Life, Post-Vacation

Last week was vacation time. I had a week away from my day job! I kicked it off with the trip to the State Quilt Guild of New Jersey show. The weather here was idyllic and I gardened and spent some time outside and in Center City. My ambition was to sew and finish one of my projects but that didn't happen. My work room was a mess and with more time on my hands than usual I couldn't focus on completing tasks. I got distracted by cleaning up and weeding my workspace. It needed to be done and I have no regrets - although it would have been nice to have finished something!

One fibrous thing I did get to do was splash around with with fabric dye and cotton yardage.

These are mostly African cotton jacquard. This one started out white. I've linked the larger picture because if you look closely you can sort of see some of the woven pattern.

This one started as a goldenrod yellow. I discharged some of the color by pouring bleach on it. The fabric was crumpled. No attempt made to pattern the discharge. Then rose brown dye was squeezed on from a squirt bottle.

This one started as the same goldenrod. I folded it up into a little triangular package and poured crimson on it.
Again the goldenrod. This time I discharged the color with dishwashing liquid on a big foam stamp -- probably meant to stamp on a wall. Then came emerald green dye on the discharged areas, allowed to do as it wanted. I particularly like over-dyeing the colored fabric. It is a rich effect that is hard to mess up!

White cotton broadcloth that I traced little scientific-ish illustrations onto with a sharpie. The sharpie was not fine enough to give a really fine line but I wanted to see what would happen and from that perspective it worked. The images made it through the entire fabric-punishing process. It is a technique that has some potential.