- Orange again

Addendum: after writing the post below, we had dinner with my daughter's family. G has the best seat in the house, looking out the dining room window. As the meal wound down, he exclaimed, "I see the moon!"

Sure enough, a waxing crescent was sinking into the sunset west. Patch #12 has been revised accordingly, albeit one day late ...

Patch #12 redux

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I was thinking I would make an orange patch each day we watch three-year-old grandson G (yep, that's actually one of his nicknames).

We're a day earlier than usual this week since he was diagnosed with strep throat yesterday. So we got up at 5:00 and drove into Austin just as dawn was breaking on the horizon ...

Patch #12

It seemed like the light was radiating up, but this stitch didn't quite capture what I was after. No matter ... there will be other sunrises and sunsets this year, so I'll look toward to seeing how many ways I can interpret them in cloth.

Interestingly, my camera is having a hard time dealing with this intense orange, so I tried stepping away from it ...

Add caption

Okay, nuff said on that. Here's another look back at Christmas:

"What about making a gingerbread house? Do you still have the pattern?" my older daughter texted as we planned for the arrival of her younger sister and family for Christmas.

"On it!" I replied. 

No, I didn't have the old recipe and template, but I had the Internet. That and an idea to make smaller houses, one for each three-year-old grandson. I couldn't wait.

After looking at scads of designs, I picked the simplest I could find and made a mock-up scaled so the pieces would fit on my baking sheets ...

along with a frame to ensure the gingerbread could be rolled to a consistent thin-ness ...

I followed a recommendation to use the gingerbread recipe from the most recent Joy of Cooking. It worked well enough, but didn't taste great, so I think I'll use my grandmother's ginger snap recipe next year. In any case, I whipped up one batch, which was just enough to cover two cookie sheets ...

While the gingerbread baked, I made more bases so the houses would be sturdy and the boys wouldn't have to worry about being careful ...

And when the gingerbread came out of the oven, I cut it to plan ...

let it cool a bit, then stuck the pieces to the bases with royal icing (made with pasteurized egg whites) ...

There were gaps once the houses were assembled, but I figured they could be filled with icing to serve as decorating opportunities ...

Which indeed they were ...

A family tradition is (re)born!

- Violet and the Blood Moon

Morna Crites-Moore had a beautiful post today. If you haven't seen it yet, click here to take a look ... I'll wait.

Her post, along with the news of David Bowie's death from liver cancer inspired today's violet patch  (not that I was a fan, but Ziggy Stardust, Major Tom, and Suffragette City did play in the background of my teenage years) ...

Patch #11 Discharge bleach dyeing on linen

I haven't done any discharge dyeing with bleach for over a year, mostly because I wasn't wild about cutting freezer paper masks. Having long intended to try using Don's foam paint daubers as an alternative, Morna's post gave me the incentive finally to give it a try ..

Note: Jude Hill did not recommend Lemon Soft Scrub, but it was all they had at HEB

So even though it looked promising ...

Looks can be deceiving ...

nothing much happened. Reading the label I found bleach waaaay down the list of ingredients. Hmmm.

Not to be deterred, I dug out a bleach pen, squeezed some out on the plastic lid and gave it a try. Whoa ... talk about fast acting!  The first couple of moons went way too far. Then I tried rinsing sooner, and others didn't go far enough ...

In addition to the moon variations,
I was seriously debating which was the best violet representative

Fortunately, the moon at the beginning of the post was just right. Because it only takes one, right? Which reminds me ... gotta buy one of those billion dollar lottery tickets today.

Before I head out though, here's the final batch of pictures from the natural dyeing workshop ...

A blurry picture of Maura hanging the first demo

Ten of the sixteen participants

Three vats of red

into which we all dipped cloth we brought with us for the workshop

Brazilwood (which Mo informed me is an endangered species)
samples of which were cut up and given to each participant

Silk, cotton, linen and wool dipped in
Cochineal and Madder were also shared with everyone

 The second day of the workshop was dedicated to Indigo magic
1 ...

2 ...

3!!!

Once again, we were all given the opportunity to dye our own cloth

which everyone was prepared to do

The afternoon was dedicated to creating shibori

graced with a rare touch of sunshine over the blackland prairie

- True (indigo) blue ... at last

I've thought about doing some indigo dyeing for a while now. Not for the first time, as I participated in eighteenth-century colonial-style indigo dyeing with Kathy Smith back in the 1980s. A true purist, Kathy conjured a vat with stale urine. I wasn't so brave.

More recently, I tried my hand at Maura Ambrose's indigo vats (one chemical, one organic), dipping pieces of vintage linen tablecloth in and coming out with this for one ...

Patch #10

I left the hemstitched edge intact, liking the look of it, wondering how it might play out. And I may add some stitch later ... well, now actually ...

Snow falling in East Hampton, New Year's Day 1978

The b-side maybe even more realistic than the front

So, having mentioned the dyeing workshop, here at last are my photographic impressions of it (Maura's artistry shown with her permission) ...

Coming into Maura's home for the first time,
this was what hit me

Followed by this wonderful display of potential

and instruction

Works in progress abounded ...

and while most were machine-sewn, some were hand-stitched

and all had colors to dye for

Samplers of a sort hung on the walls,
some perhaps dating to Maura's days at SCAD

Bits of memory enshrined behind glass

Notebook pages that spoke for themselves ...

a full range of potential

carefully curated

artfully presented

Truly an inspiration ... to be continued

- At a snail's pace

Irony abounds ... I am now writing this post for a second time having somehow lost the first pass. Ah well, I think I remember what I said.

Choosing a blue for today was made easier by the knowledge that I could save the indigo blues for tomorrow. I ended up using a heavier linen, in part because it somewhat matched the feathery blue fringe in yesterday's patch ...

Patch #9

And while I'm not sure how the weight difference will play out later, I'm going with it. The cloth came from one of my mom's favorite summer tops ... which looked great on her, but never did much on me. Here it's perfect and I'm looking forward to making patches with some of the other motifs in the future.

I also finished this week's weather patches ...

and I'm realizing Saturdays will be extra fun as I add each new week to the one before!

I'm also starting to think about how all the patches might fit together eventually. Right now, the spine and front cover of a book come to mind ...

and already I can see how photographing the whole piece is going to be an ongoing challenge.

Revision: I just didn't like the way the last two patches were oriented, so they have been flipped over ...

Okay, I feel better now.

- G is for green(ish)

Having no selvedge to guide me (I prefer this spelling to selvage, btw), I didn't know if this thrifted linen blouse was green shot with blue, or vice versa ...

Either way, I much prefer the blue to the green and fortuitously tore the cloth in such a way that it left a feathery blue edge. So I wondered "what if I made a patch that showed that edge?" ...

Patch #7 and Patch #8

Here's how it looked on the b-side ...

It will be interesting to see how it wears.

Oh, about the butterfly ... that flew in yesterday after I took a walk in the sun and noticed little sulfur butterflies flitting in the purple lantana blossoms. It was one of those days when I couldn't help saying yet again, "Have I mentioned how much I love Texas?"

And now that I look at the close-up photos in the butterfly link, I realize that the two hindwing spots look just like Jude's outlined thread beads ... so even though I didn't notice them yesterday, I've added them in ...