Thursday, April 21, 2011

Goodwill

I love the Goodwill in Lilburn. There are many people of good taste and apparently great means who bring their barely used things there for me to scarf up on Tuesdays with my SC discount.

(I compensate for these trips by watching a couple of episodes of Hoarders and making up a bag of things to take back to them...)

2$ for a large silver plated teapot? Who could resist? It was dancing on the shelf before my eyes!

No one seems to use top sheets anymore - I scored two brand new, king-sized sheets of very high quality cotton with the intention of cutting them up for the dyepot. After washing and drying I discovered I like sleeping in luxury, especially for 2.50 each. There was also a tan cotton lawn skirt with acres of tiny pleats...pre-sewn shibori I'm thinking.

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.


Wednesday, April 20, 2011

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.  "RĂªver 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.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

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.