bee creative

changing direction

One of my goals for the summer is to finish up what I was calling my "sweet pea" quilt, a quilt I was making with fabric salvaged from my grandfather's chambray work shirts plus scraps from my collection.  There has been a change of direction...

It occurred to me that it might be more meaningful to incorporate the squares with  a quilt my mother made for me when I was about nine.  It's been in need of some mending.  The dolls in the pattern are made from fabric donated from various family members or scraps leftover from clothing my mother had made for me.  Somehow it seems just right to work the two together...

I had a little assistance from some of my friends.  Briar always feels she's best at holding things down.

picking projects

Oh the joy of a three day weekend with no plans for going far from home!  I've been thinking of all the things I want to do and trying to prioritize a bit.  The garden will probably have to wait for tomorrow, it's raining again...  I'll just have to work on one my blankets! 

This is one of my splurge planters.  Every year I pick out a few annuals for planters.  I save the plastic containers the plants come in for starting seeds.  The lime green flower is nicotina, the little flower on the left is diascus, petunias in the middle (these smell so good) and then lobelia to the front.  To the back is a hosta that I grow in a container.  Small hostas grow beautifully in containers and are much safer from the slugs. 

the sock chronicles

My sock weaving is done and assembled into a pillow.  The texture is divine. 
It may unravel a bit as it's used...just have to wait and see. 

After my cutting I was left with some bits and pieces of toes and heels.  One way I'm using them up is to snip them into tiny pieces, card them into white roving and spin and knit...

There is a bit of silk gauze and a few other odds and ends in the mix too.  A sort of yarn seasoning.

I'm going to start a new photo album in the side bar for fabric weaving projects.  I'm coming up with so many things that I want to explore and share from Jude's  (Spirit Cloth) class, cloth to cloth.  I'll leave a note when I post something new so that anyone interested can go look.  Putting a few projects up tonight. And here they are! 

swimming up stream

The problem with becoming enamored with something new is forgetting to eat, not getting enough sleep, the dishes stacking up...

I did manage to make some soup.  I used some of the peppers, tomatoes, green beans and kale I dried last summer.  Tomatoes and beans from the freezer.  Carrots and onions that I had stored.  It turned out fantastic.  A small handful of pasta.  Did I measure?  Of course not...

sunday night...

The sun came out...

But I didn't spend as much time weeding as I should have....  I've been working on this project for about a year and a half now.  I'm glad I've gone slowly with it.  The quilt is richer in detail for the time it's taken, there are more stories woven in...

slowly becoming

 

Slowly becoming something else. 

One of the saddest things about hand knit socks is when they get holes....  No more!  I cut off the heel and toe, cut the tube apart and made strips and started weaving them together.  Doing a happy dance, or should I say, going to a sock hop?  It's probably going to be a pillow. 

One of the hardest parts about starting things from seed is waiting.  Especially when there are plant starts to be purchased everywhere.  And yet, in the end, it is always worth it. 

Going to the farmer's market this morning and then hoping the rain will hold off enough to work in the garden some.  The garden too, is slowly becoming everything I'd hoped it would be when I first planted it. 

more fabric experiments

It needs a bit more work I think (might make a bigger center), but experimenting with weaving wool cut into shapes...in this case petals. I was originally inspired by daisies but this also makes me think of a starfish.

It's finally warm enough to do some solar dyeing and I started with lichens.  This variety (which I don't have identified) I threw into the pot branches and all.  The fabric is a lovely champagne yellow-brown.  The canning jar contains another variety.  So far there seems to be no color.  Tomorrow I'm going to look in a few of our local bookstores to see if I can find some books on lichens.  I'm curious about how they grow (some of them take a long time to grow and are rare I know) and what would make them stop growing. 

It may be hard to see, but I decided to try a bit of shibori.  I was very pleased with the results and want to try more. 

fabric experiments in bloom

Took a cork and stamped a few dots along a strip of fabric. 

Transferred a photo I took onto fabric using gel medium.  I used raw silk for the base.  It has the texture of a t-shirt transfer but is easier to pull a needle through.  There is probably still a bit of the paper "bloom" on the surface.  I just put back up the steps I go through to do transfers on paper.  The one thing that I think is necessary for fabric might be letting the gel medium dry longer.  Not sure what I'm going to do with this, I do want to see how well it ages.

And then there is the bloom in the garden.  For some reason I like the big full peonies best when they are buds or when they start to fall a part...

revision

My "circus" quilt hasn't been wearing very well on the opposite side...I knew that sooner or later a change was going to have to happen.

Hmm... something "up" and changed here.   The gray side with circles became the base and the green side was torn into strips along with another blanket from the stash.  It won't make quite as big of a blanket if I stay with these three wool blankets for the material.  The green was in pretty bad shape.  I'm thinking maybe squares along the outside with the checkerboard for a center, possibly circles appliqued on top of the squares?  Maybe circles on top of the checkerboard? 

This would make a very dense blanket, which I actually like.  Also thinking it would be good as a picnic blanket, a yoga/meditation mat, a rug...  It's about 4 by 4 feet right now.

This is more of a dye experiment.  I tore strips of raw silk, rolled them into a coil and placed the strips into a shallow dish that had a bit of onion dye bath in it.  After a couple hours, the fabric was removed and rinsed.  My original plan was to embellish these for book markers, but they sure are nice for weaving.  I'm going to make more strips like this.  Maybe with fabric paint?  Coffee dye or bleach over printed fabric. 

So many  directions to go! 

spring wool

Had to try weaving with wool...just had to:

A little silk gauze danced it's way in too.  Now I'm dancing off to the garden: