The search for dye plants

We spent a gorgeous day recently collecting sample plants of nature's bounty to do some "eco-dyeing" on silk scarves.
Our current roadsides are awash with wild helianthus and pokeberries. Wild sumac encircles abandoned ponds and we're careful to collect only what we will use.  But my own mini-farm offers up Rose of Sharon, wild buttercups, a lot of mimosa and pokeberry as well as grapes, dogwoods, oak, pear and maple...a lot of trees on my land that are soon to turn glorious colors.   In the meantime we go with greens, yellows...lol, even red clay and tobacco!

The bounty

Water from a spring and wild picking

 I soaked the scarves in a mordant, then layered our finds on top, covered them up, rolled and wrapped them and two days later, walla! Eco dyed scarves.

It's a lot of fun to collect, a lot of time to "do" and in the end, the appeal will be to a certain kind of scarf collector.  

But the search is inspiring, restful and a soothing "back to the earth" kind of methodology that I'll employ a bit more into my fiber art :-)

Waiting for Spring

Waiting for Spring

It has been a long winter for areas unused to long winters. Spring has peeped out enough times to give us hope but then tucks her head back inside and the temperatures plunge (again!)

 Even the art studio struggles to get warm and with propane at record highs, we try to conserve and not have to buy a tank right before spring!

So my solution to the cold, the ice, the snow and the dark days was to create my own spring and I did that by bringing out my silk dues and creating my "Ode to Spring" scarf :-).

SO I have brought my as yet, non-blooming daffodils in my yard to full bloom in my silk piece-a nice place to be while waiting for spring :-)

Creating your own designs

Adding my designs to a silk/wool blend shawl

I have always carved. Mainly wood and even earlier-block prints on linoleum blocks. Both are time consuming and labor intensive-not problem normally to an artist but sometimes I just don't have the patience!
So with a "softer than linoleum" product on the market (for years apparently!) by Speedball, I started carving my own stamps to use on my scarves. To say it was fun was an understatement-it went fast, I was impressed and most of all I was enthused! My own designs-not mass produced ones from the craft stores....what's not to love? :-)

Using Speedball tools to carve away my design

A few carved in just a day (and used!)

I realize with the exception of the heart, these are all horses but that's where my passion lies when I am trying new ideas. Plenty of time to come up with other designs as I become more proficient!

Using the stamps with textile paint was a blast! I have a new batch of scarves to play with so I can't wait to try them but in the meantime I have two collages of what I worked on so far!

Our frigid temperatures have kept me off the hiking trails until today but the cold is coming back around and I'll be ready!

Prototypes!

 

 

 

 

Overlapping the design in layers

Painting silk

 

So if you think that an artist just paints, well you might be surprised :-)
 
The fun of an Artsy Journey is just that: it's fun! For the past few months I've enjoyed various forms of silk painting with more or less a YouTube education. That in itself is another story, but I have played with some pretty basic tools to the more traditional dyes used by the professionals and have just scratched the surface. I think I know now,  how my painting students who come to me and say "I know nothing about painting" feel. :-)

Special markers on white silk scarves

So anyway I've played with resists, different dyes, washing, ironing...wow more work than a portrait!  You never know what I'll create next-keep watching!

Dyed with abstracts drawn by hand onto the scarf

Stretched, silver resist and hand drawn and painted

Same horses but with background dye added and silk salt for texture

Silk scarf embellished