Thrums, a shirt, a brutalist quilt, seedlings, and painting with natural dyes
Studio updates from late March...
I recently joined the Weave Structures study group in my weaving guild. Our current project is to use multiple weave structures in the same piece. I also have a huge box of thrums, loom waste, and discarded wefts from my classmates at Penland – why not combine the two? I put a natural cotton warp on my Gilmore, threaded it with alternating stripes of plain weave and huck lace, and strung together thrums to make an eclectic weft.
The piece is currently off the loom and wet-finished, but you'll have to take my word for it. It's huge (~4 yards!) and hard to photograph. But here's a nice photo of it on my loom. I love the unintentional patterns made by the dyed weft bundles that were meant for a much smaller piece.
I sewed my first garment since pre-Penland: the Classic Shirt by Liesl and Co. It's not quite finished – I'm still looking for the perfect buttons. I'm getting closer to a good fit... and once I have it, this patten could be fun with handwoven fabric.
More sewing: I created a mini-quilt, part of a photo challenge for my quilt guild. We each selected a reference photograph and we're going to make 4 mini-quilts based on that photo, one a quarter, each responding to a specific prompt. My photo is of a brutalist arch in Bulgaria. The first image is the reference photo; the second is another photo showing the full structure (note the tiny person at the bottom!).
This quarter's prompt is "whole photo" so I remade the photo in fabric. All the fabric was hand dyed: indigo, myrobalan, iron.
I'm also starting a dye garden. You heard that right: me, who kills plants just by looking at them. I have two garden beds set up in the backyard. And I started bunch of seedlings that – fingers crossed – will sprout. Hopefully I'll have enough flowers to dye (at least!) a cat-sized quilt.
And finally, I'm making slow progress on my Maiwa class, Print and Paint with Natural Dyes. Modules 3 and 4 were intense: I created 28 (!!! 😓) different shades of paint. And now I have to use them before they go bad. Here's a sampler of all the colors. It's not yet steamed, the colors will brighten and change once they are permanently bonded to the cloth.
Year of Stories recent read: A Tale for Time Being by Ruth Ozeki