Too Hot to Dye?

As a group, fiber artists and quilters are pretty hot.  As anybody who's ever been to Festival, or to one of those wild evening guild meetings or retreats can attest, nobody parties like a quilter.  However, in my not-so-humble opinion, no one is hotter than a dyer.

Now I know there are quilters who don't think of themselves as artists, and there are fiber artists who don't quilt, and of course, there are dyers who don't quilt or even consider themselves artists.  But there is enough of an overlap between the three that I can consider them all together.  And the hottest are the dyers.

Except for snow-dyeing, which most of us agree is kind of a novelty thing that we do when it's too cold to do the regular kind of dyeing, the procion dyes like it hot.  Especially turquoise and the other blues.  And, of course, that includes all the colors that include blue: purples, greens, browns.  Basically all the colors that aren't red, orange, or yellow -- which are pretty hot all by themselves.

Unlike some quilters, dyers aren't afraid of color.  We have all made mistakes when learning to mix colors -- some turn out to be happy accidents, and some, well, not so much.  But there is no bad hand-dyed fabric -- there is probably no bad fabric either, now that I think about it -- one person's ugly is another's "gotta have it."  But I digress...

The weather has been really hot this week.  Lots of people have been whining about it (not me, but that's another story).  So I decided I better get out there and enjoy it.  I had some dyes aging in the dye studio (also known as the northeast corner of the garage) and since I hate wasting stuff, I figured I would use them up.  If they weren't strong enough to create the rich saturated colors I crave, I would just over-dye the pieces with fresh dye another day -- over-dyeing is another reason there is no bad hand-dye.

I recycle plastic lettuce boxes, among other vessels, to do my "tray-dyeing."  So I scrumpled in the fabric, dumped on the dyes, and stuck the whole thing out on the front walk to bake in the sun -- also known as batching.

This morning, when I got up to wash out the dyes, I noticed a large teal-colored stain decorating the front walk. Imagine my surprise when I picked up the container and saw that it had gotten so hot, it warped and leaked!

I posed it next to a fresh box to show the difference.

The piece on the left is the culprit.  Even with those old dyes, I got amazing, beautiful, rich color!  I will have to over-dye the purple and the pink to make them periwinkle and fuchsia for a special order; but I just have to say... I am hot!

Oh -- and that piece at the top of this post?  It was a present from the hot dyers at "...And Then We Set it on Fire"  to celebrate their topping 100 followers.  Pretty keen, huh?

Turning Point is Up!

Yesterday, we finished hanging the Madison Contemporary Fiber Artists' show, Turning Point, at the Overture Center in Madison, Wisconsin.

Here is the blank canvas before we started.  This is Gallery 1 -- on the main floor of the Overture Center.

Here are the pieces all laid out on sheets on the floor.

And the finished show:

I left the photos large -- click on them for a closer view.  I'll probably post more about this with more pictures in the near future.

This show will be on display through April 3, 2011.  There is an opening reception next Friday, January 21, 2011.

Small, Green, and Gorgeous Challenge

"Small, Green, and Froggeous"

5" X 7"

This was created for a challenge to Madison Contemporary Fiber Artists for a piece of environmentally concerned art.  It will be on display with others from this challenge at the Madison Senior Center on Mifflin Street, Madison, Wisconsin, during the month of September.

I painted used dryer sheets, then cut them up and fused them to a piece of batting which was stuck to a scrap of stabilizer.  This was inspired by Terri Stegmiller's "mosaic collage" technique.  I printed the frog image onto a used tea bag, cut it out and stitched it to the collage background.  Then I stitched some more and added the little stones that were left over from another project.

In the interest of reusing -- I have to compliment my garden.  I planted these tiny yellow light-bulb shaped tomatoes a while ago and every year since, they volunteer.  By August, we have to have tomato salad twice a day to keep up with the production.  What a problem to have.

The flowers reseed themselves too.  Yes, this is the garden in front of my house -- the one where most people grow, um, ornamental items.  I grow tomatoes, peppers, beans, basil, garlic chives, oregano, thyme, parsley, cilantro, and flowers.  I also grow rosemary, lemon grass, chiles, tomatoes, and beans in pots.

On a good year, I grow zucchini  -- for some reason, it's not growing this year.  But we did have some kind of pumpkin volunteer -- I must have thrown some seeds there when I did the jack o'lanterns last year.  Trouble is, the bunnies keep biting off the flowers.   This is the best place on my property to grow things, so I use it.  And I think it's all kind of pretty.  And even the neighbors would agree -- it's better than the ugly overgrown bushes that used to be here.