Peter made great progress on the artbarn today. Wow I don’t know if he will finish it by the end of the weekend but he will be close. There will be a lot of finishing to do but getting the walls and windows up is a huge accomplishment. Way to go!
Got the studio nice and clean today and fixed my exposure unit. Thanks to the encouragement of some of my blogging buddies Curl and Q I am cooking up some quince to make dye tonight. I put the flowers in one pot and the branches and leaves in another.
Tonight I will look around for silk, linen, cotton and wool roving and get it all into mordants. As Curl suggests, I’m going to use different mordants to see what happens. I have vinegar, alum, and citric acid. I also have soda ash, but I think that is only for procion dyes. What the heck I’ll try it anyway. I turned the heat up as I sat down to write this and now I can smell the beginning of a steamy flower evening. mmmmm
I won’t be disappointed because whatever happens it will be fun!
Here’s to dyeing every day
And maybe I’ll even get to that miniquilt tonight!
i dye every day 
Wouldn’t I love to be with all of you–such fun you are having with the experiments of dying and using natural items from nature. I am just too old to get involved, but I love to read your comments..
So glad to hear from you!
I cannot wait to see the dye! Yeah, you need to soak the to-be-dyed-stuff in the mordant first so there is an even uptake of dye. I swish periodically just to make sure. Have you ever used chrome, copper, iron or tin mordants? I haven’t but would like to. Thanks for the kind words!
Hi Susan, Left the pots on the stove all night. This morning kind of the same colors, maybe a bit darker pinkish and greenish brown.-beautiful! Still have to get to the mordant soak. I’m excited!!!!
Marjorie, Thanks for the visit to my blog today (or yesterday, i think it was). It was very refreshing to find that you’d followed my blog. I mostly post about video and photography and other forms of art production, and have, of late, become very intrigued by my art quilting practice that I’m learning to do. You do some beautiful work, apparently, from what I’ve seen on your blog. How wonderful to connect with someone else into fabric. My wife and I began quilting last winter as a way to pass the cold days of winter. We began each with a full-sized quilt that we each picked out to work on, and then this year hooked up with quilting landscapes and such. Such a thrilling time we are having of it! My wife has been learning about dyeing fabric these last couple of weeks, and is about to start with some good cotton we have around the tickle trunk. It is so encouraging to find blogs like yours to keep us interested.
We live in a northern Ontario community where it is quite cold much of the year (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario). We’ve both really taken to the “art quilting” or landscapes as most of them are. My wife has always worked with her hands to create things. Lots of cross stitching and sewing and such. Me, my previous artwork has been in the fields of video, writing and painting (oils). Fabric is where we’ve found we can come together and meet in the middle ground! It has really been wonderful to see each other grow as artists while quilting, urging each other on and helping each other find solutions to problems we are experiencing with the fabrics. Our local Soup Kitchen has been running classes, and we’ve been faithful participants in these workshops for about 3 months so far. The piece I mainly posted about was my first piece that I did. I also showed my second piece that I worked on, too.
Please keep up posting your wonderful work online. It is a real pleasure to look at your work. Great inspiration!
~darren.
Hi there, I so love cattails! When I was a young girl we used to light them up and it seems they would burn for hours, so when i saw your beautiful piece I thought it would be fun to connect. I often find myself dyeing or quilting the blues away.
I used to burn cattails, too! Those memories were the inspiration for the original photo I snapped of these cattails, and then the inspiration for the quilting. Funny!
So funny Darren! Would love to hear about your wife’s dyeing experiences as she goes along.
Oooh, very interested to see how this turns out. I’ve not tried natural dying yet, but have at least 3 people saving onion skins for me…..
It’s 8:30 here now and I’m so glad I made two different pots. The flowers have turned a lovely pinkish brown and and branches and leaves a lovely greenish brown. Both are very light. I am investigating mordant preparation because i always just throw some alum or vinegar into the dyepot. But now I am reading that you have to simmer the cloth in the mordant for a while or leave overnight. I want to do this right but i am so impatient.
Looking GREAT!!!!
You guys are amazing! Miss the quince and the garden and your faces. Sure looks like spring over there.
Hello Laura! I’m about to call you. I hope you are fine and the weather is good. Miss your face dearest