Childhood Color Palettes

You all know how much I love natural items...leaves, flowers (live or dried), trees, bones and feathers.
Oh, and rocks.
And driftwood.

You could have a peek at my (inside) (or outside) studio and be able to see this, right?
Both of my large work tables (hell, every table) is littered with precious things.

I collected these same things as a child - funny, isn't it?
That we continue to love some things our entire life?

I always carried a brown paper bag, all soft and wrinkled from handling, when I was a young child.
It was chock full of broken bird eggs, pilfered fruit from  neighborhood trees, bones, feathers, rocks, pebbles and sticks.
And an occasional piece of interesting paper or discarded clothing (because of the beautiful pattern or interesting texture) (or perhaps to make my older sister angry).

What do I carry around in sewn, painted and upcycled bags now?
Same darn thing, just larger quantities.

I'm still (slowly, slowly) working on the hand stitched piece.
In my own defense, I have been doing other things too, not just working on that particular piece.
Not that much art work but other important things.
Like hiking in the woods with my husband.
Listening to the rhythm of the woods.
The flow of the water.
Watching the birds fluttering about, getting ready for cold weather.

Oh! Oh!
I saw a pair of fox squirrels in the woods!
Oh my gracious goodness, they were SO cute.
White nose, ears and feet with the rest of their bodies ranging from light grey to almost black.
I sat ever so quietly and watched them for almost an hour (Sarah and Denise - I saw your eyebrows fly up at me sitting still that long) (not doing anything!).
They walk differently than regular grey squirrels, which is what we mostly have here in upstate SC.
It's a slower, more intent walk. The grey squirrels always seem to be bolting every where they go, running and scurrying like mad men...I mean mad squirrels.

I just TOTALLY got off of the topic that I intended to talk about.
Imagine that?!

I was talking about how we like the same things we did as children (if that "thing" can hold your attention that long I guess).
I do anyway (except that cute boy in my 1st grade class).
Since I have been dabbling in natural dyeing and eco printing, I've noticed the colors that I get are similar to the natural items that I collect.
Maybe a picture can show you what I mean.

Rose hips from my mother-in-laws rose garden.

Some type of rodent skull we found while hiking,
maybe a beaver? 

I found this shed rhododendron flower in the river
when we were trout fishing. Yes, I was gathering
things from the bottom of the river... 

There you see it - one of my personal color palettes.

Dried, rotting, dead.

Well, that was (kinda) meant to be funny, but I think that there is a lot of truth in that statement.
These three things yield a fertile field for planting so perhaps they do the same for my mind.


What about you?
Can you identify one of your personal color palettes?

I do love bold, in your face color as well but today I am all about the calmer, neutral color palette that I show above.
I hear a lot of fiber artists (or any artist ftm) say that white, cream or any similar color is NOT a color.
But I say that when you use these colors you really have to put more thought into the details or they will be lost.
A neutral palette can be a great backdrop for wonderful design.
I think I heard that on Project Runway.

Do you agree?

Pecan Stems and Silk

I love the impression that the stems
make on the fabric when they have been steamed.

Hints of the print that the pecan will create.

Beautiful, beautiful color, and shapes.

This silk fabric is still wet. I rolled it back up and will allow it to dry as an intact bundle.
Can't wait to see what it looks like!

Baby Eucalyptus

My husband and I (mostly he) planted three eucalyptus trees in our yard this year.
I cannot believe how quickly they are growing!
I have tried to be patient and not pick too many leaves or stems but...
I have not always been able to resist.

A few days ago, I clipped a few stems and rolled them into a pieces of (some kind of) silk fabric.
I forget the exact type - I'll have to look on the invoice.
I rolled one piece onto a copper pipe and popped it into my rice steamer (less than $25 on eBay!) for about an hour.
Then I left it sitting in the steamer for a few days (I was busy but then forget about it).
It was still wet but I couldn't resist having a peek at it.

This is what my baby eucalyptus is capable of!

I love the darker areas where the fabric
is in direct contact with the copper pipe.

The pipe was too short for the width of the fabric
so I folded the edges of the fabric in.

The resulting design (on the edges) is looking pretty good.

I did show enough restraint to roll the fabric back up on the pipe (without looking inside!).
I'll allow it to dry on the pipe and unroll if after I get back from Colorado - or when I remember.
I love the surprises that tiny organisms create inside the wet fabric if you allow it sit awhile. But it sure is difficult to wait that long!

I'm off to Colorado tomorrow.
I'll be teaching two really fun and creative classes. I do love to share what I do and how I do it.
But what I love the most is when people (who think they are not "the creative type") realize that they have a well of untapped creativity right inside of them!
I do believe that we can all be creative, we all can be artistic and that we all can learn to look at things around you in a more creative manner.
Sometime you just need a nudge in the right direction.
At an art festival a couple of years ago, I heard my husband talking to a woman about my classes. She said that she was not "the artsy type" and the classes would be wasted on her.
My husband said "Oh no, my wife specializes in working with people just like you. You will surprise yourself in one of her classes."
What an awesome thing to eavesdrop and hear about you!
He did convince the woman that she could create something in one of my classes and after I had time to talk to her, she had more hope that she could be a maker of really cool things.
And what a fabulous honor it is to assist people in finding that hidden (or stifled) part of themselves.

I hope that you all are exercising your creativity.
Just like our muscles will atrophy if they are not used - our creativity will also waste away.

Pecan Stems

Pecans are one of my favorite nuts and I love the trees too.
When I was a young girl, I lived near a pecan grove that provided many hours of play, hiding spots and climbing experience.
I loved the even rows of trees that stretched for acres.
It became my personal forest and my safe haven in a world full of scary miscreants.

I continually revisit the pleasure of the comely pecan tree with eco printing on fabric as well as paper.
I am working on a concertina book that celebrates my love of it.
This is one of the pages.

It is a perfect palette if you ask me...beautiful neutrals.
I love the way that the iron mordant edges the page and accentuates the stem and around the leaves.

When you use natural items to dye or print with, you become very familiar with  shape of the what you are using. You will be able to pick the leaf out of a line-up of other leaves.
I loved the pecan tree before for its safety, its imagination and its very existence but now...now, I adore it for its shape, its color and its exciting possibilities!

It's always more difficult to coax color out of cotton fabric as opposed to silk or wool.
I wonder why it is so simple to obtain color from paper that is made from cotton rag and so difficult to obtain the same color from cotton fabric?
Oh, I can imagine all sorts of reasons but if there is a "simple" answer to that question, please tell me.

I put on my mad scientist cap this past weekend and began a series of experiments on a particular cotton fabric that I have here.
It's a PFD fabric that I purchase by the bolt so I have plenty to experiment on.
I am trying different mordants, various heating methods as well as a couple of shibori resist folds.
Between the information that Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada's book offered me and the website and online class of Glennis Dolce  (it's on sale right now), I was set to go with many shibori techniques.
I have done a few things before with shibori (indigo vat fun with Yoshiko Wada in Asheville NC) but very simple, very basic.
And I will keep it that way until I figure out the best way to get the results that I want with the natural dyeing.


I love the way that the folding, clamping and stitching creates a memory in the cloth.
Just as my childhood memories create a special mark on the pecan tree prints, the shibori folds create a different memory on the cloth.
I love tying the two together in one place.

This is a piece of the aforementioned cotton fabric.
The pecan stem is a little difficult to see because of all of the patterning made by the folding of the fabric. It makes its own resist and pattern as well.

I love the marks left by the binder clips that I used.
The clips are sold in office supply stores in small boxes ("binder clips"). They come in a variety of sizes as well, so you can get different widths of line in the resist that they create.
The horizontal lines and squares left by the folding technique appeal to the OCD in me.
The unpredictable splay of color calms my mania. It also triggered several ideas which I'll be working with this week.

Damn, I have so many ideas related to this that I could work on it for a year or more!

I guess what really excited me the most was being able to get that much color and pattern from a pecan stem, a handful of binder clips and a pot heated on a hot plate.

There must be a 12 step program for the addiction that this has created.

Botanical Garden Bounty

I continue to be enthralled with natural dyeing/eco printing/whatever you want to call it.

I call it fun!

Even though it is (mostly) unrepeatable and not really predictable, I find it to be the most addictive thing that I have ever done.

I can see why people like India Flint dedicate their lives to it (even though I know that there is so much more to what she does).

I am indebted to the path that she and so many others have blazed in the call of creating with wild color.

I have been spending most of my spare time at my dyeing pots.

I went over to the SC Botanical Garden in Clemson this week and met with one of the horticulturalists (thank you John!).

We spent a little bit of time under an ailing eucalyptus tree that they have, talking about what I was doing, what they were doing for/to the tree.

They are going to wait a bit longer and allow the soft stems to grow more, then clip several in order to propagate them.

I was allowed to harvest a small bag of green (but mature) leaves as well as all I wanted from under the tree.

As you can well imagine, I came home with a grocery bag full of leaves and several pic es of the beautiful bark.

I was also allowed to harvest leaves the other eucalyptus there. 

It is an E.cinerea with the largest leaves that I have ever seen on one. Some of them were as larges as 4-5 inches wide.

But then again, I haven't seen that many mature ones before.

Here's an experiment with some of the leaves from both varieties as well as fresh vs old leaves on linen.

I love the colors!

Back to the call of the wild. 

I got the most beautiful prints from a "weed" in my yard! I can't wait to experiment a little more with it.

I'll post photos when I get a chance.

Prints on Silk

More samples of eco printing on silk fabric.

a variety of leaves

bolder colors from these leaves

you can get some really cool "ghost" prints as well

beautiful, beautiful prints on silk