I’m still here; sewing, just not posting…but here’s some stitching to share.
I have long admired the quilting work of Cindy Needham. Many times, she enhances her amazing quilting with fresh water pearls.
I needed a purse for my grandson’s wedding, had a bit of cotton fabric I had dipped in the walnut dyepot…it matched my shoes exactly.
So I gathered a few of Cindy’s stencils I had purchased, reread her instructions, and modified a zippered bag tutorial from Jenny Doane at Missouri Star Quilts.
I used wool batting and silk thread. It was fun!
A view of the bag closed.
With the flap open, you see I used clamshells, wavy lines, and pebbles on this portion.
And the view from the backside with the purse opens shows the cathedral window quilting that wraps from the front to the back of the bag.
What better way to spend rainy afternoons than playing with fabric?
We had a lot of rain last week, so I was inside the house more than usual in the summertime.
After weeks and months of working on big projects with other peoples’ styles and color choices in mind, I took a break to play.
You may remember some of these pieces when I wrote about walnut dyeing here and here.
I pulled out some pieces I had overdyed in walnut or indigo and combined them with others lying around.
Bits of vintage fabric in browns and blues, some fun improvisational embroidery, and I had a little pillow. I used simple straight stitches, seed stitches, and a few fly stitches to embellish the pieces in the log cabin block.
The back of the pillow is made with vintage linen from South Carolina.
This is one of my doll chairs sitting on the buffet in the dining room. The chair is about 20″ tall and the pillow measures 7″ square (well, sorta -it’s a bit wonky).
A quick little project is always rewarding and the stitching is soul soothing. I love my little chairs – now they all need pillows. I’ve assembled some smaller blocks for pincushions, too.
My Buttonwood Farm wall hanging.
Note: Since this post was published, I’ve been asked about the quilt in the background. Here is a photo of the full quilt. And an earlier blog post here described its construction. This earlier post was when I only posted one photo per blog – but more on this is coming soon.
Remember the really pretty tatting I dipped in the walnut dye? I wanted it darker, began doing some research and learned about iron water. We have plenty of rusty nails around here, so soaking them in a jar with vinegar and water was not a complicated process.
I had attempted some rust dyeing in the past with less than spectacular results. But I hadn’t mixed iron water with the walnut dyed fabric.
Below are images from baths in the iron water only, and some things dyed in walnut dye, then iron water.
Before: this is a bit of linen sheet and some old tatting previously dyed in indigo, some old tatting not yet dyed.
After: those same pieces after a bath in iron water only…no walnut on these pieces.
It’s always a delight to see how different threads take the dye differently. The monogram on this linen towel is stitched with cotton thread. The linen towel was only in the walnut dye, the tatting was in walnut dye, then iron water.
Here are the two sides of a bit of a damask tablecloth. These were soaked in the walnut dye a few days, then dipped in the iron water.
This linen towel shows how powerful the iron water is combined with walnut. This whole piece was not in the iron bath, just the walnut…but the residue on my gloves made these splotches. I find the spots interesting, not offensive.
The top doily here was dyed with walnuts, then composted. It was unintentional composting…as I was rinsing these new pieces, I discovered the doily in the leaves – left there from the earlier walnut dyeing day.
I am very pleased with the results of this combo…soaking in the walnut dye, then dipping in the iron water. Lesson learned: make more iron water. I had experimented with a small quantity, so only small pieces resulted from this trial. But more, more, more, to come….
This is the featured photo on the website, but for those who just read the email version, you would miss this….I always think I need to mix browns with blue, you know….but maybe some with green, too.
The recent blog post on walnut dyeing is here…if you missed it or want to refresh your memory on the before and after images from only a walnut bath.
One of the things I do in the fall is collect acorns. Every year I find myself coming home with a few perfect specimens after every day’s walk. I add them to this bowl…eventually it is filled and I admire it through the winter. In the spring, I throw them out. In the fall, I begin again.
I don’t know exactly what the fascination is with acorns. I grew up with pecan trees. I gathered plenty of those in my childhood. That was the source of my Christmas money every year. Oaks and acorns came later in my life….
I’m still collecting acorns this year…but my latest fascination is with walnuts.
A few years ago, I attended a Folk Life Festival at a historic site in Tifton, GA. Among the many delights there was a woman using walnut and indigo dyes to make the most beautiful yarn. I was captivated. From her I learned that walnut doesn’t need a mordant; that you collect the walnuts while in the green hulls; that they must ferment first, then be boiled before you can dye with them.
I followed those instructions and dipped a few things, but it was a lot of trouble.
I’ve experimented with brown commercial dyes before (that post is here) but the walnut gives a more pleasing color to me. I love the surprise of the varying richness based on the fabrics I use and the time it soaks.
This year, I gathered some black walnuts in their husks, put them in a bucket of water, covered it, and began the fermenting process. After a couple of days, I thought, “I wonder what would happen if I dipped a piece of fabric in there as they fermented.” A friend had brought me a pretty white cotton napkin and I submerged it among the walnuts. In a few days, I had a nice bit of brown fabric.
I found another napkin, damask this time, and some laces…added those to the bucket for a few days. Look at how gorgeous these are!
I had a few pieces of vintage linen that I wanted to see what happened. So I cut a few pieces of those, added a worn white cotton tea towel, and a skein of white embroidery floss. I left these just a couple of days…not wanting to completely obscure the checked pattern in the linens. Oh, my, I’m loving this!
The images above are before and after of dipped fabrics.
And of course you aren’t surprised that I photographed some of the browns with some blues. Earlier confessions of my love for this color combination are here and here. And, if that’s not enough, type “brown” in the search bar…there are more!
Now in the pot are a few more treasures. I don’t remember exactly what I put in there, but do know that some old pink rickrack is getting new life. Stay tuned.
And there are a lot of hickory nuts around here, too. Hmmmm….
As I wrote this and revisited the photos from the Folk Life Festival, I guess that’s what encouraged me to play with indigo dyes, too. There’s a whole category in the sidebar for that!
