What happened next...

Right so when last we left the story I decided to dye the ends in 4 different colors. I experimented last spring with ombres and I thought that would be the way to go, just dunk the ends and let the color wick into the fabrics. I figured that it would react differently with all of the different fibers...

It did!

I didn't forsee it traveling as far as it did in some cases though!

Interesting how it kind of stuck to the straight and narrow path and didn't spread weftwise... or is it warpwise?

also interesting that it didn't disturb the root motif too much.

I kind of like the results,

I think.

Of course laundering the piece after dyeing it made the fraying edges really come apart, but again, it feels more root like and organic so I'm good with it.

I think.

and no, I have no idea what comes next, I will have to mess about a bit more, and see what happens.

Catching Up

OK I have been feeling very tongue tied for the last 2 weeks.

However the project has been slowly progressing so I'm going to try to catch up all the stages I've been passing through in one huge post.

Here we go...

I pretty quickly discovered that I wasn't going to be able to stabilize the weaving while it was on the hoop. So I took it out and began to quilt it onto a backing.

I chose to use a running stitch in soft neutral colors to anchor each square. The work was a bit intensive as each square the direction and color changed. As I was working it occur ed to me that the work might be a wasted effort as I planned to add appliqued motifs of some sort over the top of the weaving. things slowed considerably as I decided what I would like to add. While I was thinking I noticed this:

This is a piece that I have hung on my bulletin board, odd thoughts in collage form, then I noticed this:

A piece of dyed cotton gauze I made last spring. I liked the compass like way the motif splays out from the center, it relates to a cardinal direction/time/seasonal theme I had been thinking about.

It also connects to the root idea.

I cut two pieces over the woven work making a root-like mandala. I liked the mandala, it was a neutral color but darker than the background but I found that even though the cotton gauze is quite transparent it wasn't showing much of the ground, so the best solution was to stitch it down around the motif and cut it out.

Much better, the root mandala relates nicely to the grid too.

I've spent some more time quilting the background down now and looking at all of the extra fabric I left hanging off of the center. I'm circling back around to the cardinal directions...

and each cardinal direction can be a different color.

So I've constructed a dye structure to hold the fabric up while I dye the ends of the strips.

That's where its at, for the moment.

Whew!