false starts before they become groaning disappointments.

You know what I am supposed to be doing at this moment, don't you.

the personal stash

 After the storm front moved through last night, it's turned cold again. There are sleeping cats draped all over the house.
 

I was busy at the computer and didn't hear her come into the room and clamber up from the ironing board into my personal stash...




So I asked her, "Sweetie, what the hell are you doing up there?
Casually, slowly, she turned around and showed me what she thought of my efforts.

a humble Thank You

to Jude Hill who has been so incredibly generous in featuring my hand dyed fabric on her resource page along with the work of several amazing artists.
You won't go wrong here.

Jude, I am scrambling to live up to your recommendation.

There will be Born Again Overdyes, Sugar, Salt and Buggy Cereal cloth, discharged,painted and dragged behind the mule fabric (just kidding)...lot's of new and interesting things to share in the upcoming weekends.

half baked still

Here's more what I was thinking about yesterday. The oval/circles I like best come from discharging - the hot wax is much more willful and harder to control. These processes are both time consuming and messy and this whole week I am very short of free time so I am going to let everything rest until the weekend.

I'm going to be pulling many pieces from the stash for similar treatments - they thought they were safe, all ironed and folded on the shelf. HAH!

I did a rare thing last night -spent four consecutive hours watching TV (I should have been sleeping) the pilot and second episode of "The Killing" on AMC.

I can't put my finger on what is so compelling about what could be boiled down to yet another cop drama. The complexity and dominance of character reminds me of "Homicide, Life in the Streets" and there's a dash of David Lynch. Strong performances from unknown actors. It all adds up to really good TV. 

Yesterday - 1st dyefest of the season

It was great fun to hold the first dye day of the season at Elizabeth's studio.  We are both always on the lookout for happy chemical accidents, neither one a stickler for rules.  Here she is working over a piece that came to her from another well known fiber artist (a prize if you guess who via email). They have a swap going, each taking turns changing the piece.  I don't know when they are going to stick a fork in this one and call it done.

Another view of the day's doings here.

This is part of my murky results, but murk was just what I was after because I've been having visions of those discharged discs and have a half baked idea along the lines of Shell Vapors and I'm fresh out of spots.


Overall results ran from the sublime to the ridiculous, as usual, which means something for every occasion.

There were great lessons remembered and new ones learned like, don't waste soy wax on wet cloth, make the wax hot enough in the first place, split peas were a waste of lentils and SHAKE THE DAMN BOTTLES! and don't forget to check your gloves once in a while..you don't want to see my thumb.