Dye Painting. Meh.

Today was doodle day on my experimental yard of linen. I went through my winter sketchbooks and found some great motifs. I followed instructions for making “complex colors” (adding complements to primaries — blue + orange, red + green, yellow + purple). My blank canvas was ready. I was surprised that my thin dye mixtures […]

Focus: Dive into Dyeing

One cure for Summer Hyperactivity Disorder is to devote multi-hour chunks to a single project — go deep, get it to a logical stopping point before veering off to the next shiny object. For months I’ve been planning to make a simple shirt from hand-dyed linen. I have the linen. I have the pattern. But […]

Doodling my way to…

In February, I decided to try a week’s worth of doodling a single sheet of marker paper. That lasted a few weeks and yielded some new motifs for my fabric designs. Now, after finding an old 3×5-ish moleskine notebook, I decided to take another stab at one or more doodles a day. Dilemma: Use doodling […]

Time bending

Found this old photo of myself — a toddler with a Buddha smile. Could she be having a sweet vision of wine on a lakeshore, in the distant future? Technical: composite photo; 2019 selfie (camera on tripod, remote shutter); 1949 layer colorized.

“Gotta Go,” cont’d.

[Cont’d from here] How did I wind up here, drawing “paper dolls” to add my fabric designs to? Maybe in old age I’m simply circling back to one of my first loves — 1950s paper dolls. Rita Hayworth. The Maguire Sisters. I could lose myself for hours dressing them and having them act out their […]

Shirt sleeve mending

“Visible mending” has been a thing now for a few years. I enjoy it. It’s great for long evenings in front of the TV. Or when an audio book is too good to stop listening. Last week I patched the sleeve in one of Jim’s favorite old shirts (above). Another shirt (below) had a forearm […]

“Gotta Go” fabric design

I’ve been laboring away in a course called “The Sellable Sketch.” I reached the point where I picked out (1) a style I aspired to (“flowing”), (2) a current trend in fashion (“natural textures”), and (3) an end-user (long-story-short “cosmopolitan”). The challenge now: design a fabric collection — three or more designs that “go together.” […]

Wool: knit to felt

Remember, before Christmas we made a textile run at the local antique shop. Among our booty was a Pendleton “100% virgin wool” throw. This large blankie had a couple of small stains and a tiny hole or two. I figured I could toss it in one of my (hypothetical) dye vats and refresh it with […]

Earth cloth: St. John’s Wort

Dyeing fabric with plant stuff is a big production and I always wind up cursing at the results. But then I always wind up circling back, It’s an exercise in seeing the Other as it is, not as you wanted it to be. I did not study organic chemistry. The chaos is on my side […]

Pillowcase revival

I love working with natural-fiber textiles because they are always game for transformation. They can be colored, patched, turned into quilts, bleached out, overdyed, painted, and relayered into precious new cloth. And, unlike so much art, textiles have purpose. They go to work keeping us warm and turning our abodes into comfortable and pleasing homes. […]