To Tu Tumeric

I manged three pieces and some silk dyeing today.  I finished all my "obligations" yesterday .... well most of them.  You know the list...the bills, the laundry, the dog walking, the shopping, the dinner making,.....it goes on and on .... doesn't it?  But today I got to do the laundry while I did felt.  YEAH!

I managed to dye some dark green silk....no pictures of that.  But it is darker colored for leaves and stems rather than background.  I need to start thinking about the green sections to connect the squares.  But I'm not quite there yet.

I did 3 pieces ... I also did some more drawings.  I came up with 3 more flowers.  But I just didn't seem to do the run as last time.  So I put them under the cutting board to decrease the paper curl and moved on to felting.  My favorite.

This was the silk lay out ... before felting.  I used the tumeric dyed silk as the background....with the green prefelt it was too much.  It really overpowered the flowers.  It will need some serious embroidery to save this one....and I really liked the design. 

It is too green overall.  I'm disappointed in how it turned out... sigh.

The next however was better.  I liked the way the yellow tumeric reacted with the red background

This is the layout.  Again the tumeric but this time the colors were bolder and the background was red.  Making the color a bit more lively.

 

 

I'm happier with this.  But with 20 to make...I'll most likely keep the  washout snow

drops but the Beebalm is obviously more lively.

The last piece is a trillium.  I'm afraid the color of the photograph is not a lovely as the real piece.  It is much deeper and more .... I don't know.... but the color is real.. I'm happy with this piece also.

 

Well, that's it for this weekend.  I wish you all a Happy Turkey Day....I only have Thursday off...but hope to do more felting the weekend after. 

Some Progress to Show

I'm back from Las Vegas.  It was a trip for a conference.....and since I'm a non-gambler (rather spend my pennies on silk and dye and wool and thread...well, you know) it was mostly lecture time.  I did a quick visit with my brother, his family and my youngest sister.  Always wonderful to visit family.  And they were wonderful as usual =-)
But, before I left I did some dyeing and some serious felting for my quilt piece.  I decided it worked so well and I spent less time  getting into the drawing mode...so to speak...that I just needed to set some time aside to draw several more cartoons.  These are Snowdrops, Trilium and California Pitcher Plant.

I also completed four squares for the quilt.  I was fairly pleased with that accomplishment.  It seems once the drawing is done I do work faster.

Wild ginger...with it's tiny flowers almost hidden under big heart shaped leaves were one of my finds on a wildflower search.  I would go camping with my dog and take several books, a camera and sketchpads.  Many times I would be gone a week or 2 only to return home to take a shower and do laundry.  The flowers were spectacular and I want the quilt to remind me of that quiet time.  No TV, radio, traffic noise, or even company other than the dog, the wild birds and the breeze.  I think the quilt will be a reminder to have sweet dreams.

The color turned out wonderful with the moss green prefelt and pale yellow green background silk.

Inspiration taken from one of my old Wildflower books.

Then my cartoon

I'm starting to cut most of these freehand now.  But used a single petal of the Paintbrush flower to guide me on size.

The colors of the flowers are also less flat and I tried to Fussy Cut  to add to their liveliness.

Twinflower...one of my favorites

Not sure about this last one.  I may have to eliminate it...The petals shrunk up too much and became too small.  I was on a roll so to speak...and I think I didn't plan out my shrinkage as well.

Blue-eyed Grass  which is only a bit taller than the wild grasses and the flowers do look like brillant blue eyes peeping up at you.

I also had a couple of dye pots going....and came up with this:

And this

They look wonderful next to each other.  I haven't cut them yet...perhaps they will fit one or two of the cartoons I have left from my whirlwind of drawing.  

I've Been Busy

So much has happened since my last post.  I realized that I haven't done much on the quilt and that November is here.  The heat is slipping away outside and although we recently has an almost 70F day here most mornings I wake up the temp is close to 40F.  The trees that just a week ago were full of leaves of color and now mostly dark lines against the grey sky. 

I took a dye class at ProChem.  I've been dyeing for a long time....since the 1960s off and on.  But I've never really spent time figuring out how it all happens.  For some silly reason starting to do natural dyes has made me curious about dyes in general.  I've been reading books about dyeing and even dreaming about dyeing.  I'm thinking seriously about doing an indigo vat.  But ...that may be a future post.

We had a wonderful time with this lady:

This is Vicki Jensen.  She is the Class Coordinator and Dyer Extroidinare at ProChemical and Dye.  She also happens to be a felter.  I think she is delightful....and a wonderful teacher.  She presented an organized class with even the math de-mystified under her tulaledge.  We did immersion dyeing

Then we thickened and painted

The results were wonderful.....even in the washer...

There was a rain storm that passed outside....but we made our own rainbow and hung it near the window when the sun came out.

I came home and loaded up the dye pot and went to work on the quilt this last weekend.  I had an exhausted dye bath every time!!  I was soooo proud of myself...no excess dye down the drain!  And I made a beautiful green background silk.

So then I finally worked on new squares for the quilt.  First I made 10 drawings.  It is the most time consuming part of the process.  I always have trouble deciding how I can cartoon the flower yet make it look enough like the actual bloom that it could .... ahem...kinda be identified correctly.   Some times I actually think I succeed. I'm hoping these two look like Itherial's Spear a type of wildflower found in the Sierra Nevada foothills during the dryer summer months.  Always a treat to find hiding in the grasses.

It needs some embroidery to finish up the details.  I still haven't decided if it is machine or hand embroidery I want to do.  I love working by hand, but machine may hold up better to use.

I also did Prairie Clover.  Driving through Texas...long ago...I remember seeing these.  I loved the purple colors.

So I also sat down and tried to figure out how many 'squares' I would need to finish my quilt.  OY...I have to make 40.  Yep....Four Oh.  It makes me a bit overwhelmed to think about it.  I guess I never stopped to think of how big a king size bed quilt really is.   LOL.  So now I have about 18 done and 7 more drawings.  I'm not sure I'll have it done for this winter...good thing we recent redid our heating system with a more efficient boiler. 

Color Me Pink

Well, I can't believe it's been so long since I've been able to do much on the computer.  My big computer crashed and with it so many pictures and documents were lost.  I can't dwell on it...
The season of riding my bike ended and the first snow fall has occurred.  The wind and rain have driven me indoors and to increase my metabolism I did a little felting. .... and, of course, some dyeing.

The pokeberrie juice/dye bath was absolutely fab...a deep wine.  And although it is said they are poisonous, the juice was used to color wine.  I believe it.  I rolled one piece of silk I had dyed with cochineal that was a lovely pale peachy color around the stems and a few berries then tied it very tight.  The second piece I tried dipping and removing....to make a gradient...but...have I told you I am impatient?  Well, I left it and that gorgeous color spent the night creeping forward until the entire piece of silk was fushia.

I did add some acetic acid for a mordant....and I did let the pieces dry before rinsing.  But all that wonderful color went down the drain. 

 
Pastels are what I got.  That blood colored spot on one of the pink pieces is cochineal that dried overnight sitting out of the pot.  The green .... and it actually is more green than yellow....is the dye pot from the black-eyed susans I picked from the back yard.  The color of the initial bath was a deep gold and when I added the mordant....flash.....the color changed in the pot to a wonderful dirty yellow green.  The last piece was a pure white placed in a jar with walnut ink.

My fingers retained more stain than the silk did, I'm afraid.  I think I need to go back and do a little more research and experimentation with the pokeberry.  I truely loved that fushia. 

Felt....yes I worked on the quilt pieces.  The first I was very happy with and it will for certain make a place for itself in the big quilt.  It is Chicory.  It grows wild everywhere I've been in the United States.  It is not a native...but I dearly love it.  Each flower only comes out for a day but the long thin stalks wave each bloom proudly late in the summer when other flowers are finished.

The colors of the chicory and the mottled green background played perfect in this piece. 

 

 However, the second piece I did was of a small yellow lily.  I have an sketch of it from a hike once, but tried to catch it's fragility with the natural dyes.  I think the pounding from the fulling rinsed most of the yellow from the background and the leaves....leaving blue.  But the flower itself was a piece of the tumeric and goldenrod....it withstood the whole process well.

I am more enchanted with the colors of fall right now.  They have reached their peak here in New England....and my drive to work it one of fabulous fall colors spreading from pinks, fushias, yellows, organges, reds and nutty browns set to the greens of the pines.

   This is a cell phone picture on my way to work.  But the colors are even more intense where I can't stop...but will be blown away after this weekends rain and wind.  There is a 50% chance of snow tomorrow...

A little bit of Felt

So to continue with documentation of my dyeing would let on that I've not been felting.  However, I did make a new piece.  A pillow.  I had a small piece of deep irregular blue silk and it was calling to me.  It looked like the night sky.  So I did a Rabbit jumped over the moon.  But...it looked more like a Poodle than a rabbit  =-)   A white Poodle.....with it's long ears flying behind him as he soars high into the sky.

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My camera is charged...waiting for the pokeberries to finish ... I'm letting them soak for a while longer.  Did you know that the Declaration of Independence was signed by Inkberry?  AKA Pokeberry juice?  After all these years the signatures are a faded brown.

Now... a little embroidery for detail. 

Dyeing without a Computer

Well, I've had the computer blues for some time now.  My main computer decided it's memory bank was full and would freeze leaving me with a wild screen of rectangles of color.  So instead of blogging and sharing...I took time off.  I spent time in the fresh air riding my new bike:

 So many temptations when the weather is so nice....but.... first I just had to take a walk and gather dye material.  =-)  The dogs searched and nosed around....but they couldn't tell the difference between oak galls and rocks!

But I found these.. the woods were full of acorns and oak galls this year...

I also picked lots of these....covered them with water and let them soak for a week...  Don't they look cheery sitting in that pot...waiting for the hot water?

Boy oh boy did they stink when I lifted the top of the crock pot this weekend.

I also decided to try some poke berries.  They stain the ground around them purple and when the birds eat them...well, the purple poopz do a number on your car paint.  They are the most gorgeous color...dark and inviting....but poisonous.  I love the fushia colored stems.

I also made up some walnut ink and added a pinch of iron.  This went into a quart canning jar with some silk .... but I will leave that for the next set of pictures.  My camera batteries have died and won't let me load up any more pictures....Ah, technology...

Goldenrod and the 3 Silks

So to continue my adventure....I started with this

 

trimmed the leaves and put the flowers in the first pot. It was brought to a simmer for an hour then strained and silk added.  As crazy as it seems I managed to leave it in the pot without looking, lifting or sneaking peak for a week.  When it was done and the silk removed, I added Tumeric and made a second pot. More silk was added.  But I hadn't thrown away those flowers.... all the stems and leaves were chopped, added then simmered on the stove.  It never boiled....just let off steam and occasionally flipped a leaf.  I then strained the leaf brew, added alum and put in some silk to make pot number three. 

They simmered all night, but at 5 am this morning the Big Bear (DH) woke me up and asked if those crockpots in the basement were suppose to be cooking all night.  =-)  He said it smelled like hot dogs!  But I got this:

  

The middle is butter yellow...flowers no mordant...not sure how color fast it will be.  The left is flowers and tumeric...a most gorgeous gold.  The right is leaves, stems, 2nd dip flowers with alum....the golden brown is where the edges peeked out from the brew.

And I was happily pleased after.

Next....I'm looking at these

 

Found in my wild garden.