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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Wayfarer's Wanderbook with India Flint - Day Two

It had rained on Night One, so Day Two was glorious with fluffy, patchy clouds.  India took us on a marvelous trek thru Darcy's neighborhood, and pointed out all the flora that gives off delicious dye colors.  We had all taken a bag and were allowed to collect only the windfall.  So after an hour wandering around,  this is the bag I brought back to work with on Day Two.  Lots of eucalyptus and other goodies.
Many of the participants made additional papers in their hotel rooms on Night One.  I'm embarrassed to say I did not, I was too pooped out.  But I was really inspired by their efforts, and the clever things they thought to do with stitch, thread and other fibers.
Below is the same paper after going into the eucalyptus brew.

Here are a few other cool examples.

I realy like how the gal below was couching various handspun wools onto her paper.
And the very beautiful paper below was done by my good friend and mentor, Lori Lawson.  She had thought to bring some vintage laces and framed them beautifully into her papers.  She and best buddy Margie also drove up from Capistrano for the workshop.  It was so nice to have friends there creating with me.

Here is my 3rd huge bundle after it came out of the cauldron, revealing most of my 2nd day papers below.

My favorite was this binder/folder paper that India encouraged us to make.  I loved the stunning marks left behind from my windfall that I had gathered that morning.

These next 3 pix were from my 4th batch.  Lori let me have a piece of her lace that I whipped into a pierced window area above.  But the new technique India showed us was milk resist.  She gave each of us a small cup of milk and told us to paint designs on our paper.  On the one above (front) I painted dots and dashes, and the one behind top I punctures holes and then put dots of milk over the holes.  What the milk does is make the dye go darker in those painted areas.
In this next one above (top) I painted a vertical line then dots on the paper edges.  And on the one below it's a bit hard to see but I painted another vertical along the fringed edge.  The reason some of my papers are embellished with handspun, beads and ribbons is that India encouraged us to finish them off with goodies we had brought along.
In the piece below which is part of my cover page for my Wayfarers book, I placed my paper on top of a bundled piece of silk that Darcy had made for each one of us.  And inside this paper I will dedicate my book to India and Darcy.
In the piece below India taught us a very complicated folding technique that I believe is called the hurricane fold because some lady thought of it during a hurricane when she was locked up inside her house waiting for the thing to pass.  I did it on a very thin piece of handmade rice paper.

In these two pix, India had us do an egg wash resist.  She scrambled a raw egg and gave us each a little of the mixture.  Then we dipped our fingers in it and printed them on the paper, dipped leaves in the egg and printed them, flung the raw egg across the paper willy-nilly, whatever we could think of.  Then we folded our papers up and put them in the ornamental plum vat.  The one below hasn't been dyed yet, one above has been.


In this next piece I was experimenting with some windfall, but you can see how it ripped when I opened it up.  And below I wanted to try some parchment paper I had brought.  It was a bit of a dud but the silk pieces I had sewn on came out very rich in color.

By the end of the 2nd day we were exhausted , but had learned so much and produced quite a bit as well.  So India had us sit down and gave us a bit of a show and tell about some dresses she had brought and the one she was wearing.  She told us she uses a lot of patterns from the Alabama Studio Sewing and Design Book by Natalie Chanin.  So of course when I got back home from the workshop I went right out and bought the book at Barnes and Noble.  I found that the book is filled with inspiration and I'm so excited to make several of the patterns.  
I hope you enjoyed Day Two, and hopefully I'll get Day Three up real soon.

2 comments:

  1. thank you for all this inspiration.

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  2. I am so enjoying reliving our fabulous days with India and friends. I am so glad we were able to take the workshop together -- an experience we will never forget.

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