One of my quilts for HERstory, an exhibit and book curated by Susanne Miller Jones, appears in the Quilting Arts Magazine story about the exhibit. It is always an honor to have work featured in a major quilting magazine. But just a note: I don’t live in Arizona, I live in Arkansas. There is a Lakeview, AZ but at the time I created this piece I lived in Lakeview, AR. It’s a mistake often made, or sometimes I get mail addressed in AK. Maybe I need to adopt some of these cities? Road Trip!!
When I explore surface design I want to go beyond commercial products. There are some great commercial ones out there and you can do some amazing things with them. But just like commercially produced fabric designs there is a limit to creativity. I like to dye and paint and print my own fabrics for one of a kind art work. Sometimes I start with a commercial fabric because I don’t ever want to waste something. But what do I use for printing and stenciling?
Here are a few new tools in my tool box for this. These things all were destined for the trash or the recycle bin, depending on their number. When you think of surface design you see these as tools rather than trash. Oh, that black wooden piece I picked up at a sale and I am anxious to see the design from it. The blue container is from mushrooms, of course an empty spool, the clear plastic is from cookies and the other piece is from bottles of fizzy water.
Here is a close up of the fizzy water plastic. I know this is going to be a favorite. It will produce both positive and negative prints depending on whether I use it to stamp or stencil.
I haven’t had time to play with all these yet. I have some deadlines for exhibitions coming up. I wanted to share since it has been a really long time since I posted. Here is a finished piece going to Carol Jones Frank for our small art exchange group on Facebook. I used the empty spool in gold ink for some subtle stamping. It gave just the right amount of another layer of complexity. 
….since I was inspired to work on new pieces. I haven’t really figured out what the road block to my creativity has been, I just know that I haven’t been inspired to work! So I thought I needed to get back to some basics. I worked on a couple of UFO’s and they are nearly completed and up on the design wall in the studio waiting for quilting. They will get further along next week for sure. But, I still was in a creative funk. What I do should NOT be work.
Then a couple of things happened a few days ago. I unearthed a treasure of a 221K machine at Goodwill. For those who aren’t machine aficionados, that is known as a Singer Featherweight. And it is white, or as my friend Marie said, glowy green. After getting it cleaned, oiled and adjusted I became obsessed with making something! Ron said if he knew $8 (the cost of the machine) would do that he would have given me $8 sooner! Such a kidder…eye roll!
The second thing that happened was I found fat quarters and 1/2 yd cuts of some fantastic fabrics at the Humane Society Thrift shop. They spoke to me. And they are all fused up waiting to be cut for a special landscape quilt. I am excited! I think I may have my mojo back!
I think I struck gold! Extracting the dye from dried marigolds couldn’t have been easier. Simply put them into a jar and cover with water. There is almost immediate color. The problem was that in all my resource materials the only marigold dye recipe I found was for fresh petals. So as is common for me, it was a seat of the pants moment.
I soaked 50 grams of dried petals overnight. Then I drained them, reserving the liquid gold. I put the soaked petals into a large crockpot and simmered on low setting for 2 hours. Some natural dyes tend to go brown if the heat is too high so I use my crockpot in the studio to keep the heat low and constant.
I love the variation of colors from the dye pot. The lemon yellow silks are a ray of sunshine. The indigo pieces that were over-dyed got some much needed zip. The eco-printed long sleeved tee looks amazing and I love the splash of color added to the linen scarves. There was a lot of color changed on the indigo scarf, but not as much on the logwood. I think they are all keepers. The bonus is that I still have 2 quarts of dye extract. I will have to figure out a WOF (weight of fabric) recipe for fellow dyers who like things more exact!
By the end of autumn, my marigolds were in over drive. Yellow ones, orange ones and red/orange ones. A bucket over my arm and fingers ready to pinch there lovely heads off was all I needed. They dried all winter and with dyeing season coming into full swing, it was time to see what these would do, but first the petals had to be separated from the sepal and the receptacle. But never fear, nothing is going to waste.
The sepals when soaked overnight in a pot yielded a soft yellow after a little alum was added. I was surprised! I might have been able to leave them all attached but would not want to dilute the strength of the final marigold dye bath.
Next up, results!
JP Dawes Contemporary Artist 