Friday, August 12, 2011

Hand Dyed Fabric and Threads

This week my friends Heather, Doeteke and Ann came up to the cottage and we had some messy fun dying a bunch of cloth and threads.  We ran into rain, so we ended up working inside the cover of the woodshed but all in all we had a great time and managed to have enough good weather to be able to hand our treasures out on the line to dry.  We all ended up with really beautiful things to add to our stash.  I can't wait to get busy playing and creating with my new fabrics!

(L-R: Doeteke, Heather, Me (Linda) and Ann mixing the powdered
dye and getting ready to play!  Either that or preform surgery!

Smiling for the camera.  Honest, there are smiles under those masks!
Drying on the line.




Some of our treasures drying on the line.
My new hand-dyed stash!                    


Rock, Paper, Scissors

My fibre arts group's latest challenge was to incorporate some small rock pieces that Ann brought back with her from Arizona.   In addition to using the rocks in the piece, we had to include the word 'rock' in the title.  What immediately came to mind for me was the old game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.  Here's the resulting piece.


I first created the background by using my embellisher and adding various scraps of rovings, hand dyed cheese cloth, organza, silk scarves, etc. to a piece of felt.  I then wrapped the rocks with copper wire embellished with beads.  The large beads are made of various decorative papers and strips of newspaper and some were also wrapped with copper wire.  The scissors are were thread sketched onto the background.  The piece was finished off with hand wrapped cords, hand embroidery and beading.  The final touch was to get out in my kayak and find a piece of driftwood to attach for hanging.  I had a lot of fun creating this piece!