I have been totally slammed this month with deadlines and daily life. Part of the reason is that I have been going to therapy 3 days a week for back problems. Each of those days was a complete waste since I would be so tired afterwards I couldn’t think about making art.
Ron has been helping create in the dye room. He is as enamored of the serendipitous results as I am. So here are some photos of our results, they have been laundered and are on the drying rack, soon ready to go to new homes. Enjoy!
Remember…right click for a larger image to see details.
Ron and I have been printing scarves and such while we have good weather. I love this tee! It is printed with dogwood, smoke bush and fern fronds. A funny thing is happening with our prints. We weren’t thrilled with the results at first, pale and lack-luster. So I took a page from some literature on persimmon dyeing and plunged this in baking soda water. I got this amazing gold color. Who knew!
The shirts and things we are doing will be for sale at the Art Odyssey Christmas sale at the library in November. Well, unless they are sold sooner!
Here is another one that has the bundle marks on the back and the dogwood is much greener.
This is a re- post since I wanted to introduce you to a new group that has come together from the QuiltArt List. We will do a challenge every 2 months. Here’s the address if you want to keep up with what we are doing. http://challengeplaygrop.wordpress.com/ (Yes, it is misspelled, my doing I’m afraid.) My post is the first but others should start showing up in the next week,
Jeannie Sredl came up with our theme for the first challenge of “Off To The Races”. That could be interpreted many ways by the diverse group of artists in this group. I think this quote says it all and should be the mantra of this new group.
The Race was on, the souls of the racers were in it. ~~ Lew Wallace, Ben Hur
Here is my offering in A4 size and a little about it. I wanted to challenge myself to use the mountains of hand dyed fabrics and threads I’ve been making. I started with only the fabrics in mind and no particular composition. That’s the way I work most of the time. I tell people I am seduced by the cloth as I let it morph into what it wants to be when it grows up.
I cut and pin, stitch, look at, stitch some more. When it starts taking on a shape I can see the meaning and how it relates to a theme I’m working from. The quote on the piece is from Aditya Chandra:
Life is one race I never want to win, I’d rather stroll around enjoying the scenery.
A small piece of the pink worm undone. I’ve not decided what I will do with the whole piece so for now I will keep it under wraps. I can say I am in love with it and it was totally worth the hours spent stitching the resists.
The best kind of little pink worm is on the end of a hook enticing a fish to bite it’s dinner, so I can have dinner! But that isn’t the kind this is…but it looks like some kind of wiggly pink something or other doesn’t it? This is a piece of snow dyed fabric from last winter’s dye days that was less than stellar. So I worked for hours and hours stitching and wrapping resist patterns into it. It is in a dye bath of very stinky old walnut dye right now. The photo is a little fuzzy [caterpillar?] but I’m hoping for good things when it’s dyed, dried and untied.
JP Dawes Contemporary Artist 