Shrouded Moon

Playing with anchored weaving, quadrants, and gauze.

Wow! Thanks jude!

I'm so excited! Today I received a little package from jude with a selection of transparencies to play with.
from top to bottom: cotton harem cloth, a jazzy eyelet, handkerchief weight cotton, krinkle gauze, silk gauze, embroidered linen? and another eyelet.
It inspired me to dig out my light table and play...

Harem cloth over bright red, lit from behind

and in front

jazzy eyelet over shibori

and lit from behind

handkerchief weight cotton, playing with diffusion and folds

krinkle gauze over loose dyework

Silk gauze over arashi

embroidered linen over batik

eyelet over itajime

Lots of food for thought here.

It is really interesting how the direction the light is coming from changes the look of the pieces so drastically.

makes me think about time and the passage of light as a day winds by.

visitor

Someone passed by this evening.

Small footfalls like kanoko

2nd color begun

Pale olive over thin gauze.
Mimicing the shibori lines.
Sap running beneath snow.

First color is done now.

Let the next begin....

Quite lovely

The results from the test are in. I'm not having much luck controlling my colors on silk. The results are gloriously askew; black turns maroon and copper, brown turns iredescent orange and olive, and grey turns bronze with steel blue edges.

Its pretty.

I tried all sorts of things to try to keep the colors from wicking like that, No dice.

I've decided that the silk has determined that this is how it should be, and I have to agree its a good call.

I am going to find another sort of scarf to use for my project and enjoy the silk just as it is.

just sharin' the love

I've been getting into some fun treasuries on ETSY.

The process of updating the shop is ongoing a start and stop effort...

Points of intrest

I've begun to look at the edges of the cloth and consider how to finish it.

This seems promising

Related?

As I set up one of my recent "gleanings" for a photo I noticed a strange affinity for one of my recent shibori pieces.
It is as if they were made for each other.

Even more stitching

It is slowly coming together. After many many small stitches the strips are slowly melding into a single cloth.

First stitches

Basting

This is only the second of my CWB experiments that I've basted in preparation for further stitching. I am going to explore some different cottons for doing my dye work on, this is pima cotton, dyes nicely, but I find it hard to hand stitch.
I don't want to use a machine on these pieces, I've been enjoying the focus of the hand stitch, and I prefer the way it "honors" the shibori.

Still looking at transparency as an element.

CWB another try

Beginning a new weave....

Something to see

Looking at these has made me think of this, truly beautiful work.

Gleanings

I actually collected these back in the beginning of December, took the pictures, then wandered off.

Now all of the plants are crushed beneath the snow.

That first one is a cattail that has gone to seed. It has sort of felted itself into a little pillow. All the others are roadside weeds and a sedum flower.

I found the structures kind of fascinating.

Spikey

Soft

Delicate

the lack of color seems to bring the structures into focus.

Each one different yet following its own logic.

Order disintegrating into chaos.

Another dye lot

Grey and brown.

Bold stark lines wrapped in white and soft grey. That is what I'm seeing now and that is what I'm dyeing.

Well that and these, the first try at a very particular dye batch, I learned a couple of things, such as I need to do more tests to get the look I want...

The silk reacts differently to the dyes than my usual cotton.

My colors are not as planned.

Time to make some notes, and think things through, and stitch a little.

CWB experiment 6-more transparency

This is the last experiment from my first dye batch.

Here the shibori is being shrouded by layers of cotton gauze, interesting but not quite working the way I envisioned. It is really hard to see but each of the strips is 3 layers; plain shibori, covered halfway with one strip of gauze which in turn is covered halfway with another strip of gauze.

I was hoping for a gradual erasure of the shibori. The effect is not happening for quite a few reasons, color, contrast or lack of it, and the weave itself is distracting from what I'm interested in seeing.

I dyed up another small batch of fabrics to play with tonight and I may be able to take another whack at it tomorrow.

Ready to go

Today the little bites didn't amount to alot of work getting done...

We had bright warmish weather so I ended up spending some time outside scraping ice off the driveway and going for a really nice walk.

but I've prepared the fabrics for the dye lab and tomorrow I may get a chance to mix my colors up and put them on.

I have 2 different projects I'm concentrating on, the CWB workshop, and a concept that may end up in the shop (I hope).

Small Bites

Today I tried a different approach to my long standing, overwhelming to-do list.
I chose 3 to 5 things, and gave myself to them and only them, not the other 45 things I have stacked up. I also gave myself permission to say screw it to any of them if I really didn't want to do it.
Each time I finished, or got close enough, I went back to the impossible list and reevaluated. Then I picked a couple more (or not) and kept moving.
For today it worked, I got a surprising amount done.

Now I'm stitching a few stitches. Taking small bites.
Tomorrow it will be back to the dye lab for a few more experiments.

One Month

One month ago today we lost our special girl Rasta.

It was time, she needed to rest, and we had the luxury of being able to say goodbye.

We are still heartbroken, she was our best girl, sweet and loving and funny. She completed our home in so many ways.

She had 50+ nicknames, 2 incredibly close calls (hit by a snowplow and a bout of Pancreatitis),

100s of songs were recomposed by us to celebrate her dog-ness,

the softest fur ever, nose wrinkles, a love for snuggling and so much more.

So today (and everyday) I remember her and honor that memory, grateful for the joy she brought us.

At in the moment

At the moment I am trying my camera off of the auto settings (!)

I've been meaning to do that for awhile, yet somehow it seemed so easy to just let the camera make the call.

So tonight in the spirit of adventure I flipped it off of those auto settings and have started to figure out how the camera works. Be ready for some weird photos while I get the hang of this.

Messing with the ISO settings here and I am shooting in low light

this was the best of the bunch...

In that moment I'm stitching, The piece is an alter cloth that needs to be made.

CWB- 5th Experiment, encasing

The big storm that washed across 2/3 of the country this week hit us with some snow and more freezing rain. Every twig is encased in ice. I know it can be horrifically destructive but we seem to have dodged that bullet this time. The aftermath of ice like this is a vision. Morning light glistens on every detail and glows deceptively.

This winter world I am inhabiting is surely influencing my choices of dye colors as well as my design ideas.
I did this before the ice but I can see the influence in color and action.

Wood grain shibori in grey and brown mimics the thickets of branches that capture me in the landscape. Each piece is isolated and encased in denim as twigs captured in ice. I spread out the weaving to give it some room to breathe.

I really like this one

CWB- experiment 4 weaving with transparency

We have been experiencing BIG snow this past month, lots of shoveling. The world around me is muffled beneath layers, slowly disappearing over time.

Perhaps that inspired this thought...

What if I were to layer the pattern with something gauzy. To reduce it with the weaving?

This is my first experiment with it.

Light blue gauze layered over the makiage pattern.

I learned a few things here. The contrast of the shibori itself is a very important design element, And a pale background makes a difference in the visual weight. I will be back to this one.

CWB- 3rd Experiment

Next question, how well can a single motif read when incorporated into a woven state?

Nothing very fancy here, a somewhat lumpy makiage dye and a straightforward weave. I tried to make the design bold enough in contrast to "hold together" even when torn into strips.

It seems to keep its form pretty well, has me thinking about varying the thickness of the strips, wide strips of the motif and narrow of the solid....

or transparency....