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Sunday, October 23, 2011

Autumn leaves, red and some stitching

I really like the changing of the seasons, especially autumn leaves. I pick up leaves on my daily walks and put them in a large book to press them. After they're flat I photo copy them, on paper usually but sometimes also on to fabric. I never use them, just keep them. Here are some from this mornings walk.



This one I picked up because of the wonderful patterning.



Generally it's color that attracts me, especially red. We don't have quite the color of a New England autumn, but we have our fair share of trees that put on a show for me.

Speaking of red, Kathy Loomis and I are doing another photo collaboration for the next 2 weeks. This week the theme was my choice and I chose red. You can check out our pictures all week here and here.

I've also been stitching up more white pieces and dyeing them - here's a couple of the latest ones.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Fiber and dye experiment

I've been playing with some ideas that involve stitching different fibers and fabrics and then dyeing them with a dye color that I know will split and dye each type of fiber a different color. I also wanted some texture so most of the fabrics were not pre-washed before stitching. I stitched various pieces of silk, cotton and rayon fabrics to cotton batting with both cotton and silk threads, everything was white or off white to start with.



I dyed the piece with golden brown dye (Dharma's #113 procion mx) that I knew would look much redder on the silk. Here's the results. I'm not sure where this experimenting will lead, but I'm quite pleased with the results.


I also finished up the t-shirt quilt for my grand daughter and will be delivering it soon. Don has baked a batch of cookies so he'll have something to deliver also.