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Wordless Wednesday

May 7th, 2014

ww 5-7

Fabulous Fabric

May 5th, 2014

goldensilk

I am so smitten with the newly dyed fabric in my stash!! Above is a beautiful variegated gold silk charmeuse.

I arrived home from Eugene late yesterday afternoon. I have yards and yards of new fabric for my stash. Here is more of the silk. The first batch was dyed in Judy’s  nature method.

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This psychedelic piece was done with the texture method.

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And this one is the star burst method.

 

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I love these pieces of cotton which are color bursts.

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I am not sure how I did these, but I like the dark values.

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And this one is a star burst – nice, eh?

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It took a few tries to perfect her lines technique, but this one is pretty good.

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I have only made a small dent in ironing these. I love the magic that happens when you iron hand-dyed fabric.

I went to get my teeth cleaned today and had the bad news that the bridge on the right side of my mouth is disintegrating and is in danger of coming loose. So I have to go in and get new impressions and find out my options for replacing it. I see $ signs!!

 

April Printed Fabric Bee – Art Nouveau

May 2nd, 2014

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Jackie Lams was Queen Bee for April and challenged us with the theme of Art Nouveau. Here are the fabrics that you can add to your own stash. Just go on over to Jackie’s blog and leave a comment or leave a comment of our Printed Fabric Bee Blog.

I had another great day at my dye workshop. Photos will probably have to wait – too tired to do too much blogging tonight.

Color Burst

May 1st, 2014

fabricpullsfrom base

I am in Eugene at the Eugene Textile Center, taking a dye workshop from Judy Robertson. I have long coveted her fabrics  and when I first bought them, I was afraid to cut into them. We are using her methods on a variety of fabrics and are learning how to do her 5 signature dye techniques – color burst, star burst, nature, stripe and texture. In this photo, she is holding one of her fabrics that I bought and used in my Red Sky at Night.

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Today we did color burst. mixed dyes

After sewing tyvek labels to our fabrics and soaking them in soda ash, we mixed up dye with urea water. To start, Judy mixed lemon yellow, fuchsia, turquoise and golden yellow. The base fabric is spread out on a sheet of plastic. I call this piece, the mother fabric because it will be used to produce several new pieces.

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Then dye is poured over the fabric, leaving white spaces in between.

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Then, she poured on some urea water to wet everything. Now, soda ash soaked fabric is placed on top and smoothed and smushed to bring dye on to the surface. You can see the result up at the top.

The fabric is then stuffed in a plastic cup and she spooned on some golden yellow and gave it a little more of a smoosh.

 

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I used spring green, fuchsia, and something else (I forget!) I then poured some black across it. I should have taken more photos. But,  here is my first pull.

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Here are all my cups of fabric which are batching overnight. I get to wash them out tomorrow.

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Everyone in the class did a different colorway and we around the room creating pieces from them.

Anyway, it was lots of fun and I am looking forward to more fun tomorrow. We are starting with starbursts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Window Seat at PDX

April 28th, 2014

 

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Today, I got to go behind the scenes at the Portland airport to see the exhibit that my Prairie Fields is in. It consists of 13 or 14 glass cases with and essay by Jim Earl, a literature professor at U of O. In the essay, Earl uses images taken from Google Earth to educate people about the land below them as they fly. I didn’t realize that the complete title contained the phrase – The Art of the Circle Field. In addition to our 3 quilts, there are several Google Earth photos used to illustrate the story. In it, Earl ponders the artistry of the prairie circles – are they intended to be so artistic or is it by chance. Here are some of the photos he selected:

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Here are Shirley and Elizabeth with their quilts.

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And me:

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And the three of us together.

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We met the curator in her office and she took us through to the secure area through a back door. We looked at some of the other art exhibits. I have always enjoyed seeing art in airports and so it is quite fun to be part of an exhibit, now.

IKEA is out by the airport so I had lunch and spent some time there picking up some things for the condo. Then, Mr C and I went to the lighting store and picked out a chandelier. We are tired at looking at hanging wires.