sweeties

I had a bit of a tidy up in my studio, re-arranged a few things.  Tried to put the inspiring stuff on show and the ordinary everyday stuff in the cupboards.  I need to do lots more work but have one or two nice areas.  I smile now whenever I see these, instead of ignoring the mess that used to be on that shelf.  I am hoping to be more inspired to use my stuff.

sometimes only orange will do

You may need to wear your sun glasses to read this one :)

Imagine a little grey haired woman, doing a tiny skip and just one jump.  That was me when I pulled these out of the washing machine.  How could anyone not be happy with orange and yellow all around...

My ironing leaves a bit to be desired, sorry about the creases.  The plan with these bits of cloth was to over dye them in a bucket of magenta dye.  But I like the yellow!!!  I may keep one piece to cheer me up on the grey winter days and fiddle with the rest.  The first is a candidate for having blue added to give me a forest-y effect.   I have some bits that will be discharged before going in the bucket too. 

wishy washy revisited

I re-soaked most of the wishy washy pieces in soda ash and put them back into the tray, dyed again with the same two colours of procion dye.  Robins Egg Blue and Bronze.  Left it for 24 hours before rinsing this time :)    Now I have light and medium coloured pieced.  I will be re-soaking some of these and dyeing again to get some darker pieces of cloth.
 

stamps from cheap erasers

I cut some stamps from cheap rubber erasers using the tracings from the heart design from here I cut one in reverse by mistake, duh!

But once I started playing around with the stamps, the 'wrong' one was my favorite and has potential.  Pity about the spec of dust on the stamp, that has now been cleaned off...

dyed and discharged

I bought a thermofax screen at the FofQ and gave it an outing this afternoon.  This was a piece of dyed cotton from last summer, more colourful (orange) than it shows here.  I had some Jacquard discharge paste at the back of the cupboard, I won't own up to how long it has been there but years rather than months..

I love it! 

What potential!, it needs over printing and work and stitch and beads and stuff, but it is a fine start and I doing an teeny tiny happy hop.







I have been reading Leslie Morgan's 'Tray Dyeing' book and if Leslie can tray dye her fabric three times, then I am not dispondent about my limp dyed cloth fiasco.  It can go back in the soda bath and then back into the tray. 

wishy washy

I crammed my washed and soda soaked fabric into a cat litter tray, scrunching and pleating.  I poured the dye over and watched as amazing splodges and patterns formed.  It looked delicious.  I walked off intending to leave it for a couple of days, but it looked so good.  I couldn't wait and went back and rinsed it.  BIG MISTAKE!

I have the most insipid pile of wishy washy nothing cotton I have ever seen.  Most of it is soaking in the soda bucket ready to over dye.  Or do I strip the colour out and start fresh? My impatience is my downfall.

Playing with paper

I have been having a little play following the book 'Finding your own visual language' (Jane Dunnewold, Claire Benn & Leslie Morgan).  Playing with black paper, I cut a heart shape and then cut that into pieces. 

I traced around part of the cut out heart to find this shape

And when I played around using the shape, I had this - my very own angel :)

Just playing around with the one cut out heart and a piece of tracing paper, I have a nice selection of abstract shapes, some have already been cut into stamps using cheap erasers.