New Path


Through the ole mud patch! I've been slowly plugging away at the lawn this week, trying to get all the leaves raked up (a never ending battle) the creeping charlie beaten back (a defeating battle) and the grass seed spread (good luck with the weather on that one)! I was really happy to see that my Asian Lilies survived the winter, they were in a pot in the yard so the goal this week is to get them transplanted to the front lawn.


The hostas should be ready to transplant in another week or so, my peonies are breaking the soil as are the lilies of the valley, tulips, and tirger lilies.

Jerusalem Artichokes



Well spring has finally sprung here, it's supposed to be 66 F here tomorrow, and if it hasn't sprung then I'm pretending it has anyway! I've been doing yard work, will take some pictures of that tomorrow, I've been putting down mulch and pavers in the areas that I've decided are permanent walkways and trimming everything back.
I cleaned the Jerusalem Artichoke garden and found some really nice tubers, will be making these up with a batch of green beans.

New Barn Series






















New series of barns in the making. Silk velvet that has been dyed with natural dyes (vegetable or botanical dyed), compost dyed and or indigo dyed. The colors really are this vibrant in person! Cotton is not this vibrant but with a lot of work you can get it to this level of saturation ;-)
Now to figure how I'm going to stitch these babies and not lose the naunce of what I'm trying to achieve - which is to NOT have them look like a quilt! I'm not sure what the size is at the moment, I'll have to measure the pieces tomorrow, I"m thinking they are around 22"w x 28"h

Still Cleaning

A pile of silk sheers that have been dyed with either cochineal and or indigo.
Compost dyed silk fabrics, mainly sheers, that'll end up as faerey shoes or dresses - I think.

Found my pile of immersion dyed cotton fabrics, to the left, dyed with natural dyes. A selection of silk sheers to the right that have been dyed using a variety of methods, compost dyed, screenprinted (with natural dyes) or bound resist (shibori). Seeing the dark burgandy fabric reminds me that I wanted to get back to the dye pots and do some overdyeing a great way to make hohum fabrics SING!

Dye painted, Bound Resist, Compost Dyed, Silk Sheer Fabrics.

Like what else am I going to do? I had planned on working in the front garden this morning but over slept and woke up to rain! So now I'm back to sorting and pressing art cloth and will list some on my prairiefibers.etsy.com store later this evening. I have way too much fabric, and fibers, at this point and some of it definately needs to go live some where else.

Pin Cushion


Here's a pic of my new pin cushion I actually love pin cushions though I don't have many of them. This one came to live with me by default, it's big and harder to lose, and my beloved pin cushion disappeared. Me thinks a tabby cat has taken said pin cushion and put it in HIS stash of goodies! This one is approximately four inches across, and hopefully won't disappear, though I think this may be more wishful thinking than anything else.

Studio Clean Up

I'll try to post pictures later this afternoon of my wet studio, I started cleaning it yesterday - and unpacking my stuff from the other place. It's slowly coming together, and involving a LOT of rearranging of everthing, but I have faith that eventually it'll be a real working studio again.

The problem with having BOTH a design studio, the place where I do all of my stitching etc., and a wet studio, the place where I do all of my dyeing and painting of fabrics, fibers, and papers is that they are seperated by a floor in between the two - and my knees don't like stairs anymore!

More later from the land of chaos and dust bunnies.

FFAC Collage Mania Pieces

Ghost Tree #6
Ghost Tree #5
Ghost Tree #4
Ghost Tree #3
Ghost Tree #2
Ghost Tree #1
Materials: Found Paper, Ink, Paintstiks, Fabric Paint, Timtex, Wool Felt, Metallic Thread, Cotton Thread, Wool Yarn, Compost Dyed Silk Organza Net (Behind the center panel)
Size: each piece measures approx 8 1/8 x 5 3/8 inches

Wild Poppies

I needlefelted degummed silk waste onto a base of white wool roving, tis over a piece of shiny white organza fabric. The black lines were created by needlefelting heavy black pearl cotton onto the fabric. this would probably look better photographed against a dark background, instead of my white table.

Coral Reef Series

Top pic is of the fabric before I started applying shiva paintstiks - I"m no where near being done with the surface of this piece, and then it needs to be stitched!!! My shiva iridescent blender is NOT cooperating, time to dig out a new one. Everytime I went to draw a line on the fabric it wouldn't lay down color, if I pressed harder it just started flaking apart not fun at all, I've had this blender for about four years now so that could be a part of the problem.

I've never been to a coral reef, just seen them in photos etc., so no where near being close to the real thing. I have 4 maybe 5 pieces of fabric that ended up looking like coral, well ot me anyway, so this is the nature of my newest series of art quilts.