A Colourful Weekend.

We had a wonderful weekend up at Main Creek, although the weather continued to be a bit difficult as the wind blew all weekend, as you can see it kicked up another nice dust storm and drove us inside to dye.

With dust masks in place, everyone got their dye stocks mixed up ready to begin.

Then we had a break for morning tea. You will notice that I never get any pictures of the fabulous food Marion makes as I am too busy stuffing my face, next time I promise.  After indulging in scones,  vanilla slice and biscuits, all lovingly hand made, the dye pots come out and all that white fabric is transformed into a myriad of colour.

Here's the white fabric being ripped ready for the dye pots.

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OK I did get a quick picture of the table set for lunch, but as soon as the food arrived, the camera was forgotten.

After lunch, the rinsing began, we found a relatively sheltered spot and set up the rinsing table. Even the buckets and gloves added to the brightness of the weekend.

And then the fabrics were hung to dry, which took all of about 4 minutes. Amazingly, none came loose to disappear over the paddock, although a few buckets and pots did make an escape and had to be run down.

A few found a nice sunny spot and enjoyed an afternoon champagne,

just to keep the energy levels up you understand.

Day two, and although the wind continued to blow, the dust had gone, leaving a beautiful sunny day.

On the second day, the stamps and shibori poles etc. come out and the fun continues making multi coloured fabrics and over dyeing some of the previous days. As you can see, you can never have enough pots and jugs and general paraphernalia when dyeing.

Here we are at the end of the weekend, very well fed, and with that weary but contented feeling that a lot has been achieved for all your hard work. You can see the piles of fabric stacked ready to take home for their final washing and then to be made into unique and treasured quilts, bags and goodness knows what else.

More wax and a Birthday Present

Earlier this week I got the soy wax and procions out for another bit of experimentation. I am still playing around with this wax to see what exactly it will do. Last time I used it I made up a print paste as the wax is water soluble, and didn't think it would take too much wetting out, however is proved to be a lot more resilient than I expected, so this time used just straight dye. The pieces you can see below are just experimental bits, trying out different stamps, rollers, etc. and trying to get the wax just the right temperature to use with a tjanting to keep a good flow. As whole pieces they are pretty out there and a bit of a confusion, but when they are cut into smaller pieces they are quite gorgeous. I have cropped some bits so you can see. Further down the page, you can see how I used one of the earlier pieces in a project, a little pocket book in the latest Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine. These multi coloured fabrics are ideal for this project.

As you can see they are full of texture and colour. 

But the small pieces are terrific, and there's so much variety in just one fat 1/4.

Here are the pockets made for the book, took only a fat 1/8th

The pockets in the book

This little pocket book and itouch cover where Birthday presents for Louise, it's very hard finding presents that are light and  portable as she is travelling OS at the moment. Her itouch goes everywhere with her, and the little pockets will be ideal to store her treasures. Apparently Green is her favourite colour at the moment, so the itouch cover and book cover are made from textured calico with golden acrylics and mica powder.

As I have mentioned the pocket book was a project in Cloth, Paper Scissors. I have only recently subscribed to this mag, having subscribed to  Quilting Arts in the past. Now these wonderful magazines are available in digital form and I get both mags for the price of one in this format. It's terrific, I can't loose them, don't have to find storage for them, can print pages with templates etc. straight from the computer, no scanner needed and the ads are linked directly to the relevant web site for easy browsing. If you haven't had a look at these magazines before, or the new format, then you can see them here.

Something Old Something New

  A while ago, I made this box from hand dyed fabrics, threads, silk paper and all sorts of braids ect. I have always intended to make a book to go in the box, at the moment it contains two of my favourite novels. The textured surfaces workshop has given me all sorts of new ideas for pages for the book. With the holidays coming up, who know's I might actually get this done.                                             

                                  

 

My Golden paints arrived early this week and I have had a chance to try them out on two canvases I had prepared for the workshop. I bought three interference paints in green, violet and red and just had to try them all out on these. The red has given them a lovely purple glow. I'm quite happy with the way they turned out, but need to do a lot more experimenting with these new paints to get the best out of them I think.