Another Love


I showed the fabric, that I love so, to my hubby, he said it was nice but he likes what I have hanging on the line a lot better.

This is a piece of pink cotton that was originally dyed with cochineal On cotton to get the best colors you really need to alum tannin alum your fabrics, and this gives dull dusty flesh toned pinks, if your cochineal vat isn't concentrated enough. I then screen printed over it using natural dyes.

This cotton is really soft and has a loser weave making it ideal for hand stitching.

I'm in Love


I'm in love with this piece of fabric, I can't wait for the curing process to be done with, about 3 weeks this time of year. I can then wash it and get to the business of stitching it. Should have taken a better pic of it too, it's screen printed with lac over a cochineal immersion bath on silk dupioni.

More fabric


These are composted fabrics, I undid the bundles tonight, I'm going to leave them on the line, though they are almost dry now, because it's going to rain tonight. It'll give them a nice preliminary rinse, and it won't cost me anything!

That's my husbands pile behind the cloth, it's leaving soon as we will be doing some landscaping, ie leveling out the yard. So we now need to find a place to put all of my garden fencing and the like. Gotta keep the rodents out of the garden. Normally I don't mind sharing but we are over run with chipmunks, rabbits and squirrels. I"m not sure what the ground hog eats.

Picture of Me


My aunt commented that there is a weird box in the far right hand corner. Yes this is where the picture of me is supposed to go, so far I've tried several things and it won't accept and of hte formats it states it wants. I even had my image reduced to 32Kb and you get a max of 50Kb. I uploaded the image, saved it both as a .jpeg and as a .gif it wouldn't accept either format. So who knows, so here you get to see the pic I was going to use, how I'm going to get it into my profile is beyond me.

Blog Changes Again

I managed to find a free 3 column template for my blog, from blogger no less. Scroll down on the right side, when you get to free blogger templates go there, there are a lot of options.

However, while I like my new 3 column template a lot I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get rid of the header and footer images. I have my own images I want to insert here.

I've been looking at the template for a couple of hours now and still cannot find it, so if you find the string of code, that will actually change cause that one at the bottom of the code isn't working for me, please let me know.

Thanks - now back to our regularly sceduled surface designing!

Samples






I've been composting and screenprinting away today. Here I have some fabric that was already dyed red, with a madder lac dyebath. I've wrapped the bundle in copper wire and put it out doors.

I've been working with this lace tablecloth for the better part of the day, screenprinting it as a resist. I've printed up lots of fabric, some yardage pieces, all using natural dyes, and a natural thickener as my print paste.

It just goes to show that if you get in the studio, and start producing, and keep at it long enough the creative juices will come back. It helps that I brought my little portable stereo to the basement so I could listen to my music. I listen to alot of instrumental, it helps get me into the creative mood/flow.

I Got My Groove Back & QSDS


I'll have to post pics of the fabric later, but I've basically been sitting on some fabric for five years now. It's a huge piece of silk dupioni(sp?) that I compost dyed. I've wanted to do something with this fabric ever since it came out of my washing machine, but to date have only hung it as yardage.

Well tonight I got my groove back, it's been a long two years peppered with too many dead relatives. Anyway, John and I were out looking at some fresh cut downs, cottonwood, locust, birch, and ash. He brought home some logs of each variety. I went gah gah over the birch, or I should say the bark anyway.

I hope to work on this piece this weekend, I have too much to do tonight, plus I need to get the other elements ready first. But I went to town photographing the wood, the next step is sketches and some samples of things I want to try. I should have it all worked out by Saturday, and will probably spend most of Sunday working on the pieces.

I'm excited the deadline for QSDS has been changed to the 26th, so I still have time to submit my yardages. There's a piece, further down the blog, that I plan to submit. So if your interested in the piece it is for sale and you can buy it at QSDS.

Rust & Clay Dyeing Book



It's done and out the door. It took two of us to finally figure out the reason behind the video snaffu. But FINALLY it's on it's way.

My husband gave me a high compliment, as he was burning cd/dvd's he said it looked really nice.

This coming from a man who is impressed by nothing!!!

Anyway I have a total of four video clips on the CD Book, each clip discusses one technique, the ones that I'm asked about most frequently. You can purchase the book here at Rust & Clay Dyeing Book