Dye day

I've been wanting to have a dye day for a long time and I finally got around to it over the weekend.  Above you can see some of my dye pots, batching around the wood stove.  I have a lot of dye powders and I also have lots of fabrics and vintage textiles that I collect at garage sales.  A few white tops that have been waiting for my next dye session too.  Here is my favorite:

Which is brighter, my new shirt or my shower curtain?  This is an Eddie Bauer shirt, brand new for twenty five cents at a garage sale.  Now it is a brand new Jannie Brattain, ha ha.

Miss Sadie enjoys guarding my drying dyeing.  These are some of the small pieces.

My wooden drying rack is overloaded with the rest of my fabrics.  I love that orangy red and the periwinkle.

I ironed most of my small pieces and just folded the big pieces.  Above you can see some of the dyed vintage napkins and other textiles.  I love the hand of the vintage pieces, so soft and worn.

A few lovely doilies.  It is a shame to let them molder away in the closet.  I rather hated to treat them this way but I'm hoping that now I will be more likely to actually use them.  Such beautiful hand work is frequently found in garage sales, very cheap.

I threw in some scrim and a few cut off strips of batting.  The scrim takes the dye beautifully.  I had also tossed in some cheese cloth but evidently it was not cotton and all it did was make a big mess as it unraveled and shed on everything.  It was the same with some unknown sheer fabric I had and was hoping maybe it was silk but no, it is something that didn't take the dye at all.  I did have one silk scarf that now matches my new shirt in tangerine, fuchsia and lemon yellow.  Beautiful.  Wish I had some more silk.

Now I had better get busy and do something with some of these fabrics.  Maybe I will turn one of those vintage napkins into a dooleybobber.

I'm in the mood for some rock and roll today, listening to the White Stripes.  Turn it up!!

Be well.

 

Stuff I have accumulated #1

Rummaging through my valuable supplies, looking for cool stuff to attach to my current dooleybobber, I came across these items.  I likely picked them up at some garage sale.  Here is what every woman needs, a Sew It Yourself skirt kit.  Make it tonight!  The fabric is of undetermined fibers, but what a deal!  Only $1.00!!

Complete with instructions!!  It is as easy as 1-2-3!

Can be fit to any size from  8 to 16!  I'm about a size 8 but I haven't had a 20 inch waist since I was 14 years old.  I think yesterdays size 8 is today's size 2.

 If you are needing repairs on your brassiere or garter belt, help is available.  I have the Perfect Fastener for you!

Hose supporters.  I'll bet young people these days equate hose with record albums and rotary dial phones.  If they had any idea what those things were.  Come to think of it, they would be right to equate all those things together.

I hope you enjoyed this little trip down vintage lane.

Be well. 

Key to life

"The key to life is enjoying the passage of time." That is quite a large statement and I'm not sure it is entirely true but it certainly has some truth in it. It is a garbled quote from a James Taylor song, in case it sounds vaguely familiar. James says "the secret to life is enjoying the passage of time". I created this piece when my friend Mary threw down a challenge, after giving 5 of us in the creativity group each a baggie of old keys and asking us to create something using one or more of the keys. We had 2 weeks to work on our projects. Yesterday at our get together we revealed our creations, you can see them here: http://foxontherunarts.blogspot.com/

I used 3 keys in my mixed media piece, each tied to a rust colored ribbon and held to the background with some beaded stitches.  I long ago made some rust dyed fabric and thought it would be perfect to use some as the background.  Then continuing with the vintage look I used some old photos that Mary had also given me (no one we know) and put it all together using some tea dyed lace, scrim, felt, beads, bottle caps (behind the two smaller photos) and hand stitched it all together, frequently using beads to enhance some areas.  It was fun rummaging around through my collection of crap...I mean, my collection of valuable artifacts to find just the right bits to bring this all together.  As you can see if you have been following along on my art journey for long, this is rather a change of pace for me in its color scheme.  Usually I am all color, all the time.  I quite enjoyed the change.

I might even like to continue along this theme, but use some photos that have personal meaning to me.  I have lots of old family photos from both my mother's and father's sides of my family.  Maybe the theme would be "the key to life is starting with good genes".

My weather here has remained mostly quite cool for summer.  Cool as in the 60's, and wearing sweatshirts all day long.  If the sun comes out it does warm up but mostly it doesn't come out until mid afternoon.  The neighbors have cut my hay field down and we are waiting for it to dry so it can be baled.  With the cool damp weather, it was great for the grass to keep growing so this years hay crop has been much more abundant than usual.  I have been taking pictures that I will share when the whole process is finished.  I'll bet there are a lot of you who have never been involved with the haying process so maybe you will enjoy seeing it.  Until then, I will leave you with this quote:

"There is more to life than increasing its speed."
Gandhi  

Slow down, be well.