Yesterday's Dyeing

I had a woman from Santa Cruz come to my studio yesterday to have a private workshop session. Suzanne was delightful and we discovered we have mutual friends. I am so disappointed that I did not take any photos of her work. She had the most beautiful color scheme, dreamy seafoam, golden wheat and brown.

After she left I got busy shibori dyeing silk ribbons at the request of super talented friend, Suza, to add to her spring linen jacket collection. It's hard to color match and it may be that none of the ribbons will work for her color scheme. A color name can be a wide variety of actual colors. Think if someone asked you to color something plum what would that mean to you? I bet everyone would have a range of purples but maybe not the "plum" the person who asked envisioned.

I've not said much about my back issues but it's been difficult for me. We trust doctors so much but often they can't help us and only offer opinions that we take for gospel. Sigh. I'll not go into the saga but next Friday I will get another round of epidural steroid shots and really, really, really, hope they give me some relief. I mean I'm leaving April 6th to go to New Zealand and I so want to not back pain!!

The sun is finally shining today so I'm going to go outside and enjoy it since it's predicted we'll only see a couple days of it and then more rain and gloom. I really am starting to feel like Eeyore.

Silk Crocheted Flowers ~ Nuno Felt Wayward Wrist Wraps Class

I sent my friend Doris Arndt some silk yarns and asked her if she'd crochet some small flowers for me. I intend to put these in kits for the class I'm teaching at Create, "wayward wrist wraps". I can't imagine the students taking the class won't love them as I do. Of course I will use some of them myself to embellish the nuno felted wraps with.


If you click on the highlighted "Create" above it will take you to the website. Check out the classes being offered and if there is anyway you can attend the retreat you really should!

I'm also planning to travel to Missouri in June. My friend Sharon Kilfoyle and I are putting together a weekend retreat at her studio in Ashland June 11 & 12. We'll be doing shibori dyeing silk and silk ribbons, creating a wayward threads ribbon scarf and nuno felted projects. I will be posting more about that a little later so please stop back by my blog to check for more info.

On another note I have been affected by the tragedy that has hit Japan. There are many charitable organizations to contribute to that are setting up plans to help Japan. We have contributed to Save the Children but I urge you to contribute to the charity of your choice any funds you can.

Finished Garments

I finished the piece I have been working diligently on for the Altered Couture Wedding Challenge. The due date is March 15th and I was able to finish the dress this morning and mail it off USPS Priority mail so it should arrive in time. Whew!! Now to wait patiently for them to go through all the entries and decide who gets accepted. I think it could take months and sometimes that's hard for people (like me) who get impatient and anxiously excited to know. I'm just like a little kid who wants to know what's in the wrapped box?! It's that same feeling.

I'm not going to reveal any of the dress since there is a possibility of getting published and I want it to be a surprise in the magazine. I mean that is the point. I guess it seems like I am contradicting myself since I both love surprises and at the same time can hardly stand to be patient to find things out.

I also finished this garment I've been working on for a while. Let me explain. I often start a piece by hanging it up and looking at it from time to time. I pin different fabrics, or vintage pieces, trims, and laces to decided where I want to go with it. I work as I go so sometimes it takes a while to get a piece completed. I work on more than one garment at a time so I've always got projects going in different stages.

The back of this garment has a velvet piece that was designed by Marian Clayden. I attended a tea in her honor in 2008 where remnants of her designed velvet pieces were for sale and I purchased a few of these along with some of her shibori fabrics. Marian is wheelchair bound by her illness now and I have not heard a word about her since I attended that tea which was fabulous! A whole exhibit of her lifetime works of art in the garment and fabric design world.

I always thought of her velvets as being "burn out or devore" but in fact she created the designs and the velvet was woven with them and not the reverse. With devore (in a nutshell), the velvet is woven and then the design is "burned" into the fabric by screening or painting a chemical onto the velvet fibers in the design you want and the chemical causes the rayon velvet to pull away from the silk backing.

This is the finished piece:







But it started this way:





My goal now is to clean up my space a bit, begin gathering materials to make kits for Create in May, and do what I can to create more garments, dyed ribbons, flower pins, etc. before I leave on April 6 for a trip to New Zealand! My hubby and I will be gone until April 28th visiting friends there and exploring a bit on our own. I've never been and am looking forward to this trip!

I'll be participating in a May Day show On April 30th and May 1st and sincerely hope I will not be jet lagged and spaced out for the show. I'll be posting more about that show in a week or two.

Wedding Dress Progress

I realize that I am making this for a challenge for the magazine Alter Couture and they would not want me to publicize this. So this will be my last post of the progress. This is after I cut it and dyed. I am documenting it and after I deliver the dress to Stampington and hear back whether I'm accepted or not I'll decide when to publish my journey with the dress.

An Artful Journey Ends and Begins

The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.
~William M. Thackeray


I'm home from An Artful Journey where I stayed in a cabin that felt like a tree house. The little sunroom had a large paned picture window looking out at bare oaks and evergreens. We gathered here in the morning for tea and coffee and in the evening after class for a glass of wine.




I was pleased to learn several new techniques in three days of classes I took with Nina Bagley even though I chose not to attempt the wire wrapping and metal parts. I had the tools and I bought the wire but remembered my last attempts and thought "I don't think so". Nina was gracious enough to give me some clues on how I could work around not doing the wire wraps and I am very grateful.




Learning to crochet beads is something I know I will be getting hooked on (pun intended) and knotting silk cord and making these little stuffed hearts that are so precious. Everyone in class did such wonderful work!!!




I took a little valise full of dyed and vintage ribbons wrapped on cards and practically sold out. Now I will need to have some dye days to color more ribbons for Etsy.

My big project I'm starting though is for this challenge from Altered Couture magazine: Altered Wedding
 For those of us who have bridesmaid’s dresses we don’t know what to do with, we challenge you to take the occasion out of the dress and make your wedding attire into something usable. Everyone in the wedding party can get involved. Consider revisiting a flower girl dress or bridal wear and accessories as well. There’s no better way to keep a memento from such a big day than to incorporate it into wear for any day. Or, if you are an ambitious bride and have recreated your dress out of another one, we’d love to see that too. Save the date and alter away!
 Deadline: March 15, 2011.

Here are some pictures of the wedding dress I will be altering. It is dupioni silk with an organza top that has ripped a bit and a full nylon petticoat flounce. It is in the washing machine as I am writing this. When it's washed and dried I'm going to cut it up. I do have a plan but I'm not telling. The deadline isn't very far away so I have hopes of getting it finished but I'm not making any promises. I will post my progress if it happens.

An Artful Journey

I have been gathering supplies for a class I will be taking at An Artful Journey retreat beginning on Thursday. I'm taking Nina Bagley's class and while I know I'll be challenged with the metal part I'm looking forward to working with the fabric bits and learning how to crochet beads and buttons on a chain.

Friday night at the retreat is vendor night for the instructors and on Saturday attendees can vend. I plan to have hand dyed ribbons, wayward blooms, scarves, stoles, and some garments for sale.





I haven't been as productive as I'd like to because my back has been so bad. I've tried not to whine and complain nor write about it here but dammit all, aging pretty much sucks and I'm not even that old. I've had a fractured vertebrae at sometime in my life in the thorax area so over the years two vertebrae have become wedged and the effect trickles down. It's a chronic ache and somedays I just can't stand over the dye pot, or sit at the sewing machine, or much of anything but lay on a heating pad. Last Thursday I had an epidural steroid injection and so far it hasn't improved and initially I felt worse. I'm told it could take 1 -2 weeks to feel any difference so I'm trying to be hopeful (trying is the operative word here) and not get depressed. Okay enough of that. (WAH!).

I'm going to work on some more flowers today and maybe finish a garment I've been working on if I can find the black piece of burnout velvet I want to use on it. I knew right where it was until I cleaned up my studio. sigh.

Tea Dye

Tea dyeing is a simple way to get a tan/ecru color when dyeing fabrics, ribbons, and laces. Remember that only natural fibers will take the dye. Tea contains tannic acid which is what colors the fabric. I like the aged look that tea dyeing creates but I find while silks dye beautifully and a richer color cottons can be pale or show almost no color. I think in the future if I'm dyeing cottons I will use an alum mordant first to see if it produces a deeper shade.

Tea is a natural dye so is not good to use on items that will be washed a lot. The dye will fade with time and definitely be removed if using detergents with additives such as stain removers.

Dyeing with tea is simply steeping tea bags (5-6 per gallon of water) in boiling water. I found tea on sale at Ross so the expense was not great. I added the fabric pieces, ribbons, and lace and let them set over night. I did notice that the silks could have been taken out of the bath in a couple of hours and been just as deeply colored but the cotton laces soaked up a little more color by leaving over night.

The term tea staining is when you brush on the tea solution as opposed to immersing in it.

Here are my results from this batch. (click on picture to zoom)