nemo ignorat

I dyed

beware, this will be a picture heavy post, with some ramblings about my life the last month.

Last saturday, I had my first possibility to sell my hand dyed yarns and fabrics. Before I could sell some (I did sell some, not many but I learned a lot about building up a booth, writing labels, telling people about what I do, how I do it etc) I had to dye them.

As it sometimes happens, the last 4 weeks were ... challenging ... to say the least. My mum (who is 86 and lives at my house) fell about 4 weeks ago and broke her hip (to be precise, she had a femoral neck fracture). She came into the hospital, got a surgery and a femoral neck prothesis and then we had to wait. Being in the hospital is not easy for anyone and after a few days the grumbling set in. Since last week she is in rehab, which is good, because the rehab clinic is very good, modern, nice and especially for seniors.

To make things even more interesting, we will go on vacation (our only vacation in the year, and we really need it) end of this week. Two weeks France, Brittany ... at the sea side. We're both looking forward to it but for a while it seemed as if we might not be able to go.

All the other things that can happen when a dear family member fells ill happened and didn't make it any easier. Others involved themselves and it got complicated. And it is still not over and still very complicated.

So, I was quite happy to have a reason to stand at the dye pots (in between visits to the hospital, washing drying and ironing and taking it back to the hospital, talking a lot over the phone, arguings and debates and legal stuff and burocratic madness).

There were lots of fabrics as well. All dyed with natural dyes.

Fortunately, I took these pictures yesterday in the sun. I will show some dyed fabrics today - maybe. Right now, it's 2 am and I can't sleep.

Below is silk thread. Really thin thread I dyed with indigo. It took me a while to learn how to handle this really thin silk thread during dyeing, but now it looks so beautiful and I'm looking forward to sew with it. Maybe a bit embroidery as well?

And there was some mending as well. I follow Jude's Contempory Boro Class very interested. At first, I wanted to mend my most favourite jeans. But I had to acknowledge its age and the lack of fabric integrity. But there are always shirts. I haven't bought a new shirt for me in years, because I always inherit some from DH and male friends. Some are torn (those came from DH) and some just fell out of favour (mostly from my friends).

When I get a shirt I want to keep for myself, the first things I do is remove cuffs (I don't like them), the stiff collar (I prefer a small mandarin collar) and I look if I can take it in somehow. (I'm not petite but most male friends we have are huge.) And thanks to Jude's commentary, I now remove the labels as well.

And then there is a black linen jacket. I got it from a friend who didn't want it anymore (never really wore it) because she felt like a circus director in it. It is true, it looks a bit like swallow tails from a tail coat. I wore it as it is and the linen feels good. But as I looked at it today, I thought what if I would elongate the jacket with some indigo linen and fill in the gaps between the swallow tails. This is something to ponder on.

Maybe I could ponder about the black linen jacket in bed. Better that than all the other things rushing through my brain keeping me awake.

Somehow, I am glad I didn't sell all the yarn. I want to see them knitted into socks. Warm socks in white and red/blue/green or yellow. Maybe they will be stripy? Mismatched, stripy socks would feel quite good right now. 

Good night wherever you are

ombre blues and then some

well, nothing new from my dye studio, still working on the blues. Or better, stitching the blues. Which is a whole new field to learn. But, I had some really interesting and exhilerating results with my now 4 weeks old 1-2-3-vat.

Before re-heating it, I added a teaspoon of fructose to it. And lo and behold, it dyed a really good blue.

See for yourself (though the lightning wasn't good and although the damask looks really great, it doesn't like to be photographed):

 

and some trys at ombre dyeing:

the technique is not really good, but you can see how well the blue builds up in the middle part

here's a detail of the long cloth

and now another dragonfly - which looks a bit more like a flying fish, methinks ;o)

the body is better but the wings are fumbled. Well, we dye and learn ;o)

(all fabrics were dry but not yet ironed)

fat dragonfly shibori

Glennis showed us how to stitch resist a dragonfly in our indigo workshop. She asked us to do our own, because 'every dragonfly is different'

uhm, yes, every dragonfly is different and mine is definitely overweight or not a dragonfly at all.

Conclusion: technique works fine but I do have to work on my basic understanding of dragonfly anatomy ;o)

Since I had some thread left in the needle and some space on the piece of fabric, I free-hand stitched a spiral.

which worked a bit better.

blue

I was in a kind of dyeing frenzy last week. Since the vat is already up and running, I might as well use it.

Here is a small part of what I dyed during the week. Somehow the real life blue eludes me in my pictures. I really have to learn how to photograph indigo better. In real life the blues are slightly darker, esp the wool.

two caps for my sun sensitive red headed DH. Crocheted from several strands of very thin linen yarn and dyed in a pre-reduced vat.

The same multistranded linen yarn, knit with size 4.5 to 6.5 needles (I wanted to see which one knits up into the better handling). I used cable binders to tie dye the scarf. Again, the blue is darker.

some damask fabric (I think it comes from an old table cloth) resist dyed

 

 

 

 

and an old cotton nappy I want to use as a kerchief. The cotton is very soft and took up the dye rather well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

this one is fantastic. I love the way the dye distributed. Again some old damask from a table cloth.

wool georgette above. in real life it is a darkish aquatic blue. I dyed it first in 9 dips in the same vat as the linen fabric below. But I raised the pH from 9.5 to 10.5 for the linen.

Over the last week I learned some new things:

- I still fight with the 1-2-3 vat.

- the pre-reduced vat is really easy to use and to maintain. i will see for how long it takes up

- damask table cloth looks wonderful but i dyed cotton satin at the same time and although the hseen is great, it seems to hinder the take up of the dye

- i now have several yards of indigo dyed fabric and would like to sew ;o)

and now for something completely different

After yesterday's slightly depressing entry, I feel much better now, thankyouverymuch for listening.

I got the fireplace in my garage going for the fermentation vat. Not that I'm really happy about it. The fog is everywhere and it is so wet that my wood smokes a lot. Which won't make my neighbours very happy in the long run. Maybe I have to think about something else. At least I got it and the vat started. Most probably, I will start another fermentation vat in my crock pot. I'm not absolutely happy about that  either, because it needs electricity. But as long as it isn't about 20° C outside, the vat will need some external heating.

On a more stitchy note, I wanted to show some cloth I started working on during the last week.

As I noted yesterday, while sorting through my fabrics, I found some old quilt beginnings. One of them was this here:

My original plan was to use this as the centerpiece of the back of my indigo coat (back then thought of as sun coat becuase of the centerpiece). It was too large, my back is not that wide. I still love the arrangement and had it already batted, lined and begun quilting. In any case, it didn't work out, and so it wandered into the stash, waiting for better times. When I picked it up last week, I decided to be honest and brutal, removed the stitching, batting and back and tacked the top to some other cloth.

added some scissor work and cloth weaving and it begins to look much more interesting.There is a sun in the center of everything. Matter begins when a sun dies. We are all made up of stardust so why not let the sun be in the center again.

Then there was this:

Unfortunately, there is no picture of the cloth as it was before I used my scissors and some other fabric on it. Just imagine it without the blue strips.

I think, my reasoning behind this bland arrangement was something like "sewing a quick top with some circles applied and stitched to it and then make a quick quilt from it". That's just how it looked. Stitched together with no thought in it at all.

And then there was the sun and planet-like circles and I think with the coordinating indigo fabrics, they could work together. And an idea formed. Resulting in another fragment, using up some other quilt beginnings:

It is still a bit of a mystery for me, hence the naming of the pictures. A mystery cosmos perhaps. Who knows what kind of beings made of stardust can live there?

quilting

The cold is exhausting. Luckily we're on the western part of the Siberian coldfront but still, -15°C (that's 5° F for those who aren't metric ;o)) is really cold. Especially at 5 am in the forest. Fortunately, the dogs don't seem to mind. And no, they don't wear vests or anything. I'm the one in the seven layers of woollen underwear and sweaters and whatnot. I praise all ancestors who had the idea to breed sheep.

Due to the cold, I wasn't as productive as I wanted to be. A lot of my ironing is still lumping around in baskets but I descided it was time to work on my quilt again.

Two years ago, I've sewn DH a quilt. As it happened, I was unable to walk around much with a rather bad knee and 6 weeks to wait for the appointment at the specialist. (BTW by the time I had the appointment, the knee was better and we could start aftertreatment at once - and it most probably saved me from a knee surgery. Lucky me.) So I took the opportunity and made the quilt. When I asked DH about specifications, he just said: large and green. Well, that's what it is:

The larger pieces are hand dyed (synthetic dyes) bourette silk and the smaller ones small linen pieces I bought in bulk from a flax cooperative in Northern Germany some years ago. They sell (sold?) the leftovers from their tailoring in bulk. The quilt was sewn during those 6 weeks, while I was cooling my knee and watching the whole 7 seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Therefore I called it Forest Quilt or an Hommage to Gene Roddenberry.

The quilt stitiching was done with two different green linen threads, it has no batting/wadding but a flanell backing and really is warm enough. And it is about 2x2m (which is a bit more than 2x2 yrd). 

Why am I telling this. Well, first of all, I really like the quilt and wanted to show it to you. And secondly, last year when I went off to ISEND, I took a lot of hand dyed (natural dyes) patches with me to have something to do while sitting around. And the top was finished in december:

The patches are mostly vintage cotton and linen and some are bourette silk. The undyed fabric is from a bolt of vintage linen. Rather dense but wonderful fabric. Like the Forest Quilt, this one is about 2x2m as well, no batting/wadding and a flanell back. This time, I quilt with some silk threads and a hemp thread, some naturally dyed. And although I told myself after the Forest Quilt, I would never ever quilt such a large cloth again in one go, right now it is quite cozy underneath it.

Stitching on my quilt and watching and listening to Jude's magic diaries (I'm still behind schedule) made me think what I am doing.

I like complicated, colourful pieces. But my patchwork blankets are mostly functional and for warmth. Maybe my approach will change when I begin piecing a larger cloth together from all those experimental pieces, we'll see. I always was really bad at following patterns and trodden down paths.  Back then, I tried to follow patterns and tried to make things like the manual said they should be made. And I failed colossally. Always. So I began seeing patterns and rulebooks a bit like the pirate code, more an inspiration and as a guideline, which worked much better. And now I am on my way to really let go and go with the flow, so to say. I know, I wrote this before, but I still feel like I am standing on a cliff top ready to jump, not yet jumping. More like hopping up and down on the spot, opening my arms, ready to fly and shouting FREEDOM ;o)

Right now, some words are buzzing around in my head: neo-tribal, post-apocalyptic and most of all STELLIFEROUS.Weird combination but they all fill me with a warm fuzzy feeling and I think there is potential in them.

The cold has one big advantage: the night sky is crytal clear and indigo blue, with a bright yellow moon and lots and lots of stars.

another experiment

I am in an experimenting mood right now. I really have the urge to try new things, so I go with the flow and work on several new beginnings. The day before yesterday, I was mostly working on some vest pattern. I try to sew as many of my clothes as possible. So far I stopped only at Jeans (though I have a really nice organic cotton canvas ready for some new trousers already lying around) and underwear. Just the thought of the amount of underwear I would have to sew is a bit daunting. But we'll see.

One piece of cloth I regularily wear is vests. In summer only with a top underneath, during winter with shirts or even sweaters, vests are my staple clothes. And I really like my sewing to be functional. Just wearing accessories for the pure decorative effect is not my thing. To cut a long story short, when I looked at the elefant cloth, I thought, why not make it into a vest. So I worked out a paper pattern for a vest and realized, it wouldn't work on the elefant cloth. Which didn't stop me I just tried something different. Woven cloth directly into the vest pattern.

I wouldn't say it's perfect yet. It's not even what I imagined, it is still too geometrical, to organized for my taste but it's a start. I think, there is potential. But did I mention too organized? I will have to work out a way to let go.

I will be signing off until monday. I finally need to do some house work (my ironing basket already multiplied and Mum needs some attention) and I need to do some real stitching now. Not only the beginning of experiments but stitching and seeing where the cloth wants to go.

And I added something to the About section. Bits and pieces about me. In case you wonder who is writing. Somehow I don't find a way to open a comment section there as well. Still getting used to typepad's CMS.

See you all on monday

still wandering

Ulrike

and then there was an elefant

One of my creative hurdles is that I like to stick to geometric forms. Nothing wrong with that, there is an abundance of ornamental work out there which is enormously creative. Just think of the wood carvings on old Breton furniture. Amazing. But as I see it, part of my journey could be/should be (?) to travel to unknown territories, step into the dark and unknown waters of my mind and find my way to new shores. Which I did this morning and lo and behold, an elefant appeared. It is still the rough shape of an elefant more like the shape you see through the fog (my brain fog concerning representational forms vs ornamental maybe?) but it begins to look like an elefant.

The fabric is rust dyed dish cloth linen. Very soft but still durable.

Now I just wonder, why an elefant ;o)

something old something new

I wanted to thank you all for the warm welcome. I am overwhelmed. Thank you.

Something New

Yesterday evening, I felt the urge to begin something new, some woven boro style thing. I am intrigued by the possibilities of fabric weaving. I like the look very much and how it handles. Most of the fabrics I have are vintage linens and cottons. Bedsheeds (definitely not usable for woven boro), cotton pillow cases and duvet covers, linen dishcloths and towels. Most are not exactly the lightweight stuff Jude recommends but some are still manageable.Especially the old and used dishcloths are so worn out that some of them barely stay together. They make nice weaving material.

The background is an old dishcloth, crush dyed in indigo and I wanted to keep the undyed parts intact.

Another detail I wanted to preserve, the monogram dyed really nice, darker than the rest.

I basted the piece last evening. My stitch is not exactly invisible but I used a dark blue and a white sewing thread. Somehow sewing threads accumulated over the years, so they usually are my default threads.

And this morning, while looking at the first piece, I began with another one.

Plain weave, the background fabric is some vintage damast cotton, indigo dyed and then overdyed in oak bark, which gives it a slightly greyish green hue. The other fabrics are dishcloths and some other vintage damast dyed in indigo, the red is cochenille and the darkish purple is logwood.I love the fraying. Linen threads are really dense and they usually don't dye through. At least not when you're dipping only two or three times to keep it light blue. When you tear them, the fraying sometimes is still lighter or even white. And I think that looks fabulous. Very organic.

The reason all those colours work well together is that they are all natural colours. Somehow you can't go wrong when you combine the most unlikely colours as long as they are all natural dyed.

Producers of synthetic dyes know that, which is why you have colourways (Ashford acid dyes for example come in winter and summer hues - this way the colours of one colourway will always match) and you shouldn't combine different synthetic dyes by different producers. Everyone of them works in a special colourway and combining colourways from different producers can look quite garish.

Something Old

This is the thing I originally wanted to work on when I began something new last evening.

 

It is the front of a bag I began many moons ago. When I was still working with synthetic dyes ;o)

The blue part is from an old silk shirt and the white part is some vintage cotton pillow case. The colour parts are reverse appliqued and are vintage cotton dyed with synthetic dyes.

This is the back. Still the same old silk with some stitching. I love spirals.

The inside of the bag is made from an old flanell shirt and its two breast pockets. One can never have too many pockets in a bag ;o)

And here is a detail from the front. Here the thread is some indigo dyed linen thread.

Still wandering 

Ulrike

the first step

Every journey begins with one step. But usually there are already several steps behind you, some places you come from when you decide to begin your wanderings.

I'm already knee deep in hand sewing. Equipped with a great dislike of machines, I used to hand sew shirts and skirts and even trousers many years ago during my frugal time at university. After some time without much time for texile crafts, I returned to my fibery interests one day in december about a decade ago when I ordered a handspindle and some fibre. I began spinning, dyeing, knitting, weaving the usual stuff and then, I some years ago, I returned to sewing. 

I feel content when I stitch.

Several years ago, I dived heads on into natural dyeing and sometime later I realized I'm a natural dyer with a day job. And then I realized, I love dyeing fabrics. So my love for fabrics, for sewing and for natural dyeing intertwined.

I am far from being a master or something like this. I am learning, wandering among fabrics and experimenting with possibilities. And since I seldom have the opportunity to travel, I enjoy online workshops and online classes.

Last weekend, I enrolled in several online classes over at Jude's. Since my other blog is (mostly) German and a hotchpotch of all possible fibre crafts, I wanted to start something new, English only and only about my dyeing and my sewing.Let's see how this works out. As I said, I'm experimenting here.

And since no blog post is complete without pictures, here are some of past and present stitchings:

into the woods, neo tribal art cuff

into the woods 2 - neo tribal art cuff with encouched horse hair

buttoned up - the desert series

A coat I am working on now for several years. It was finished at one point but I didn't like to wear it. During the last two weeks I added some changes it feels better now. Come summer I will see how it actually wears.

Well, this is a small view into my past endevours. I'm working on some new things, I will see what path they will take.

I haven't done much modern boro like weaving and stitching yet. Up until now, I just dived into the online classes and immerged into the texts, videos and whisperings. Just listeining was inspiring and I have some ideas for larger cloths. Maybe another jacket, something different than the above. And then there are some old beginnings I found yesterday while cleaning the bedroom. Really old beginnings. Maybe I will rip them or incorporate them into something new. I don't know yet.

 

As I said, it's the first step of a journey.