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Archive for the ‘indigo’ Category

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Friday, September 6th, 2013

bluemoon2shrunk

This photo is a bit dark, but it will have to suffice. I stitched the other indigo blue moon to prefelt today and did some shrinking. I was more careful this time. I started the washer on regular wash with hot water and then stopped the machine and reset it to drain and spin after it had tossed around for about 5 minutes. Then I threw it in the dryer. It has a bit of pilling of the blue prefelt, but is not nearly as felted as the last piece. Here is a detail:

bluemoon2detail

Here is the stitching on the moon before I did the shrinking:

bluemoon2stitching

Now, I need to do some hand stitching and get it layered and faced. I also have to decide if I want to try shrinking it a bit more. We shall see.

Yesterday was a bit of a hiatus from studio work. I was doing SDA work, mainly creating some photoshopped artwork for a new Constant Contact newsletter. And, it was our 49th wedding anniversary. It usually falls on Labor Day Week-end, but was later this year. Hear we are, 49 years ago.

8432_1126513522230_2952794_n

I guess we need to do something special next year! Last night we went to one of our favorite restaurants and invited Steph and Jack to join us. We had a great time. It is always more fun to share good food and wine with others.

Blue Moon # 1

Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013

BlueMoon1

Here is my wonky and fun Blue Moon 1. It has been a bit tortured — felted more than I anticipated, combed and brushed to remove extra fuzz, beaded and then unbeaded. It is not a quilt, it is fiber art and I am happy with it. We have spent days on end together and I have grown quite fond of this piece.

Here is a detail of the moon and stitching. (Click on photo for larger view.)

bluemoon1detail1

And here is a detail of the other stitching.

bluemoon1detail2

Now, I will move on to Blue Moon 2 and see what kind of torture it will encounter!!

Making Lemonade

Thursday, August 29th, 2013

defuzzedindigomoon

I went to work on this piece which looked like a piece of wool felt after I had blocked it and it was dry. I removed lots of blue felt fuzz from the surface.

feltfuzz

I had this tool with my felting supplies. I am not sure what it is for, but it worked perfectly to remove the fuzz from this.

feltingtool

defuzzing

You can now see the organza. I stitched the rows a little close together. I won’t do that next time. I am now doing some beading with seed beads. My first task was to bead around the moon shape.

moonbeading

Now, I need to get creative with the beads. I am hoping to get a more organic pattern going on the moon. I will do some stitching with perle cotton, too.

We had a great dinner on Tuesday night with two couples from our neighborhood. I did some great cooking. We enjoyed a nice evening on the deck, great wine and intelligent conversation.

And Then the Lights Went Out

Sunday, August 25th, 2013

sumptuousindigoorganza

I had a fairly productive day yesterday. I took some photos to share and was ready to blog about my progress after dinner. In the middle of dinner prep, the lights went out. This is a rare occurrence. We have lived here for more than 7 years and we have had very few power interrupts. Apparently, a tree was down in the neighborhood. First it was to be back at 9 and then 11. We finally went to bed at 10:30. I think it came back on at 1:30 this morning.

Anyway, I went back to stitching the organza to the wool pre-felt. It has such a luxurious tactility. I just love touching it. This is why I work in textiles.

stitchingbluemoon

I think I can finish stitching it today and do the shrinking. The Barnes’ are coming over for pizza so I may not get totally done.

I also made a quick trip to Mill Ends to get some yarn to make a chemo hat for my friend Judy who starts chemo this week for breast cancer. She is so upbeat and positive about this whole experience — she makes me smile when I want to cry about it. I promised her a chartreuse hat and I found this yummy mohair:

chartreusemohair

But, in the end, she is such a colorful person, I had to go with this:

judyhatyarn

It is really soft. I think it will look great. I was going to start knitting last night, but that didn’t happen!!

While I was at Mill Ends, I saw this colorful burlap. Have been wondering what I could do with some of this.

colorfulburlap

The Lost Week-end

Monday, August 19th, 2013

buttuglywithindigo

I invited Stephanie to come and play in the indigo with me on Friday. We had lots of fun.

stephinindigo

She did this beautiful cotton gauze scarf.

stephindigoscarf

She dipped a couple of pieces of clothing for herself and these socks for Miles.

indigosocksI rehabbed a couple of butt ugly pieces of hand-dyed fabric. My favorite is the one at the top of my post. Here is the other.

buttuglywithshibori2

I also dipped this piece of raw silk. It lost a bit of color in the wash which disappointed me, but it is still quite lovely. The dots at the sides are where I clamped the folded fabric.

rawsilkindigo

I dipped another white shirt. This one was a rayon/linen blend. I didn’t get a photo, but it looks great.

We went out to dinner on Friday night and had a great meal at a new to us restaurant which was totally gluten free. On Saturday, I did a shopping list to get food for the week-end. We were planning to have the Portland peeps over for dinner on Sunday. I also got some work done on a symmetry/asymmetry presentation for High Fiber Diet.

I planned to go to two store. My first stop was Trader Joe’s. By the time I finished shopping, I had such a raging headache that I thought I would burst into tears. I went home and did not finish my shopping. I spent the rest of the day in a daze with the bad headache and some intestinal gas pain. I made dinner and ate a normal meal.

The pain in my stomach got worse as the night wore on. I  finally had a major purge, if you know what I mean. At any rate. it was 5:30 in the morning when I finally got relief, but I was done in. I spent Sunday in bed sleeping, drinking sips of gingerale and taking bites of gelatin. By evening, I could stomach some chicken broth and a rice cake.

I feel much better today, but have severe abdominal muscle pain from the retching. So, I lost a couple of days of work in the studio and some quality family time. I hope this phase is coming to an end. After feeling so good for so many months, I am not happy about this turn of events.