eye candy relief

The fierce weather left us relatively unscathed. I gave up watching the storm tracks on TV figuring I'd hear the alarm from the fire station nearby. Hardly. 



No art  from me today so enjoy some freedom, energy and excitement.

Branko Bursac

Gwen Fox

Emily Miah Stewart

Green Bag redux

The overdye and discharge didn't wreak as much change as I had hoped so it's going to be up to me and the scrap bag to set things right. Here's a good start. It's nice to have this distraction from the weather.

We are in the path of the storms birthing tornadoes all across the south. My studio/office is on the top floor and from the window I can see our next door neighbor's towering trees tossing in the wind like so much green surf.

The next moment the wind drops, all goes still and muggy and the sun lights the treetops from an odd angle. It's been on and off all day. They say tonight the real trouble is coming. The tree frogs have been flat out insane at night.

new day, new project

From hideous mistake to potential serviceability.
A little dye, some new zippers and a little TLC. Who knows, I may run wild and break out the beads!

I've been shopping for a new bag for a while now with no success and realize it's because I'm hung up on an old favorite that needs a second chance.

Pastel Hell

Lesson learned. Some rot about being conceived or executed in haste. I have paid the price for disregarding a few cardinal rules. #1..let the dye warm up after you take it from the fridge. #2 be positive of the nature of your cloth. This sheet turned out to have a dash of synthetic by the looks of the results.

One of the groups making quilts for the quake survivors in Japan will be getting a whole tops worth of 8" squares by the end of the week.

PS- thanks for all the positive comments. I should know by now that my pastel dreams never satisfy my craving for the bold, daring and vibrant when I am awake and fully aware. I know someone will make something beautiful with these and then it will be given to someone who will appreciate it's function first and maybe it's beauty too. 

Easter

I hard boiled a few eggs this morning but have left off dyeing them. A giant chocolate rabbit has been being nibbled at for a week already, beyond a Sunday dinner, we don't do Easter now that the boys are (mostly) grown. It used to be like minor Christmas here on Easter. Somehow the notion of new toys crept into the baskets in place of excess candy.

There was cloth to dye today first thing. Sometimes ideas come in dreams.






Whether or not this is a good idea remains to be seen. This fabric has been lolling in the soda ash tub a while now. I ripped it into strips and rolled them, not too tightly.

the dye went straight onto the turkey platter and the ends dabbed in colors.

the rolls then stood on their heads in mason jars for a few minutes...and then taken out and flipped over to take full advantage of gravity from the opposite direction.

and then laid out like so many tasty little Cannoli to spend the day drying in the hot sun.

Now to keep my hands off them for a while.
 
PS...why wait? I unrolled them to dry flat in the sun...quickly.

spoze-yah update

I like the overall effect but it was a whole lot of work although the process could be refined to make enough fabric for a project in one session. Not as much "creep" as I wanted from the dye...thickener maybe. Maybe doing the creep thing after the blocks are stitched together and wet with soda ash. More trials to come.

I came into a large quantity of thick poly felt and wanted to see how it went under the needle. Machine quilting here is too mannered for my taste. Hand quilting is in order but not for a while.

plotting

I have been captivated by this quilt on the cover of Susan Beal's "Modern Log Cabin Quilting" and spent part of my evening doing my own version of Jude's "what iffing" but I've always called it "spoze-yah" (go on, say it out loud) .

It involves some things I have been warned against, like sewing dyed and painted but unrinsed cloth. Speculating about some of Mary Anne Jordan's pieces like this one and thinking about what the dye will do if you just let it.

no time for tea

I doubt this teapot will ever see any liquid again. Maybe Sangria.  There was no top, so maybe it's not really a teapot but  I saw one just like it in a wonderful film yesterday.
 
Take the time, settle in, watch the faces and listen to the voices. Give yourself over to this one - "Dean Spanley",
  and I promise you will be delighted.

(a very photogenic teapot, here and here are some large, flashy images. my magpie brain is captivated with the reflections)

phase one, wrap up

It was a long day at the Lawrenceville Frankenstein Dyeworx...even the tools and the tablemoppers had a good time.






the theme of the day seemed to "extra-terrestrial hides" 

there is still a lot of work to do but it will have to wait until the weekend.

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.

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.