More Onion Adventures

So the fabric sat and stewed with the onion skins overnight and here are the results:

I used purple onions for one and yellow for the other, but if you guess which produced each piece of fabric, you will probably be wrong. The top fabric came out of the pot with the purple onions and the bottom one from the yellow. I was pleased with both colors, but the bottom one has a much stronger personality. The color surprise may be due to the amount of skins used: I didn't have as many purple skins so I will have to try again some time when I have had reason to use a bunch of purple onions and see if the color intensifies at all. 

I am not sure how colorfast these are. I did end up trying very hot water and synthrapol to get them to stop running but never fully succeeded so these are not candidates for any project that involves water. But I felt quite environmentally righteous as I finished up by composting the boiled onions. 

And, if you are still with me, thanks for the company on this natural dyeing adventure!

Multitasking

Easter fell in the middle of a visit from my son and his family (a bittersweet visit since they were saying good-bye to our house and land here in Pennsylvania) and I thought my six-year-old granddaughter might enjoy experimenting with me to see whether onion skins could really dye eggs. I decided to follow the method that involved making a nest of skins around each egg, then bundling fabric around that and tying it with a string--and you may already have guessed the connection between egg-dying and quilting. Continuing my goal of working with some natural dyes this year, I used PFD fabric and began my dying of perle cotton thread with some PFD thread to tie the bundles.

We made four egg bundles--two with purple onion skins and two with yellow, but all were cooked together so I am not sure how the color would change if they were separated. We boiled them for twenty minutes and had a hard time letting them cool since we were so curious about how they would look (I was not setting a very good example of delaying gratification). The results were exciting--nice strong colors and some interesting patterns:

I am assuming the one on the right was in the purple and the other in the yellow but I am not sure since both the skins turned rather reddish.

And here is the fabric and thread:

The color is a bit pale so it was difficult to get a good photo, but the fabric was in the water for only 20 minutes. More is on the way, a larger piece of fabric that boiled and is sitting much longer in the onion skin water:

Stay tuned for the next installment!

Word Watching

Paul Kingsnorth in his Orion article "In the Black Chamber" quotes Aldous Huxley:

"Reality as actually experienced contains intuitions of value and significance, contains love, beauty, mystical ecstasy, intimations of godhead.  Science did not and still does not possess intellectual instruments with which  to deal with these aspects of reality. Consequently it ignored them and concentrated its attention upon such aspects of the world as it could deal with . . . . In  the arts, in philosophy, in religion men are trying--doubtless, without complete success--to describe and explain the non-measurable, purely qualitative aspects of reality."

What's in a Name?

The latest in my scrunched series that plays with heavy texture is an attempt to push the limits of what I could do with this technique--can I make sharp curves with these scrunchings? And here is the answer:

I was obviously playing around with letting some of the background show as well.  But I was also very aware, as I was stitching these rows down by hand, how the various shapes were influencing each other--from the triangle-ish piece in the center left to the twists and turns of the others that encircle it.  It is a small piece, about 14 inches square.

Naming a finished a work is often a fun part of the process, although I sometimes begin with a  name in mind.  But the naming process for this one is dragging on. "Influence" was an immediate favorite until I was looking at the piece a couple of days later and "Aura" popped into my head.  Although "Influence" certainly conveys one of the main themes of the piece for me, it is a bit pedestrian. "Aura" is a more resonant word but is also a bit more restrictive in its connotations. Then today, I added "Connotations" to the list and that became the favorite for a good part of the afternoon, but I keep waffling among the three. Any thoughts?

And, even if you don't care what name I give it, thanks for the company!

Check out what's happening at Off the Wall Friday!

All For Love

Ah, yes! It's Valentine's Day again, a time when I give my husband a small piece of the work I do, that may or may not be successful, as well as an interesting meal, that I hope is more consistently successful. With all the water that figures so prominently in our new home/life, it is not surprising that water images keep showing up as I visualize future quilts so I thought I would give Tom a walk on the beach, one of our favorite places we escape to when all this relocating stuff gets to be too much.  And I used my scrunched fabric technique because it captures that unpredictable/predictable way water moves.

This is more straightforward than many of my quilts, just playing with color and line but clearly suggesting ocean, which of course is endlessly symbolic in itself. It's only about 6 x 9", made from my hand-dyes (there's a story about the brown that I will save for another time), and hand-stitched with perle cotton except for the machine quilting at the bottom and top.

Hope you have spent at least part of your day with those you love!

And check out what's posted on Off the Wall Fridays!

Beyond

One of the nice things about falling in love with a new technique is that it can keep you going even when there are a thousand delightful distractions like long conversations with our grown children, reading and rereading a new book with a grandchild, deciding on how to replace an old bathroom vanity top with something that suits us, walking on the beach with an enthusiastic Golden Doodle. Even as the holidays sped by, I kept working on a small piece that used my scrunched texture technique combined with untextured bits on top of the scrunching.

"Beyond" is 7 x 10 inches and made of various hand-dyes hand-stitched to batting and backing with perle cotton. 

And thanks for the company on this brief ramble!

Resolution

Snow falling has that mesmerizing effect, that pull toward contemplation, that makes us think of newness, beginning again, the possibility of real change, and with blizzard conditions approaching our Massachusetts home, there is plenty of snow to watch.

Add the fact that it is the second day of the new year and I begin to search for pencil and paper to write down some resolutions.

But I don't often do well with resolutions:

RESOLVED:
I will spend more time with friends and family
                         AND
I will spend more quiet time in my studio.

I will take my work more seriously
                   AND
I will laugh more often.

I will post more regularly on my blog
                          AND
I will spend less time on the computer and more time on my work.

I will believe in myself
                AND
I will question myself.

I could go on. My resolutions often take the form of paradoxes and I become like someone trying to walk in two directions at once. But no matter how absurd or antithetical the two parts of a paradox become, according to the classic definition of the word, it can suggest a truth. And so perhaps my best resolutions on this snowy second of January 2014 are not to ignore all the contradictions and seeming impossibilities of my life but to see where they can lead me--and to keep the bird feeder filled.

Happy New Year!