Mossy Banks

Calgary has FINALLY greened up completely: no brown highway verges, leaves budding and fuzzing, flowers just starting to pop. I’ve been craving these fresh colours, and whipped up some dye pots to accomplish that as well!

All in the shop now 🙂

Luxe threads for stitching along and on Mossy banks! A mix of wool, silk and silk/wool in clear crisp greens and yellows dyed in historically accurate processes with osage and logwood.

 

 

What could be better than an amble along the riverside, finding little secret coves and mossy banks to sit on and dream? As the wind sways miniature willow stands, you daydream, floating in the clearness.

This pack includes silk noil, cotton velveteen and silk/rayon velvet, solid and streaked and mottled, with osage and logwood dyed in historically accurate processes, giving elegant calming blues and soft Monet mossy yellows and greens. (Note, threads are not included, just to give you an idea of depth of colour. Threads will be in a different listing!)

Sotto voce part 2

After smashing our trusty Nikon D90 last month, i’m still trying to get used to the new Settings and Things on the replacement, a Panasonic Lumix FZ1000. Apparently i need to read the manual, go figure 🙂

The Nikon would allow me on the automatic setting to get the most beautiful daylight shots that showed texture, true colour and fine detail. The Lumix does fantastic close-ups on several settings, but the light effects are not the same. I suppose i should be thankful though that testing it doesn’t ‘waste” film, HA.

So, with 4 different settings (that i of course did not take note of), here’s “Sotto voce” again with different looks. None of them portray it properly, so i guess that’s this evenings reading, and tomorrow’s testing  on the to do list.

And those green dots are coming off, changing to the tawny fox and peachey colours instead. I have a few things more to do to it, and then it gets mounted, hopefully for a virtual exhibit. (If anybody from the fibre group i’m in ever answers my emails and FB questions that is………………………………….)

Sotto voce

A piece started for another exhibit, which undoubtedly will be online, as most are these days!

Caliente! Picoso! Candente!

Very very happy with latest thread colours, a mix of old moldy cochineal (yup, really, astounding colours), madder, osage, marigold, combinations of, and various post modifiers, all 100% cotton.

 

The linen was sunny too! Osage over marigold (Only because the marigold was weak. So weak in fact, that it fainted on the way to the dyebath. Dyeing yellow over yellow for any reason still gives you only yellow 🙂 ), and over madder.

The full Panoply of Sweet Pepper Power:

If you click on the photo below, you can see all the lovely nuances in these lavender ash and grape skeins. YUM.

And i’m hoping when this velvet below is dry, that’s as beautiful as i think it’s going to be!

I have two sets of some of the threads in the shop too 🙂 Edit: one set left!

no manual included

Trees and moons and Spring are on m y mind–though *that* is far away right now, with -21C to -25C projected for this coming weekend. (My son has been in Uganda since the beginning of November–is he gonna get a shock, trying to climatize again to Alberta weather, after almost 2.5 months of African heat!) I’ve picked an indigo overdyed osage cotton, 2 different velvets for another blue moon, a previously screensprinted and then stencilled indigo cotton, and a hunk of the most wonderful chartreuse velvet i only hope i can replicate again! That one is the right side and you may notice a funny bit of photo editing to show the correct colour, a square of green set in the yellow–it ain’t yellow, but the studio is so wrong for photographing colour, and i was too pooped to drag everything upstairs and anyways, it’s a grey snowy day, so bear with me 🙂

Here’s the indigo over osage:

Above is the piece of cotton i will use as the background (has bluer tones), below is a larger piece (greener tones) that i am drooling on and fondling:

I had revved up my indigo vat again on the weekend past. (Actually i had to start from scratch as the originals had to be dumped for the move…..too little to save, and too much chance of spillage or oxygen overload as it sloshed on a truck!) First results were not encouraging, but after asking in an indigo group what the problem might be, have concluded it might have been the tannin premordant, *and* the cutch, which is *also* a tannin. See the grey around the darker marks of indigo? (All photos in my posts are clickable for larger viewing.) I like the effect, but if it doesn’t “stick” well, it’s not a good practice if i wish to flog my goods later! (It also appears to have stripped the madder…)

Apparently tannin repels the indigo, something a lot have discovered with indigo and ecoprinting. Of course, checking my Boutrup/Ellis book, i should know better anyways and do the indigo first, THEN the mordanting, then the overdyeing. The two osage/indigo pieces mentioned above were done after this debacle, and though of course they were premordanted with tannin and alum, they don’t have as much tannin as the tannin/cutch piece, so the indigo struck properly!

I’ve been meaning to add less expensive, ready to use items to my inventory as well. Here’s the first test piece, a cotton neckscarf, clamp shibori-ed, and modelled by the ever silent Madame LaToussa.

I do like that, if i say so myself! The only problem is that the scarves were obviously hemmed with a polyester thread, but it’s not obtrusive enough to bother me (or probably anyone else) greatly. Barely noticeable.

I also have today clamped a shibori indigo dyed very hairy very scarey very contrary chenille scarf, ready to overdye, and as i mentioned in a previous post, i will do a post about that. I’m pretty sure it’s a failure, a funny one, and probably still wearable, but definitely a failure. You can judge for yourself at the time of showing 🙂

I’d have a nap now, but Greyman will be home in several minutes.

I will have a nap now.

 

studio time finally, and a shop update

This past week i have said to hell with unpacking boxes, shuffling furniture around and organizing things in our new home. I finally got down into the studio and had fun!

Digging through the silk velvet scraps for the elf mentioned in a previous post, had me wondering what to do with all the dinky teeny itsy bits. If you love velvet and other luxe fabrics, you get that–no small left behind! 🙂 And when they’re naturally dyed, they are even more precious!

And yes, they DO come as PAIRS 🙂 Hmm, might be cute Christmas ornaments as well!

This weekend however, the two of us will be descending to the depths, and getting laundry appliances moved around, a laundry sink and water filter hooked up, tools settled into shelves, and the last of my studio stuff IN the studio, out of boxes, bags and piles. Once that is done, i plan on setting  myself a schedule of sorts to get work done, the serious stuff (Samara, poor Samara!), and some more fun things as well.

 

working

Second “suzani” progressing. It was hard at first to cut the silk velvet, but oh so worth it!

 

down in my dreams

Hues of blues and schemes of greens, silk velvet naturally dyed with osage, quebracho rojo or tansy and dipped in the magic of indigo. Leaves and deep ponds, skies and tears, oceans and mountain horizons.

“Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose
Won’t you let me go down in my dreams…”

Listing live tomorrow.   Listed now.       SOLD OUT

 

The Indigo Day Dye Inspectors are bored obviously.

Biscuits were handed out.

in soft fields

Coming, coming, coming, soon i promise! Still fondling and sorting these silk velvets, trying to decide what colours should go together! Tell anyone who says “natural dyes are boring old browny beige blahs” that they are SO wrong 🙂 I hope to get packs in the shop by Friday evening, and yes, these will be included in the current sale. There may even be some scrap packs of these! SEVEN PACKS NOW LISTED   SOLD OUT

naturally dyed silk velvet

I’ve had a love affair with velvet since i was 12 and found a Vogue magazine that advised “A pant of lavender panne velvet is the essential in a bohemian styled wardrobe.” I’m not sure *how* i thought my 60cent an hour babysitting jobs were going to finance the purchase of an $800 garment, but that was obviously beside the point 🙂 (I’ve never forgotten that quote either…) Natural dyes coupled with silk velvet have me quite giddy at the moment. 😍

I just have to fire up the indigo pot, do some dye combinations and extend the colour range a bit more as we need greens, blues, purples, almost-blacks, different pinks!

Listings will start on July 5th, with 2 differently sized packs, and as always, i refund any extra shipping paid!