Carmine Red Cloth

I finished (except for hand-sewing the binding) this crazy batiked wholecloth that I waxed and dyed a while back. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, not thrilled, but happy. The flower centers were done in clusters of french knots. The red color isn't what I'm used to working with, maybe that's why I'm not 100% thrilled with it.

And here is what's up on my design wall today. I'm using the Benartex printed sheets for this, and it really goes together easily, I'd highly recommend them to anyone who wants to try one of these quilts!

And, here is another project in the works, using my hand-dyed and printed fabrics:

Creativity Quiz

Here's a simple quiz that might give you insight into your creative side. According to my results, creativity enriches me.

"What you are really looking for is harmony — you want to feel you are a part of what you create."

and

"you seem more suited to the sort of creativity that calls for gentleness, subtlety, harmony and patience. "

Dyeing again

Another dyeing day yesterday, I mixed up two dye baths yesterday morning before work and put some pieces in. The colors I used were teal blue and khaki (both from Dharma). It's so interesting to me to see how different they turned out!

These three were all in the teal blue dye bath:

And these were in the khaki dye bath:

Because I put the fabric in and didn't stir it a few times during the day, you can see that the darker ones were most likely sitting on the bottom of the dishpan I use for dyeing. The khaki apparently contains a mixture of brown and green, and the green is less dense than the brown portion, so the brown sinks and the green sits on top--that's why one piece looks all green.

I'm also trying out different shibori tieing techniques, and am really liking how they're turning out.

Shibori & goats

A few weeks ago I shibori-dyed this piece of fabric. While I liked the pattern a whole lot, the colors were just too bright for me to use.

So, on Saturday I got out my batik wax, and drew some circles and lines on the piece, then overdyed with warm black, and got this, which I think will make a great wall hanging:

And what is this? Breakfast for goats, of course.

My neighbor has two goats, and they "forget" to feed them, I'm afraid. They're in a smallish enclosure that has been stripped of all vegetation. The poor things cry all the time, so I finally started feeding them. I've even been giving them hay and cuttings from my trees and shrubs.
This pygmy is Zackie:

And this is Brownie--you can see how thin the poor thing is.

Shibori Dyeing

Before my vacation started, I got a bunch of books through the interlibrary loan program at the university library where I work. Two that I liked best were:

One of these had a simple recipe for direct-dyeing, which I copied into my sketch book:

I did a machine stitching technique on a pretty bright fuschia (or maybe it was carmine red) piece that I had dyed a while back, then poured on some plum and yellow dyes using my recipe and mixing bottle:

This is how it looked after I opened it up, (taking out all those stitches with a seam ripper since the stitching stayed damp after the fabric was pretty much dried)

Also, I took a white piece of fabric and wrapped around a PVC pipe, tieing it with a string and scrunching down as tightly as I could while wrapping. Then I squirted some Warm Black dye on it, followed by some Jet Black about 10 minutes later.

Here is the unwrapping:

I love how it looks, I folded this piece in thirds before dyeing, so it looks a little more interesting, and I also twisted the fabric as I was scrunching it down, so it was a little more wavy. (I was trying to get the look of the work of Jan Myers-Newbury, but I have a way to go!)

These pieces were just accordion folded before dyeing:

This blueish piece was folded in half, then wrapped on the pole and squirted with fuschia dye: