Play Day (with Dyes)

I am still in dealing with the aftermath of my move mode, but I took a break yesterday for a Shibori play date with the guild's Surface Design mini-group.  I haven't yet washed out all of my pieces–I dyed cotton fat quarters, silk scarves and a straw capeline (which will become a hat soon)–but, here is the first.

What do you see in this arashi shibori? 

Common answers of the day were petals, yucca plant, dragon or alien skeleton.

There is a nice tutorial for shibori here:

Shibori-DIY

For our workshop, we used an indigo-colored procion dye.

This (and getting settled into the new place) is my work-in-progress this week. Like Lee, there will also be painting.

My sewing space is still unpacked (and I still cannot find the box with the sewing essentials like scissors and needles in it).  Right now, the cats are spending more time there than I am.

And the design wall is still just a piece of insulation ...

They are checking out the neighbors. Isn't he a beauty? 

   

Carrots, Potatoes and Other Found Objects

Did you guess what the potatoes and carrots were for?



They were used as stamps in a Batik workshop with Malka Dubrawsky . . . along with bell peppers, potato mashers, cardboard tubes and rectangle "stamps" and a few traditional wooden and copper stamps for batik. These are the fabrics I patterned in the workshop.

It was a great break during the unpacking and I know I want to do more of this.  It was so much fun.

Stash, Stashing, Stash-busting

I almost never buy fabric with a specific purpose. Everything goes into my stash and nearly everything I use when I'm making quilts comes from my stash. I wonder, does that make every quilt I make a stash-buster?

My stash feels pretty right-sized these days and–with the exception of the museum sale a couple months ago, I'm not buying much fabric. I was surprised how UNDERweight my luggage was on the trip home from Houston. (I didn't buy any patterns at all.) However, even though I didn't buy much fabric in Houston, I did PRINT some, in a Thermofax Basics class.


I'm itching to use this in something, though I probably won't chose it for my response to Amy's Project Runway Challenge. And I want to print some more handwriting fabric with thickened dyes . . . sometime soon.