Book Review Time!

Those of you who follow my blog know I love handwork.  I've dabbled in shibori from time to time and have posted posted some of my results.  You can see one post here, which also links to a previous shibori post.
In creating some shibori pieces, I've used templates from Jane Callender's web site, which you'll see in post(s) above.  I have several  templates and have used them with great success...her instructions are easy to follow and the diagrams are perfect for us "show me" gals!

Recently I ordered her book Stitched Shibori and I LOVE it!  What a great book!!!

I even did a review on Amazon for the book, that's how impressed I am!  She takes you from beginning to end of the process.. There are so many different stitching patterns and well explained/detailed pictures and instructions. I can't wait to get started!! She also includes sections on Indigo dyeing, natural dyeing, fiber reactive....This book is for beginning shibori stitchers or those just wanted to learn!!!  

If you have any interest at all in shibori type work, pick up this book!!!  Well worth it!  Now to see how much I can do before surgery!!  Woohoo!!

Shibori pillows

Our fiber group, Aussome Study, met this past Monday.  I just wanted to share some of the pillows one of my friends made.  Mary does beautiful work and I have posted some of it on my blog before.  Just check out some of her work on this post here!    She has been working on creating some pillows using some of her shibori hand dyed fabric (she used fiber reactive Indigo dye).  These are beautiful!

This is the back of this pillow.  I think it's around a 12 to 14" square.

Mary used french knots but I thought they were beads!  Really nice!

I know Mary has several more pillows to work on and I can't wait until next month to see what else she came up with!

Her work is wonderful!!!  She's another one of my idols!



I'm just working away on hand work (squirrel and modern quilt) and trying to stay cool.  The temp was 91 @ 5 p.m. on Wed.!  Is this Florida or Michigan!  Too hot for me!!!  Have I mentioned this before!

More layering!

First, here is another shibori piece I dyed over the weekend.  I'm happy with results...now to use it in a project!

Well, what else do you do when you have 'ugly' or not so great results from dyeing or printing fabrics!  You redo them somehow!  That's what I did yesterday with some buds here in Florida.  These are all scrap pieces with exception of the blue mono printed.  That is a full yard of fabric I dyed several years ago.

Before

After - stamping

Before

After - mono printing

These next pieces were some of my Solar Fast failures - only because I forgot and left them out in the sun after I removed the transparency!!  Once you rinse them the dye image/print is set...big oops but a great opportunity to 'fix' the failures! All of these were stamped.

This was an old mono print I had done a few years ago so I just stamped with metallic paint. I know I can use all of these pieces somewhere in my upcoming projects!

One Shiboi Result!

I posted last on the process for creating a shibori 'test' piece.   I posted on the process.  These are the results!  This is about 36" long and 8-10" wide.  Should make a nice panel or table topper.

 I'm happy with how the leaves turned out.  Lots of detail!  Circles...I only sewed around the circles and then only wrapped part of the 'excess'.  Next time, I want to stitch several rows within the circle.

Tuesday I'll be meeting up with some other ladies for us to do more stitching!  Should be a fun time!
I'm happy with how the piece turned out.  I think by adding some type of a border and doing some hand stitching or even beading it will make a nice piece.  This is at least 36" long x 8 or 10" so a good size to start wih!

Saturday...back to art work!

 I really have been creating art by creating  the blocks for the 12" block exchange.  Now that they are finished, I can start some new projects.  Blog post on process will be later this week after they are mailed. Woo hoo!
I created these shibori designs back in 2009 (you can see post here).

  I used templates and patterns from Jane Callender's Callishibori web site.  She has some great patterns and good instructions.  Of course, because it's all hand stitching, it's right up my alley!

So today I grabbed a strip of fabric, traced some circles and added a few leaves using Jane's templates.

And here was my little bundle after pulling all the threads.  I forgot how much my hands hurt pulling threads!
My fabric is now in the dye bath and I hope to have the threads all cut out sometime tomorrow!
You are never sure what you'll get or not get!  Let's hope I get what I think I'm getting!!

Bead Artists

Before I show some of my 'efforts' at art work, just let me show you some true BEAD ARTISTS! The first one is Beth Murr at Until We Bead Again. I'm happened upon Beth via some YouTubes she had on the peyote stitch. You know this is becoming one of my favorite stitches! Beth has been 'firing' (read her blog for stories on firing!) Raku Turtle Cabochons and a pendant and guess who bought the pendant!! Yep, I just rec'd it in the mail today!! I love it!!!! Thanks, Beth!!!!
You have to make sure to check out Beth's blog and web site as well as her tutorials if you are at all interested in beading. She does a great job - no talking but has the camera up close and works slow enough for you to see exactly what to do. Her beading is exquisite!! Just check out some of her beading patterns for sale.

The next bead artist you really need to check out is Kate Boyan at LivingBeadWork. Kate uses beads the same as a painter uses paints! Her work is also spectacular. I'm just amazed at the depth and detail of her work. Both Beth and Kate are true artists and I'm so inspired by their work. I know if you just take a quick stop by their sites you will be as well.

Geezz..I'm not even showing my beading today! But I am showing my KISS challenge. Dijanne presented a challenge to her blog readers to create a 20" x 20" art quilt using only two colors or fabric but as many colors of thread work - but - only using straight stitching, no machine embroidery stitching. This is my finished piece. I think I only showed some areas of it a few months ago. Dijanne is going to post our finished pieces soon. I can't wait to see what others have done.
I used a piece of snow dyed fabric my friend Mary gave me last year. I wanted to do straight stitching (which I'm not good at!) and then I did hand stitching on the circles and other areas.
Just another closeup.
And this is my shibori piece over dyed for the last time. The black dye I used does have a blue cast to it and over dyeing with the two blues added to that. I also used a cranberry dye in some areas. I'm pleased with this piece and hope to use it as a whole cloth and added hand stitching and of course beads!
Today was the memorial service for my friend Mary's son, Father Tony. They had well over 250 people in attendance at the church and the luncheon after. It was such a nice gathering of family and friends to be around Mary. So now life goes on for her and her family but they certainly have some wonderful memories and stories from those who knew Tony. I only wish I had met him but I feel like I know so much about him now.

Where's baby's chair?

The first weekend we arrived home from Florida, we bought Bob a new recliner chair for our L.R. While in Florida, he sat in a similar chair which really helped his hip (lots better than sitting on the sofa). This was the best investment we made. Bob's hip is SO much better partly due to the chair keeping his body straight..the other part is he's not golfing five days a week. So here's Bob's 'papa bear' chair!
And guess what came today! Yep, 'Mama Bear's' chair! Mine was a special order because I wanted something other than 'beige'. Go figure! I know!! I'm a beige kind of gal...goes with everything...easy to change colors by adding pillows, etc. But this time I decided to 'live on the edge' and so I ordered 'sangria'! Actually, I had visions of a dirty beige chair in a year! The picture makes the chair look pinkish which it isn't! It's more of a burnt orange.

It was delivered this a.m. and it is SO comfortable!! I can't wait to sit and bead in it! Poor Mandy doesn't know where to sit now. We got rid of our 3 seater couch and only kept the two seater and another LazyBoy barrel chair we had. She does sit on Bob's lap in his recliner but she won't fit on my chair with me. Poor baby..guess we'll have to buy her a 'baby chair'.

Beading does take time so I don't have much to show for my work the past few days! Actually, there are a lot of Delica's (11's) in this fish and lots more to come. I'm working on the tail right now as I'm not sure how I want to do his face.

I have some ideas but I want to play with some beading stitches to figure out the pattern. It really is meditative to bead and I feel like I'm always accomplishing something - "idle hands are the devils works" is what my aunt always used to say. I never did know what she meant by that saying but it always made me feel like I had to keep busy so I guess it worked! And still does! Maybe that's why I can't sit still...geezzzz between that saying and the 'guilt' I have from being raised Catholic no wonder I'm the way I am!

I've also finished my shibori stitching on two pieces. The red piece I want to overdye with different shades of blues which should give me some nice shades of purple(s).

This white piece I'm going to use black in some areas and then some pastel shades in the resist areas. Our CCC fiber group has our annual dye camp next weekend so I'll dye these two pieces up then. I still have to pull all the stitches in both pieces but I'll do that later this week.

I'll only be at dye camp for a few hours as Amber has her school play that Sat. I'll leave dye camp and head over to Dawn's to get cleaned up and then we'll go to the play together. Should be a fun afternoon.

So we're just having a relaxing afternoon. I stitched the red piece while watching the move 'The Box' on my laptop from Netflex. Weird movie but I did watch the entire thing. I'm listening to two books on cd right now, The 19th Wife and Legal Limit. Legal Limit is pretty good. I finished reading Caught by Harlan Coban which was really good. I read at night before bed and I have another one I started which is Look Again by Lisa Scottoline. She writes a pretty good mystery which is what I like..mysteries and bio's. Well, off to start some dinner so I can sit in my new chair and bead! Ain't life grand!

Shibori Testing

Here's my shibori process that didn't quite work out. I started off with this hand dyed pastel piece (white/blue) which I used for my other shibori pieces (that turned out great!). This isn't the piece I did but just want to show what I started with. My piece is approximately 20" x 40".

Here it is all tied up! This took quite sometime to stitch but was good TV work!

Here it is getting its 'roots' dyed! I used black procion dye...and lots of black!

Here's my finished piece. As we were driving to Ann Arbor this weekend and ladies were looking at my piece...Mary asked what kind of thread I used. I bought some 'button' thread which is quite strong...I thought I was doing good using this...but Mary gave a good opinion that it looked like the threads took the dye..hence, the dye ran in between my stitching which ended up not giving a good contrast. The areas that appear white here are actually gray. So I think Mary hit on something. I just purchased another four spools of this thread but I'm taking it back and sticking with my quilting thread (which is quite strong). Live and learn!

This music clip is for my friend, Karen...It's Cecilla!

More shibori

Do Not Laugh! OK, so here's the scoop..a few weeks ago I did some shibori in red...making leaves, etc. Well, one of the 'leaves' looked like a bug! You may have to click on the picture to see his antennae..it looks like a bug to me...so I cut out the 'bug' and then cut one of the larger fat leaves in half and gave him wings!

Here's my 'shibori bug'! It's my Art of Nature journal (8 1/2" x 11") for Sept. Not sure what kind of bug it is but it is a bug to me! Although, he almost looks like a fish now that I see it at a distance! I added beading and put him on a black/white background. I have to get used to the camera and using different settings to get the colors correctly. Guess I need to go to my daughter and ask for advice in the photography area! She's the expert in that field.

Here's a close up of the beading...I think he's cute..and I even gave him two eyes! You stopped laughing, right!

My next shibori work was stitching a sample piece so I could try Sue Cavanaugh's technique of using thickened dye rather then immersion dyeing for shibori. I started off with this commerical fabric which was a very loose weave..my first mistake. I stitched it up then...mixed up some print paste; added dye concentrate (per Ann Johnson's formula) and spooned dye on my stitched piece. I was using black dye by the way.

Here is the stitched piece after I rinsed out the the dye...looks blueish here but it actually turned out....next picture, please!

Like this! Go figure! No white for me to try thickened colored dye on! Hmmmmmmm I think in part the loose weave may have had some impact on the process....I wanted to try this out before I dyed my large shibori piece I'm stitching. I think I'll just stick with immersion dyeing then if there is any white left (which there should be!) I 'might', just 'might' use the thickened color dyes on some of the white areas. I'm just not sure but I don't want to waste all the stitching I've done on the larger piece. I have to think on this a little more.

More shibiori and dorm pics

You know how I love to repeat myself...so here's my first shibori piece I did using some templates from Callishibori web site. My previous pics didn't show the true color and this one is so much better.

Then I stitched my 2nd piece and finished picking out the threads last night. Here's the finished piece! They are similar but different patterns..I'm really happy with both pieces.

Susan , from my online lino class, gave me some suggestions which I'm going to try on my next piece. One is using a bead on the end so when you tie that last knot it's easier to cut. There's always that chance you're going to cut into the fabric when you cut away your threads (which I've done in the past!). Also, she suggested that you wet your fabric before pulling up your stitches. This was also suggested to me at our fiber group meeting last week and I think this is a great suggestion. The threads do pull easier and I also can see where the white is 'more' white! You can see just a tad difference in these two pics but I think the clarity of the stitching is due to the wet fabric. Both of these pieces are approximately 20" x 18" or close to that.

The next piece I just started stitching on is a tad bigger! It's 40" x 20". I drew a pattern out on paper and now I'm starting to stitch this bugger. It will take some time I'm sure. My marker pen ran out of ink so I only marked the middle. I'm using just a few leaves and more straight lines and curved lines on this one.

Just some more of my stitching and some of the pattern. You might have to click on pic to see any detail.

Kayla sent me pics of her dorm room. She's quite busy but also enjoying college life! So here's here home away from home now!! Interesting how the colleges are utilizing space with putting beds up high! Makes sense!

The quilt I made her is on the futon. Hope she uses it! And not just for decoration! HA