Zen Cat Art

Mother's Day...

Aren't these beautiful flowers?  A gift from Phil.  I had never seen them before and the photo doesn't really do them justice.  When the light is behind them in the morning they glow a magnificent orange.

From my kids.  Chocolate covered strawberries.  Yum!  Each strawberry is the size of a golf ball and there has to be a small chocolate bar's worth of chocolate on each one.  Since I love dark chocolate they were my favorite.  We shared them with Phil's parents and they were a big hit.

Phil and his parents, Helen and Bob.  It was a good visit.  They had a singer, guitar player and his son playing some of the old songs.  He was pretty good - although his comments that it was such a nice day that he might go down to the beach later seemed a bit unkind to me since for the most part beach days were a thing of the past for the residents in the nursing home.

A little smoked salmon for breakfast, a call from my kids and a visit from friends...

Rick, our favorite Reverend.  That spectacular hat is a bag that I made with my hand painted fabric.  Who knew it would look so good as a hat.  It also makes a lovely Egyptian breast plate.  There were a few other uses contemplated but ah...maybe we won't mention them here.

It was a fun day.  Now I just have to figure out how to spend that Amazon qift certificate I got from the kitties. 

Sneakers for Lauren...

Not the best light for photos and I still need to highlight the silver and paint the laces but they were fun to do.  I might have to do a pair for myself.  Lime green...midori... Teal and blue...  Sand and silver...

Next the jacket. 

Old jeans, new bag...

We went through my scrap bag to find yet another bit to sew on my already patched jeans.  The jeans had definitely seen better days and before I knew it the scissors were out.

The pink & blue are my hand painted fabric.  The purple is a batik from a recent project and The pattern fabric has to be at least ten years old.

Not my best free motion stitches but it was fun to make and only took about 4 hours.  I'd do a few things differently...but I like it enough that there will be another one.  

The bag pattern is called "Two-hour Tulip Bag" and it says that "larger" bags take longer.  This is the large bag (out of small, medium, large & ex-large).  I think two hours is a stretch if it is your first time doing one and especially if you want to add pockets or embellish it.   Mine has a pocket on the inside and the outside.  Of couse, in defense of the person that made the pattern - I'm not good at following them AND I always change something.  I just can't help it.

PS It's cold and damp and raw today.  My feet are cold even though I have on socks!  The cat's know what to do...

Indigo cloth - from last Friday's dye play

Some of the indigo pieces from our Creative Ladies Luncheon Salon last Friday.

I like the radiating spokes on this one.

Folded.  A beautiful gradation.

Moons...some clear nights, some cloudy...a lot to think about.  

There are more.  Some might even appear in current work.  Some might even appear on Etsy.  We'll see...still thinking about it.    

 

Creative Ladies Luncheon & Salon goes Indigo Girls...

This is my indigo dye bucket bubbling away ready for dyeing cloth.  The bubbles on the top are called the plume and it carried the extra indigo dye that has not yet been released into the water.   You remove most of the plume everytime you do a batch of cloth and add it back to the bucket when you are done.

Here we are ready to go. Holly, Louise, Karen, Mimi & Nan.

We wrapped wet fabric around pvc pipe or crunched it into balls or folded and clamped it.  Here's Karen dipping some cotton wrapping around a 2" pipe.  The water underneath the plume is green and the fabric will look green when you first take it out of the water but it will turn blue when exposed to oxygen in the air.

Here's a closer look.

This fat-quarter of white PFD was wet and scrunched into a ball and dunked in the vat.  You can see where the top is just starting to turn blue as it hits the air.

You can see the cloth in the basket by Holly's feet.  It included cotton PFD (prepared for dye), old white table clothes ready for a blue adventure, and pieces of wedding dresses that were left over from a quilt that Karen Eckmeier did for a Breast Cancer Awareness raffle.  We didn't dye it all but we had quite a few pieced when we broke for lunch.

We left them in the sun to dry and do their blue magic while we had a bite.
Onion and spinach quiche, tabouli, red pepper humus, salad, mushroom brie, fruit salad, roasted garlic baguette and a delicious holiday bread from Bantam bread.  YUM!

When lunch was over it was time to unwrap! Nan, Mimi and Karen got to it!

Fabulous!!

Here are some of them drying on the lawn.

Blue hands and happy faces.  We had a grand time.  We are holding a piece of cloth that will be a scarf for Nan as she heads off to Argentina in a few weeks.  The fabric is soft and silky - even prettier in person! 

My haiku for the day:

Ancient Indigo.
Modern women
Dipping cloth into history.

Indigo is among the oldest natural dyes (extracted from plants) to be used for textiles and India is believed to be the oldest center of indigo dyeing in the Old World.  Blue dye is mentioned on a cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia in the 7th century BC.  Although associated with "blue" jeans, for me indigo is always tied (pardon the pun) to the Japanese art of Shabori.  Shabori cloth is crunched, folded, tied (as in tie-dye) to form patterns on the cloth.  Read more about indigo here: Indigo and more about Shibori here.  
 

Pinks from Deb

Pinks from Deb!  Whoopee! 
(That's cranberry juice in the glass.)
And if you think I was excited...
 
Sammy claimed them for her own the minute I opened the package!


A feather for Jude's  Magic Feather Project. 

Mid-winter "wide" cloth...

Both Jude at Spirit Cloth and Joe at ManhandledThreads have done some wonderful "long cloths."  I love the idea and have just the place to hang it.  They inspire me.  But as a rule I seem to gravitate  more toward wide (in more ways than one) than long.  So this is my "mid-winter wide cloth" in the making.  The indigo cloth and moon are fabrics that I dyed this summer.  My first indigo and I am missing having the dye bucket on my porch.  The other is a Japanese fabric that I have had for years.  

I am not sure how I will stitch on it yet but I am thinking about extending lines from the Japanese fabric and seeing where that takes me.

It's snowing again...  Buddha wears it well. 
 

Needle Keeper...

Part of an organizational attemp for the New Year... plus it keeps my needles and threads away from my kitties.

My painted fabric and some strips.  Open it's 8 x 10 and it's about 5 x 8 closed.

A couple of pockets for needle packs and sissors,  A folded section for needles, especially ones with threads still attached.  It snaps closed because the tuxedo Breezy can open almost anything. 

Today she threw up a six inch piece of red plastic ribbon.  I throw out anything that she might eat and I try to be especially vigilant but she will dig about until something looks interesting and being a kitten almost anything is interesting.  And, sometimes tasty.  

I'll eventually make a pattern of it and print up some instructions.  It's really easy but some people like to have the measurement and the order in which to do things.   

Avocados & fabric...

I saw it on Deena's blog Eclectic Meanderings.  Deena saw it on Gerdiary.  How is happens, I don't know, but if you boil some white cloth in a pot with avocado skins & pits - you get pink fabric!  Not being one to shrink from trying new things, I made some guacamole for lunch and popped the remains in a pot and let it simmer for a hour.  Then I let it sit overnight.
 
The next morning... 
 

Voila!  Pink fabric!
 
Here it is drying on the porch rail.  I have a feeling that there might be more avocados in my future. 

Rainbow colors...

I love color! I'm dying a rainbow of fabric in plastic cups.  Each cup holds a x-large fat quarter, some harem cloth (like dense cheese cloth), and a few feet of cotton trim.  I carried the tray out to have a look at them in natural light. 
 

Here they are drying on the porch after being rinsed.   
 

This was the second batch of colors - I think of them as "Karen's Colors" since she wears them often and looks great in them.  
 

Now all I have to do is decide what to make with them.  Look at all that potential! 

"Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment."
~Claude Monet