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.

Yoshiko Wada

This is what Yoshiko's web site says about her -
"Yoshiko Iwamoto Wada is an artist, author, curator, textile researcher and has long been an exponent of traditional and sustainable practices in fashion and textile production."

I would simply say that she is a beautiful woman...inside and out.
I had the pleasure of spending the day with Yoshiko (and about 25 or 30 other lucky women) in Asheville, NC yesterday. We were at an all day workshop at the Asheville Arts Council on Biltmore Avenue (part of the Hatch festival in town). Boro Transformed. I wish it had of been a week long workshop. I could go on and on about it but just lack the time right now. I have to get packed for a weekend trip. I'll try to add more later.
I sat with my buddy Judy Simmons and we were just in awe of our speaker! So very intelligent and interesting. We spent the morning listening, looking at awesome textile samples from far and wide. Then in the afternoon we were "set loose" with a bag of samples, directions and orders to "have at it"! We had sheets of water soluble vinylon that were supplied to us so we could create our own piece of fabric. I laid mine out in the workshop but didn't sew it until I got home.

I really enjoyed the process and know that I'll be doing more of it. I choose to use some of my rusted fabric, wool that was supplied in our sample packet (the loose weave black fabric), rusted cheese cloth and black batting. Oh, and some beautiful hand dyed wool thread from Nancy Bruce. I like the way it turned out and will probably use it on a book cover or similar project.

Then we hit the indigo dye vat. Wow! Loved, loved, loved it! This is one of my most favorite colors! I'll post a couple of pictures of everyone else's work (even though some had already been removed). They were wonderful! Judy shared her beads with us so we did some shibori with them. I also just tied up other areas on a piece of PFD fabric. I would have loved to dyed much more but due to time, space and a hip that refused to cooperate I was limited to what I could do. I may just have to add indigo dyeing to the rust dyeing mess, I mean area that we have now. It's just so beautiful!
The gallery of the Arts Council building was a veritable feast for the senses. The "Slow Design" exhibit was being shown there. I've a few photos of it, not very good ones, as the new camera seems to have a mind of its own (and a very stubborn one at that!). You simply MUST go there and have a look at all that they offer. Talented, fresh designers that all are trying to create their work involving local and/or regional technologies and materials. They were featuring work and works curated by the HATCH Fashion mentors, Elisa Jimenez, Yoshiko Wada, and Mary Gehlhar on the theme of 'Slow Design'. I also recognised the work of Natalie "Alabama" Chanin. I have her book and adore it! The pictures below of reverse applique pieces belong to the "Alabama Chanin" line.