Stitch Rabbit

The Dye Shop ( a work in progress )

 

 

It ain't pretty, but it's workable.

 

I've moved into the shop in our backyard. I couldn't wait till the interior walls were done. Also, the dye pots and plants and mordants were taking over my kitchen, and staining the walls and floors. So, I moved in early!

 

There's still a lot to do to make the space workable as well as (ahem) pretty. And there's a lot of room and possibility for more. This concrete sink came up from the basement and will one day house an indigo vat.

In the meantime, I've been clamping and dipping and playing with cottons and linens. I'm pretty happy with my new space. Can't wait to spend the summer with the shop doors wide open and my hands covered in color.

 

Railway Spikes and Cherry Trees

 

On my last trip to Yale I scavenged for some old rusty railway parts along the tracks and came home with a nice collection. Using one part vinegar, two parts water and a few rusty old railway spikes from the Fraser Canyon, I made an iron mordant a few weeks ago and has let it ferment till now. And it worked!

 

 

This week I harvested the suckers from the cherry trees in my yard and used the bark and leaves to make a new dye. I boiled both bark and leaves separately and came out with similar shades from both.

 

 

Playing with swatches I got a really good look and learn from comparing how the different mordants react to the cherry dye. A teaspoon of the homemade iron solution into the pink dye and suddenly we've got blues and purples! Amazing.

 

The far left is cherry bark with alum. Then, with some copper pennies I was able to pull the second shade. The blueish grey in the middle was made with my homemade iron mordant and the last with a store-bought iron from the supply shop, Maiwa. I'm especially pleased with the shade I got with my homemade iron mordant.

 

 

A Steady Constant.

 

It seems to me that there are not often times in my life when things stop, for even a moment. And there are times when I cannot find a room in my house where there is not something perched on a table or shelf or armchair waiting for me to return to.

And I like it that way. Idle hands I have not.

 Frankie's long-awaited quilt will be finished in time for her birthday. I am only a few stitches away from the hand-quilting being finished before I bind it for her seventh year. I can't believe she's about to be another year from the moment I laid eyes on her.

 A growing collection of buckets and pails of dye and yarn and linen and cotton are finding their way to the shop outside, recently emptied and ready to become my garden and dye studio. Scrap and salvaged wood is collecting as well, ready to become the interior walls of the shop. I can't hardly wait to have such a great space for all the mess and glory.

The garden grows and grows, and so do the trays of seedlings in all the windows. Perhaps it's time to build a greenhouse.

It seems that every space available there is something going on. It is spring. It is change, it is growth. It is making and creating. It is doing. It's how I like it.

It is a steady constant, and it is love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While We Were Away

 

 

While we were away I got some serious work done on my knitting. A trip away from all the other work aroud the studio and yard gave me some good dedicated time to knitting projects and the last quarter of Book Three of Game of Thrones. (hooked, but it's an exhausting read, and often the last on my to do list)

 

While we were away it seems the garden was busying itself as well. I love going away for a few days and upon returning finding tiny surprises everywhere. After a good few days of a real sunny blast of weather, I came home with the kids today to discover a multitude of true spring miracles. It doesn't cease to amaze me every spring, that while I'm not looking the earth sprouts new life for yet another year.

 

Outside, the welcome of spring warmth had done it's job in coaxing tiny sprouts out of the ground. I had been worrying over my sugar peas drowning in the rain, but today they were here, and I was so pleased I dropped our bags at the door and grabbed a pack of seeds and planted another row.

 

Trillium! I love these little white tri-petal beauties, a precious little flower that never stays long enough.

The raspberries survived a transplant, and the peonies as well. Soon enough we will have hearty vines and big red blossoms.

Inside the house a few more discoveries lay in waiting. A skein of cotton that had been soaking in a dye bath, and a yard of cotton I had dip-dyed and left to dry. Both greys were made with cutch and iron and the yellow with turmeric.

 

The indoor seedlings survived and really took off while I was away. Pumpkins, squash, tomatoes and broccoli, as well as a few herbs and dye plants.

 

And of course the long-awaited arrival of the pepper plants.

 We also brought home our own signs of spring... pussy willows from the top of Myra Canyon, picked in the bright sun with snow under our feet.

Oh Brilliant Nature.

 

I've finished the top to my first completely plant-dyed cotton quilt project. I've been foraging, saving, cooking and dyeing with plants over the last few months, and the outcomes are a perfect example of the brilliance of nature, the surprising discovery of color, and the satisfying ability to make it yourself in a sustainable way.

 

 

Using walnut husks, ivy, pomegranate, cutch, avocado skins and onion skins I dyed unbleached cotton about a half metre at a time. I used alum and iron as mordants.

The fabric came out beautifully, and I think all the inconsistencies and surprises in the dye give it a really nice texture and depth. I am so amazed by the colors you can pull from a few leaves and skins. All the exhausted plant materials went straight into the compost. Nothing was wasted.

 

 

 

 

 

Collecting

 

Trying and failing. Fallen birch bark hasn't made me soft pinks yet. But hovering underneath trees picking up curled pieces of bark has named me the new weirdo at the park.

 

Some dyes are becoming my old faithfuls. And still they surprise me.

 

Twisting and folding and dipping and dyeing and opening and discovering.

 

Collecting enough to call a quilt or two.

 

The sun warm on my back, the season's first flowers cast shadows in my windows,

and my hands are busy in all of this spring.

The Process.

I was talking with a friend over a beer about the importance of documenting your process. Not only for personal reference, but as part of your public outreach in whatever platform you choose. Whether you blog or instagram or tumblr or facebook your personal hobbies, art and business, I think it's just as important to present your process, your tools, your systems, your space as it is to present your finished work.

 

For me, if I didn't document my process, you wouldn't see very much.

That is because the finished product doesn't come as often as the times you are in your studio or in your shop. The hours that go on behind your own works of art are such a beautiful part of the story. I find it so interesting getting a chance to peek at how other people are spending their precious "work time", when it's something that they do for love.

 

 

Many of my photos are of my materials in use because I find them beautiful on their own. A skein of yarn or a pair of shears, a length of fabric that has been dyed and waiting for possibility.

 

 

It's within that process that you will find people being exactly who they are. I am happy to finally be in the stages of styling a finished product to shoot a photo, but it is actually here, peeking in my studio, in my garden, in my baskets upon baskets of projects, that you will find me, exactly the way I want to be. Never finished, always wanting more.

 

 

Patterns and Color and Taking Breaks

 

I'm trying to get out more, be more social. It's hard for me, when I've got so much going on at home and in the studio that I'm happy and excited about, but I am also recognizing in myself how isolated I can become - even when it's for something I love to do.

 

 

When you have these tiny kids and you are choosing to be at home with them, you are also making this choice that your daily life contains a very tiny group of human beings in comparison to the rest of the world. I remember days when I felt like the only mother alive with two kids and a dirty kitchen and a pile of clothes I never got to wear anymore because the stay-at-home uniform was jeans, gumboots and an apron.

 

 

For me, knitting and sewing came as a need for sanity, a need to be doing something other than hanging diapers on a line and cleaning up sparkle glue. I started to get creative with the small pieces of time I could get to myself and it gave me a huge sense of satisfaction, that I was contributing in some way that felt artistic... it was like I was contributing to myself. 

 

 

And now with kids bigger and busier and more independent.. I find more time to do the things I love, the anticipation of thinking about how I want to do something, or how this might look cool motivates me to get downstairs and work on these things...

 

 

 

And I get lost in it in such a fantastic way. Quilting and dyeing and knitting gives me this stuff to think about, to use my brain and work things out and discover - and LEARN, constantly. Getting busy with materials has saved me from boredom and given me a lot to think about.

 

 

 I'm on this edge of seeing another side to things, finding patterns and colors in different ways and different places than I'd expected to. And that's exciting. But like everything, like someone who works too much or overloads themselves with classes and homework or simply doesn't ever come up for air, I too have to remember to balance my act. Get out. Like out of the backyard and into conversations with people. See my friends and go to shows and do different things. I'm proud of the work that I do, but I need to remind myself to put down the work sometimes, it will be there when I get back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More From The Dye Pot

 

I'm in love with this process! Using metres at a time, I've been dyeing cotton with different plants and flowers and getting really satisfying results.

I moved all my dyeing equipment from a big tupperware container into a cabinet in the kitchen, though I am looking forward to the redo of the shop in the yard... I have big dreams for a dyeing and gardening studio back there... in the meantime, this should suffice.

 

 

My most recent shades, using walnut husks, cutch, plum tree bark and iron and alum.

 

Sneaking In A Little Sewing

 

While it's been all work and (mostly) no play, I have managed to sneak in a tiny bit of sewing.. I finished off another denim mat for the house. Just in time too, with all the mud being tracked in. This mat was re-purposed with some of our oldest work jeans, so I didn't feel badly that it was muddied in a matter of minutes.

 

I also found a bit of time the other night to dip a skein or two into a pot of plant dye. This skein was dyed with avocado skins and iron, and left for a very short time in the pot to keep it light.   So fun!

Busy Hands.

 

 

Using plant dyes from the garden and the grocery store, with some help with a few mordants, both alum and iron, I've been playing alchemist this week to a variety of cottons and linens, as well as wool. Using a wonderful book called "Eco Color" by India Flint as a guide, as well as key tips and pointers from experienced friends, I've come up with some awesome shades that I'm very pleased with. I started cutting for a quilt this morning.