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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.
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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.
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Normally I'm not a fan of the color pink but when Laurie brought this quilt to me for a repair on the binding it quickly became a sweet favorite. Notice how well the points are done.
It's folded in quarters. It has one large center star and smaller stars in each corner. It has some stains on it that I hope will wash out or at least lighten but I'll do the repair first.
The picture is just a touch out of focus but you can see here the edge of the quilt is warn and shredding.
The new binding is a soft muslin that Laurie provided and I washed several times just to ensure all the sizing and any preservatives were removed. It is almost as soft as the quilt.
Usually I will attach the binding by machine but hand-quilt the back edge. In this case the backing was a bit fragile and I did the finishing by machine as well to add strength by sewing through all the layers.
You can see the front and back edges of the quilt. Tomorrow I'll see about washing her and if I can remove some of the stains.
(also posted on Zen Cat Quilts)
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When we bought the house in 2003 there was a pile of fire wood out by the little shed we keep our garbage cans in and it was covered by an orange tarp. It must have been a year or two old then, last week it pretty much looked like sawdust when we finally took the tarp off. There was also a pile of old 2 by 4s that we brought up out of the basement two years ago that we were meaning to take to the dump but never did. So last week with the aid of our friend Richard...
This was trip number one.
"You don't want these, right?"
Richard and I put everything we could squeeze in. A good thing we didn't have to stop short!
The house is starting to look pretty good. Now for some flowers!
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Yes, I know Easter was yesterday but it has taken me a day to fight off the sugar coma.
A delightful basket from Jim and Tracy, Michael and Hannah, and Jodi and Puddin'. What fun!
Home-made hot crss buns. So good. One for breakfast, one with tea, a bite or two before bed.
Carrot Cake, the perfect thing after the ham and mashed potatoes. Just a sliver, well...maybe two slivers. A nibble here and there.
And I wasn't the only one down for the count. Lots of cat treats and catnip may have played a part.
A good time was had by all...
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This is a little hard to see but this is our bear, Larry. He doesn't look really big here but when he stretched up against the tree he was taller than me. Tall enough to run from, that's for sure. But I did venture out a few minutes later for a shot in the dark - from the deck with one hand on the doornob. The pictrue looked totally black but with a little photoshop magice, the pixels gave up this information about our night visitor.
I was making the bed and heard some banging around outside the window. At first I thought it was right at the window, it startled me. But when I looked out the sewing room window on the way to look outside, I saw that the bird feeder poll was bent over in a "U" with the feeder on the ground. Empty. Sure enough, there was a bag of garbage in the back yard just off the deck and the garbage can bin was open and the two cans were spilling Larry dinner on the driveway.
Larry is annoying; we have to clean up his garbage and straighten the bird feeder poll. Larry is exciting; we never had a bear in my yard when I was a kid in Levittown. Larry keeps us on our toes getting out of the car after dark and gives us extra work bringing in the birdseed every night once he wakes up in the spring. Larry is part of living in CT.
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A new puppy found something to cut his teeth on, a quilt belonging to our local dentist. It took a bit of doing but in the end it came out as good as new. If you want to see how I did it, check it out here.
Here is the finished block.
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Oh no! It's my birthday! I've never had one before, I wonder what will happen.
Mom got me this great box with paper in it. My sister Maggie likes playing with it, too. Mom likes it when I share with her. I like to share everything except the red dot, but Maggie and Breezy catch it sometimes, too. I also got a new feather toy and some catnip treats. It was all very tiring...
Maggie and I needed a nap. Birthdays are really tiring but very neat and I hope I have lots more of them.
Happy Birthday Sammy!
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