Snow Dyeing Part 2

So here are the trays of snow covered fabric five hours into the great experiment:

On the left, A deep purple and forest green and on the right, B brilliant blue and forest green

               Notice how some of the dyes have soaked through the snow already and are hardly visible on top.

 On the left, C Amethyst, lemon yellow, mist gray, and on the right D Amethyst, deep purple, mist gray

                            E deep purple, lemon yellow, dots of amethyst

Here is tray B with a side shot showing how much dye has migrated.

The fabric was supposed to be at room temperature at the end of seven or eight hours, but I had left mine in our cold basement and things were moving slowly so at five hours I moved them upstairs, and here they are at the end of eight hours, still looking a bit frosty:

The next morning, as evidenced by tray B below, all was melted but I let them sit a full twenty-four hours to get up to what felt like room temperature.

And here--ta dah!--are the final results:

        On the left, A deep purple and forest green, and on the right, B brilliant blue and forest green

C Amthyst and lemon yellow with a little mist gray

E deep purple, lemon yellow, and dots of amethyst

D Amethyst, deep purple and mist gray

This was a success, in my view.  I like the tiny crystalline patterns but I particularly like the watery patches where the colors have captured the liquid nature of the dye and flow into one another.  Alas, almost all our snow is gone, after a winter rain, or too gray specked or frozen to use.  Now I have another reason to be excited about the next snowfall.  It will be interesting to see if a different snow--dryer, wetter--would produce different results.

Another Way to Have Fun in the Snow

I had begun to get a little itchy at this time of the year to get back to dyeing some fabric, but the basement workroom is too cold for me to spend much time in--and too cold, I thought, for the dyes.  But then I heard about snow dyeing and had to try it. Beth Hartford has a good intro to the process at http://quiltersstitchtogether.blogspot.com/2010/01/my-version-of-snow-dye-process.html

 We had quite a bit of snow on the ground; it had been there a while and was fairly wet from the warmer temperatures of the week--good packing snow, perhaps too good for dyeing but I couldn't wait.  So three days ago, on Friday I mixed up some soda ash, soaked some fabric and got started.

I used five of those plastic bins that salad greens come in--knew I was saving them for something!  And I crumpled up about a yard of fabric in each.  Then out I went and filled each to the brim with firmly packed snow.

I had mixed up some dyes and just chose some of my favorite colors without really thinking about how they would play together, but the suggestion was to use two colors in each.  So I began to add color.

A I poured on some forest green, but thought I might need a bit more control so I put the deep purple in a squirt bottle and squirted it on.

B forest green again with some old brilliant blue; both poured on.

C amethyst and lemon yellow both squirted on and some mist gray poured on.  Couldn't help adding a third color.

D deep purple and amethyst plus a little mist gray

E deep purple and lemon yellow squirted on with dots of amethyst

The dye immediately started to migrate through the snow to the fabric below.  But then I had to wait for the snow to melt. . . . .

Good Way to Start the New Year

As part of my attempt to try new techniques, I joined an online challenge group a couple of months ago.  This group posts a challenge the third Thursday of each month and finished projects are supposedly due in a week.  Some people actually make the deadline, but there are usually stragglers. I had not had time to fully participate in one yet, but just reading the explanation of the challenges and looking at the websites sited for further information has been well worth my time.

The December challenge (right before Christmas, for Pete's sake) was intriguing:  look at the colors used in  product packaging (food, cosmetics, toys, anything) and make a quilt using those colors.  But there is more: create a still life composition that contains a plant (nature is the theme for the year).  In between wrapping packages and planning meals, I began noticing the boxes and cans on my kitchen shelves.  One morning as I looked at the box of Numi tea (one of my favorites) I was pulling a bag out of, I realized that the rich warm brown that bordered the front panel was just the color I had been trying for when I was dyeing this summer and I thought I still had some left.  Soon I was pawing through my other hand-dyes looking for other matches.  I had assumed, for example, that the lettering was white, but it was not; it was a very pale yellow.  I came up with reasonable matches and decided that I could cheat a little and use the teal from the teacup on the top panel as well.  The color combination, very different from my usual strong reds and purples, was enticing--but it was Christmas . . .

After New Year's, when the last of the family units were on their way home, I treated myself to some quilting time, and the pile of challenge fabric caught my eye.  But what to do with it?  My quilts tend to be abstract rather than representational so the still life/plant requirement slowed me down a bit until I decided on abstract simple shapes--a trapezoid for a pot, rectangles for what it's sitting on, and some ovalish shapes in yellow to pull the eye into the piece--with perhaps leaves as contrast.  I played with the composition a bit  and came up with what to me is a very restful piece--like sitting down for a cup of tea.

Deciding on the quilting probably took the most time of the whole project.  Every quilting pattern I tried complicated it, made it busy, or distracted from the composition until I came round to where I had begun--simple shapes with little quilting.  I have started to face more of my quilts instead of bind them and I tried a slightly different method of facing on this quilt, which turned out so well that it has become my preferred method.

I posted a picture of my piece--it's about 17" x 22"-- and the box of tea on the challenge blog, where other members of the group may critique it.  I saw four comments--and then I left for a visit to Massachusetts, and when I came back three days later there were more, all quite positive--and  an e-mail message from one of the members, who wanted to buy my quilt!

I was very pleased with this little quilt, and so it took me a while to decide to sell it, but it will soon be on its way to its new owner.

Serendipity

Now that the delights of family immersion are over, I have returned my focus to my quilting.  Nature gave me two gifts today:  a thoroughly self-possessed coyote trotted across our back hill just a few yards outside the kitchen window this afternoon.  His coat was so thick and long you could easily have sunk both hands into it--gray on top and shading to a deep, rich red brown, a color that I worked a long while to capture this fall as I was dying fabric. It was one of those Oh-my-gosh!-moments.

Earlier in the day Tom and I got a thorough look at a sharp-shinned hawk that had perched in the chestnut tree outside another kitchen window.  He had the same striking color of brown on his breast and on the front and sides of his neck.

I had to do something with that color and later in the day I began a challenge piece that yesterday I had decided not to do because it was not close enough to my usual range of subject matter and technique.  That shade of brown is an important element in it, and working on this project that is a little outside my comfort zone has been satisfying so far.  With luck, you will see more on this.

And I had to remind myself that, not only would I not have gotten any quilting done today, but I would have missed both those beautiful creatures had I been working at the library instead of working at home.

Going paperless

These are some of the packages that will be under our tree this Christmas.  For the past three years I have been making bags for Christmas gifts, instead of using yet more trees and producing yet more waste during the season.  The first year I just got a couple done, the next year a few more, and this year I may make enough for just about all the presents.  It's a reason to use up some of my stash and Christmas fabrics are a great buy, if you stock up after Christmas or during July sales.  I will see how many bags return this year, but my youngest daughter, who is very creative on the sewing machine, caught the bug and made some last year as well.  We will see if she does it again this year with a nine-month old to keep happy. 

If you look closely, you may notice that there are no decorations on the tree yet, only lights.  But the bags are made.  I'm kind of liking this minimalist look of the tree . . . .

Patience

So have you identified what is wrong with this picture?  In the midst of all my other projects, I took a break to work on the Christmas stocking I had promised to make for my granddaughter and that had begun to cast a larger shadow in my mind.  It was going to be a relatively (in my standards) quick project.  Since I couldn't decide between a stripey multi-colored stocking or a more elegant appliqued one, I decided to do one side of each so she could choose, although I envisioned the candle on the front.  I began late morning and by 3 PM even with interruptions I had the back done and the other ready to be quickly appliqued-- a good project for that Coen brothers movie Tom and I had been watching.  I congratulated myself on how quickly the project was coming together. But then the Irish god of So-You-Think-Things-Are-Going-Well-Do-You? started laughing and I saw before me not a front and a back but two fronts.

It's a shame I don't get into assembly line quilting because, after some moments of expressing my utter frustration, I got to work, and  faster than our dog can eat a Kleenex I dropped, I had finished another striped back pointing the right way.  Well, probably not as fast as Terra can eat that Kleenex but repeating something I've already done instead of puzzling it out and making color decisions from scratch really improves my speed, if speed is what I want.

Ah, but that omnipresent Irish god was not done with me yet for the day.  I finally settled into doing some quilting on my major project of the month only to be interrupted by a phone call--I was having a  problem with my laptop and was doing my part to keep the populace of India employed--and a dog needing to be walked.  I left the quilt under the presser foot with the machine on and when I returned there, as if standing on a stage under a spotlight, was a Western Conifer Seed Bug reared up right on the quilt next to the presser foot.  Now I am not squeamish about most bugs, as a matter of fact like many of them, but this one invades even the most sealed up houses, particularly those near pine trees (part of our acreage is covered with pines) as it seeks to escape the falling temperatures of fall.  It is one ugly beast.  And it stinks to boot (a member of the what is familiarly called the Stinkbug family).  And, even more frightening in the present circumstance, it poops.

I grabbed a Kleenex (seems to be a recurrent image in this blog) and quickly swooped it off the quilt, only to see with horror that as I had swooped, it had pooped.  On my beautiful quilt that I had been working on since June a small brown blob sat on a piece of light gray fabric with a circle of brown stain slowly oozing out around it.  No four letter word was appropriate here; only a primal scream would do.  But even as I screamed I grabbed yet another Kleenex and swiped the blob away.  No good.   The oozing stain was still there and now Terra was convinced I was beset by something she must defend me against and so was leaping and barking as I wailed.  Luckily no one else was home--or walking by, for that matter.

After imagining for a while months of work being ruined, I turned to problem solving and decided to try the easiest solution and I made a discovery:  a paper towel dampened with plain cold water takes out a Western Conifer Seed Bug poop stain on a quilt!  Maybe that will come in handy some time again.  But I hope not.

Festina Lente

I just discovered the Slow Art Movement.  Inspired by the Slow Food Movement, an attempt to return to well prepared, wholesome local foods eaten with attention and appreciation, the term "Slow Art" may have first been used by Grayson Perry, a Turner-award winning potter in his column for the London Times in 2005, where he says:
Art-world acceleration I put down to various forces. First, we are just as prone to being sucked into the idea that fast is somehow central to modernity. To be relevant is to be broadband-quick and dressed for next season. . . . As a producer of art I feel an increasing pressure to keep in step with our 24/7 culture-on-demand society, and as a consumer I am overwhelmed by a tyranny of choice. I hereby declare the launch of the Slow Art Movement (I have not hired a PR).

Well said!  Here, here! or, to be obnoxiously current, a FB "I like this."  Obviously, Slow Art has not triumphed over the mad rush for more and for more immediately, but here and there the idea has been picked up--by a museum that had attendees sign up to spend at least ten minutes looking at each work of art or by artists anxious to let their art lead rather than being driven by outside demands, including competition with other artists to produce quickly.

In the quilting world "slow" often has negative connotations that range from "uptight" and "obsessive" to "no fun."   Freedom is equated with speed. A small rush of creative optimism comes when a piece is finished, and, in pursuit of that momentary high, the process, where the furnace of creativity is stoked and made to glow, where the deep enjoyment that comes from understanding and connecting with your work can be discovered, is ignored in the rush to completion.

Part of the reasoning behind this year's experiment is to slow down, to savor, to give myself time to understand. It is not a pursuit that lends itself easily to crowds, is probably downright inimical to them, but finding a kindred spirit here and there can be reassuring when you begin to worry you might be lost in the wilderness instead of pursuing some noble path.


On the other hand--and due to my mildly dyslexic tendencies, I am always aware that there  is another hand--there is a slowness that, I almost said becomes glacial, although even the glaciers seem to have been speeded up by our cultural demands.  But there is a slowness that is a drag on the process, like a river that is being strangled by silt.   When I cannot bring myself to make that first cut in a beautiful fabric, when I put off sandwiching a piece because I don't want to have to square it up--or see how out of square my innovations have made the piece,  when I check e-mail or read just one more QuiltArt digest instead of tackling the next challenge, I am not doing Slow Quilting; I am not quilting at all.  Sometimes my dithering is indeed a sign that as in yoga, I am rocking back and forth on my toes, trying to find my balance point from which I will launch into the next phase and the more securely I am in that balance the easier that next step will be.   But  often my dithering points to a fear of failure, a fear of messing up something that I have spent a portion of my life working on.  

Balance may indeed be crucial here, as it seems to be whenever a question of importance comes up.  I think I am more comfortable with a Latin motto that became my son's favorite Latin phrase years ago when he was in his teenage trough and looking for wise excuses to avoid doing something I wanted him to: Festina lente.  It translates as "hurry slowly."   It captures my need to keep myself moving but at the same time work with attention and care, in all the senses of that word. 


I have often been quilting the last couple of weeks to the music of Arvo Part, whose music can rise to sublime heights.  I bought one of his CDs because of a piece called "When Bach Kept Bees"--his titles can be as intriguing as his music--and I discovered that another of his pieces is called "Festina Lente."   One of those validating coincidences.

I cannot picture any movement called Festina Lente so Slow Art may have to do.  It does give hope that alternatives still exist to the McArt available at a drive-through window.  And now back to quilting.