The Return of the Weaver

Natural dye yarn, commercial and handspun, mint and rosemary, alum and iron dip

Wow... it's been about 2 years since I last posted. Someone was asking me about the blog the other day, and so I thought I'd pay it a visit. Then I thought, what the heck! Let me bring this baby back to life. Like Frankenstein's monster.

A lot has happened over the past 2 years to keep me away. 2016 brought 2 grandbaby dolls, so I was pretty busy with that. Then 2017 was a  busy year with two quilt shows, so that means deadlines. And I have a 9-5'er in the midst of all this.  Oh and I am the caretaker for my 93 year old mother and disabled brother. So here I am in 2018. And I feel like I need to take some of my own advice from a past post. Being, not doing.

Which is why I decided not to enter a piece in the Season After Season exhibit. I started to work on a piece and then I just plain got tired and lost steam. I think part of the reason I lost steam too is because of the age old internal battle that has gnawed away at me since I first learned to weave in high school… the artisan vs. artist in me. I want to make something beautiful, but it has to be functional. I just can’t get past it. As the Shakers used to say:

"Beauty rests on utility"

So I’m sticking to functional quilts for a while. I won’t say forever! But for a very long while.

Black beans & tea

In the studio....
My manatee pal has taken me back to natural dyeing. I haven't worked with natural dyes in a while and forgot how interesting the colors and the process are. Not to mention much safer for the environment than commercial pigments.

I dyed manatee with tea. To do this, you basically batch your fabric in a cuppa. I added 8 teabags to 2 1/2 cups of boiling water and let it steep for 15 min. I poured some of the bath into a jar and added manatee, then poured the rest of the tea bath into another glass jar and added 1 yard of fabric. I let these 2 fabrics batch for 24 hours. The yard of muslin came out much lighter but with a pretty mottled look. I did not use mordant.

I then moved onto black beans as I wanted to get a blue color. I soaked the black beans in a plastic tub over night, stirring whenever possible. Used a good amount of water as beans absorb quite a lot. Used alum mordant. Soaked the fabric for 4 hours in 3 tbsp. alum, 2 tbsp. cream of tartar and 1 gal. of water. I'm not sure of these measurements, and maybe that's why I didn't get the exact color I wanted... but that's part of the magic of natural dyes. Both fabrics are cotton, but the fabric on the left, which has a tighter weave, seemed to achieve more of a blueish purple while the other is more of a reddish purple. The picture doesn't show well the different veins and hints of light blue and grey running through it. I am happy with the results, even though I didn't get blue per se.

Did a little over dye on a swatch of commercial fabric also. For details on these two dyeing methods, shoot me an email.

On the bookshelf...
Read Carl Hiaasen's Flush. Being a children's librarian, I have to read kid's books in order to provide reader's advisory services. But I don't have to read them, I want to. Most children's authors are good writers. They have to be. Because kids can smell a stink bomb a mile away. Children's writers have to grab you in the first page or two or they are toast. I enjoyed Flush and I like Hiaasen's writing style for kids. His books take place in Florida, and have an environmental theme, and goodness knows if any state needs environmental awareness, it's Florida. This is the story of a couple of kids who go up against a nasty casino boat owner who is dumping his boat's waste into the sea. Likable characters and good story.