WIP's - Sandstone Series

 

This Sandstone piece has been in a bucket for the past decade, every once in awhile I dig it out and stare it it on my design wall (in my case my design wall is a bookshelf).  Today's it's day, I've decided to seperate the two pieces of fabric and overdye the top piece with kutch, and maybe some kamala.

 

Detail, the reddish fabric is cochineal and rust dyed silk fabric.

Another Sandstone WIP that has been languishing in the storage bucket for the past 10+ years.  It's mostly hand stitching on the surface, tonight I have plans to add some machine stitching and possibly a few layers of constructed cloth.  This piece is small enough to experiment with pushing the surface.

Organizing Fabric Stash Leads to Found Samples!

Believe it or not the fabric in that suitcase really is organized!  While I was searching for piece of unfinished silk fabric I found my long lost stitched sample I had been looking for late last fall. 

Due to the sample of the rights disappearance, deep into a pile of folded fabrics, I made another sample to pratice some machine stitching on.  Both sample pieces consist of cochineal dyed cotton fabrics and are machine stitched.  The left sample, however, has been surfaced further using fabric paints, oil bar, and ink.  I'm thinking the sample on the right could use a good dose of color as well.

Practice No. 2

Well since I lost my orginal practice piece I whipped up another one this evening. 
Cochineal dyed cotton fabric, machine stitched, wool quilt batting, aurifil threads.

I couched down more sisal to pratice some stitches with, this "x" shape I bobbin stitched using aurifil wool thread.  Above view is the back side of the sample that was facing upwards when stitching. 

Top side after bobbin stitching, the aurifil wool thread doesn't like to feed through the top on my 6500S so I bobbin stitch with it instead.

I've couched down more sisal since this shot was taken, now I will experiment with hand stitching over the sisal and then machine stitching over the hand stitching to see which effect I prefer.  This all in anticipation of finishing Bjorkboda.

Untitled WIP

Natural dye painted and rusted silk organza over cochineal dyed wool batting.

I'm off on a couple of tangents, now that I know I won't be entering Quilt National.  Hopefully the next time QN rolls around they will have either changed the image requirements, of 300DPI or I will have a new camera capable of taking that high quality images.  Until then I'm content working in my studio.

If you'd like to learn more about dye painting fabrics with natural dyes check out my eBook Mark Making with Nature!

Corn No. 53

Corn No. 53 - Madder Root dyed cotton fabric, cochineal dyed silk organza net. Machine stitched.

Natural Dyed Wool Bundles

Each bundle consists of 4 pieces of wool fabric 9x6 inches, all fabrics dyed using natural dyes. 

Muted Mauves and Blues

Jeweltones - Indigo, Cochineal, and Copper were used for these deep rich colors!

Indigo Blues ranging from a dark indigo blue to a medium value indigo!

All bundles are $18 each not including shipping, please email me for a PayPal invoice at prairiefibers@hotmail.com


Edited at 1:10 am central time: Sold!!!

Fabric Stash

Been rummaging through my fabric stash for some bleeding heart colors.

Natural Dyed Silk Yoyo's

Sampling

Natural Dyes:  Cochineal, Kamala, Weld, Indigo, Copper dye silk

Cotton Quilt batting

Compost Dyed Silk Organza

Machine Stitched

9 x 5 5/8 inches

Natural Dyed Goodness

I have yet to decide what I will do with this pile of cochineal dyed yummyness!  The doiley was dyed in an exhausted madder root bath yeilding a lovely peach color.

Heron - WIP

I'm seriously considering ripping out the stitching on the red organza area! An idea that looked good in my head didn't work out the way I had hoped. It's rather lacking, the silk organza going wonky on the piece doesn't help matters any. 

IF I don't rip the stitching out and this is a very big IF, I may couch some yarn/fiber onto the piece in an assymetrical manner over the red stripe to correct the balance on the top right and lower left bottom. 

Prairie Potholes Harvest No. 23

I don't believe I've posted this one in the past, found it in a pile of work tonight while looking for a piece of indigo dyed rusted fabric, the fabric is still MIA.

Compost WIP

Each piece of fabric was dyed using natural dyes, the pink was cochineal, blue was indigo, pale yellow was weld. The caramel or beige piece has already been compost dyed once but never did a whole lot for me so it's going into the pile again. I did this once before only with indigo, rust and tannin. I'm not sure how this will look it'll either be a go or a bust but first I need to add more stuff to the surface for textures, resists, and the like. This is a combination of both hand and machine stitching.

Cochienal Extraction 1

Pink Pin Cushion

This pin cushion is living with Lynn now. The top fabric is cochineal dyed silk velvet with cochineal dyed rayon trim and two vintage buttons. The backing fabric is painted silk dupioni fabric the whole thing has been stuffed with merino wool - the super wash variety.

Indigo Prairie Seeds

Indigo and cochineal dyed silk fabrics tied with a lovely pink silk ribbon (also dyed with cochineal) Available in my Etsy Boutique.

Silk Cloth 3

This is my cochineal sack cloth, silk chiffon, I filled it with cochineal bugs and used it repeatedly to create red dyebaths over the span of two months. This is how the fabric looks untied.

Barn No. 1 Update

I've added more stitching today, will finish it by Sunday. I trimmed the sides flush a bit ago and put zig zag stitching across the top. The colors really are this intense, will try to get a better picture with better lighting.

Barn No. 1

I have to take a break after over two hours of stitching on this piece. I dyed the fabrics today, the bottom half is dyed with indigo ala bound resist and then over dyed with cochineal. The top fabric, and middle two fabrics were dyed with cochineal cream of tartar and citric acid. The top fabrics are as follows crinkled silk haboti, deeper middle red fabric is silk organza, and the lighter middle fabric is silk dupioni. The backing is osage orange dyed cotton batik fabric and the batting is wool.

Size approx 43 inches wide by 60 inches tall. I won't have a traditional binding on this piece, I very rarely ever put a binding on my quilts. I haven't stitched the bottom half or the middle field yet.

New Barn Series

New series of barns in the making. Silk velvet that has been dyed with natural dyes (vegetable or botanical dyed), compost dyed and or indigo dyed. The colors really are this vibrant in person! Cotton is not this vibrant but with a lot of work you can get it to this level of saturation ;-)

Now to figure how I'm going to stitch these babies and not lose the naunce of what I'm trying to achieve - which is to NOT have them look like a quilt! I'm not sure what the size is at the moment, I'll have to measure the pieces tomorrow, I"m thinking they are around 22"w x 28"h