29 DAYS

A STITCHING AND DYEING ADVENTURE

Day I

For the past 2 February's,

Australian Artist India Flint has offered up the most wonderful online Eco-Dyeing workshops

that I've enrolled myself in. 

Last year it was called A Clearing in the Woods,

and this year 29 Days.

In both I've learned so much about eco-dyeing and slow stitching,

and am now working on both simultaneously.

The one from last year I work on in the evenings as I've been binge-watching

various series on Net-flicks, Hulu and Amazon,

sometimes staying up till 4 in the morning.

My newest favorite is Outlander on Net-ficks.

If you want to give it a try it's a bit hard to get thru the first Episode 

until near the end when is roars to life,

then watch out, you'll be hooked.

I'm a bit of a history buff so it's right up my alley based in 1743 Scotland.

So anyways I digress.

Back to this Feb's workshop.

These following pieces were my first attempts from Day 1

The leaves I used where found in my gutters after a big wind we had and were dried up,

so India taught us how to reconstitute them,

other vegetation plucked from my porch garden.

I felt my results were pretty blah on these two that were bundled together on wool/silk broadcloth,

and wool.

Note: we are not mordanting these pieces yet.

When I opened these next two that were bundled together I was a bit more pleased,

especially with the top one.

These were both on two different types of silks I found.

Note:  I did cheat. 

 The string I used to wrap bundles with had been re-purposed from a tye-dye demo 

I did last year with my students.

That's where the beautiful bright greens are coming from,

but the rest of the color is from my leaf choices.

I enjoyed my results on these next two as well,

both on cotton.

These are picking up a bit of greens and turquoise from the tye-dye string

and you can really tell where the Eucalyptus leaves are along edges.

And in these last two that were bundled together,

 I had no idea there was so much dye left in my bundling string.

I really dislike that patch of dark turquoise.

But I do like how my Boston fern printed along with some other plants from my porch.

These were fresh.

The good news is that I was only supposed to do one set for Day One,

 but I wanted to see how the same plants would work on various silks, wools and cotton fabrics.

So far the silks are winning big time!

Stay tuned for Day 2.