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Archive for April, 2010

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If at First You Don’t Succeed

Sunday, April 25th, 2010

…try try again.

These are quite spectacular, but not what I had imagined. I made an error in following Jan Meyers Newberry’s directions. I forgot that I was working on silk and not cotton. Black dyes do not dye silk the same as cotton so I ended up with red instead of black. These are the 15 inch wide scarves. These are the 11 inch wide pieces:

Here are a couple of detail shots of the larger scarves:

The turquoise and fuchsia scarves were not over-dyed with black.

Here are some random pieces of linen, cotton and silk that  I threw into the dye baths:

Undaunted, I underpainted six more scarves and I will use silk black on them to see what happens.

I was not happy with the yellowish orange shibori so that is being over-dyed with rust and I am dyeing two more chartreuse scarves to be over-dyed with black.

I am having fun and focused!! Time to update the SDA website. I will check in with the new results tomorrow.

Posted in Dyeing, Trinity Arts | 5 Comments »

Dyeing Day One

Saturday, April 24th, 2010

No, I didn’t dye this, but I finished the edges while I was waiting for some fabric to soak in soda ash. It is a paint rag that I embellished with black ink. I then cut it up and collaged it with some hand-dyed fabric strips.

I did lots of dyeing of silk scarves today. My first task was to underpaint some scarves without soda ash that will be overdyed after being arashi shibori wrapped on pvs poles.

I mixed up fuchsia, turquoise and lemon yellow.

Here are the other supplies that I use: foam brushes, extra containers and some water.

I covered my work tables with plastic and laid out a couple of scarves and spritzed with water.

Here are the first two. One is yellow to turquoise. The other is turquoise to purply blue.

I did two that are fuchsia to orangy red – color is not showing well.

Then I had some dye soup to which I added water to make value gradations.

I just love that orange.

I then soaked some scarves in soda ash and did immersion dyeing with some chartreuse and some more dye soup. I still had dye left so I grabbed some fabric scraps from my pfd cabinet and dyed them. They are batching in the furnace room. The dye painted pieces are drying and will be wrapped on pvc pipe tomorrow and over-dyed with black, I think.

I am whooped and want to be taken out to dinner and pampered.

Posted in Dyeing, My creations | 3 Comments »

Bet You Can’t Make Just One

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

I had enough of the  velvet to make one more piece. The other two are made with hand-dyed fabric. I like the ground fabric because it looks like fallen Aspen leaves.

Mr C has The Farm ready for me to plant. I think I will wait another week to make sure that my shoulder is healed.

I spent some time trying to photograph Scooter with my new camera. Here are some of the better shots.

He has a pine cone in his mouth. Sometimes, he brings them into the house and makes a mess.

This is funny! His ears are flying and it is almost hard to tell which end is which!!

Posted in My creations, Scooter, The Farm | 5 Comments »

Dinner At Eight Artists Interview

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

A Beneath the Surface artist is featured each day on the Dinner at Eight Artists blog. Today, you can read my interview.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

On a Roll

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

Wow, what a difference a week makes. I have had hardly a twinge of pain today. I lost my best studio scissors so I went on a clean up the mess rampage in the studio and my office. I didn’t find them. I haven’t seen them in quite a while. I asked Mr C if he might have borrowed them. I got an interesting non-verbal response. I went into his work room and there they were on his work bench. He still claims his innocence. LOL

Judy asked me if I had made the aspen fabric at our workshop together. No, up above you can see what is left of my current aspen fabric. I paint organza with splotches of black, brown and white. Then, I cut strips for the trunks. This is one way I make the trunks. Sometimes I use shibori fabric.

I ordered and received about 24 silk charmeuse scarf blanks in different sizes. Mr C had a thing at church on Saturday so if the weather is nice, I think I will do some scarf dyeing. I think they will be a nice addition to my booth next month.

I also received some bobbin washers from a FB friend:

They appear to be made of Teflon.

You put them in the bobbin case, under the bobbin and they are supposed to prevent those nasty thread nests on the back of the quilt when you do free motion quilting. I have not tried them yet.

I am so pleased with my two Kilauea quilts. Since I can’t show them yet, I am showing the back. I love to buy designer boo boo fabric on sale which I use for the backs of my quilts. This is one of the fabrics I had in my stash.

I am doing hand sewing of facings and hanging sleeves tonight. I am a little tired from my day of activity. I also went for a 3 mile walk with Steve and Scooter. Here are a couple of photos I took on our walk. It is the pink season here in Portland.

Looks like someone needs to shovel their pink snow!!

I also received queries about the books that I discovered. Someone wrote down the names and authors and is going to send them to us. When I get the list from her, I will share.

Posted in 12X12 challenge, My neighborhood, Stuff I Buy | 4 Comments »

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