Friday, December 16, 2011

the start of something else

pretty boring ah?  This is just the beginning of a round robin, four of us are going to pass work around until we either finish or get bored.   We are working on fire, air earth, fire, and water.  I bagged fire of course.  The grand plan is to chop each piece into four and sew them back together then send them round again for embellising.  We can't wait to get to that part :)
This is a piece of hand dyed cotton, with a 'hoop' of the painted silk velvet from a couple of posts back.  I don't know whether I will keep any of the blue once it is completed, but for now it cheers me up on a dreary grey day.
Watch this space for updates.. 

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Post

You know when someone tells you something and you think "Yeh, right". 

The Post Office has run out of 2nd class stamps!!!

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Fire

I needed some fabric to represent 'fire' for a round robin I am taking part in.  After a lot of thought I decided that silk velvet would be the idea fabric to use.  I just happend to have some white velvet so carefully scrumpled it and threw acid dye over it.  Into the microwave for 5 minutes.  Hmm.  It must be viscose/silk.  It came out a bit wishy washy. 
I just happenned to have some more so this time I carefully crumpled it into a litter tray and poured 'dyn-a-flo' over. 
I put the litter tray with the soaking fabric on a box behind me and dampened some habitai, put it into a smaller tray.  Reached behind me to grab the dye and knocked the first tray over.  Sigh.  Not much I could do, so just shoved the velvet back into the tray.  I put it in the airing cupboard overnight to dry.  Next morning, it was still soaking wet.  I got an old towel and wrapped the silk in it, along with some other bits of stray fabric (waste not want not) and got ready to wring.  Oops, the dye paint had dripped out of the towel and I had lovely orange dots all over my oatmeal covered bedroom carpet.  Sigh.  I can't remember what made me think working in the bedroom was an idea.
I scrubbed the carpet and then, with the towel, fabric and dye over the bath tub, I wrung the excess dye out.  Scrubbed the bath.  Sigh.  Then I put a black sack in the bottom of the bathtub, a drying rack over and hung up the fabrics to dry.  Got fed up waiting and got the hair dryer out.  10 minutes later I was ironing.  And if I say so myself, it is a nice firey piece of velvet. 
 
This is the piece of silk habitai that I coloured at the same time.

The old towel that I borrowed from the dogs went into the washing machine and came out perfect.  No staining of the dyn-a-flo at all.  The carpet has some echoes of orange but I guess it will disapear in time.  I sat in the bath and found the stray paint splots before anyone else could...

Bad hair day

Pocket angels for a swap over at cloth paper studio, each one is around 3.5 inches tall. 

Thursday, December 08, 2011

2012 colour of the year announced

Tangerine Tango

I won't be the only one being fashionable next year as I know at least one person who loves orange more than I do

Monday, December 05, 2011

Sad news and a huge loss to us all

Sarah Lawrence of Crafty Notions has died.  How can that be?  Sarah inspired me to stretch and grow, she shared her talents and experience so readily, exhibitions just won't be the same without stopping by and seeing what she is up to.
I am gutted, I can't imagine what her family are feeling. RIP Sarah

Friday, December 02, 2011

Pintangle

Everyone is doing it - following Sharon's take a stitch challenge.  I plan to follow Sharon's example and make a band sampler using one of my carefully hoarded pianola rolls as the base for my scroll.  I don't suppose mine will look as nice as Sharon's band sample but who cares.