More Orange, New Blue, Less Brown, No Poo

I'll assume that most readers are tired of seeing what appears to be the same thing. A few more changes on the commission. I think it may even go more orange. I'm wondering if I need more texture in the fabrics, perhaps more swirls. I'm sure the additional applique and stitching will add much more texture, yet I feel more is needed at this point.

I bid on Ebay for 4 bags of beads that I thought would be great on this quilt. A total of $25.00. How many of these 4 do I think will work? Yes. None. Great beads, different project. I always end up throwing money at a new project. Often most of what I purchase does not end up in the project purchased for. The vast majority of things do find their way into something eventually. It may take a couple of hours, it may take 10 years. Oh well.

I "cleaned up" my studio to begin on this project and threw out lots of old paints, crusty brushes, unidentified things stuck together and some hand-dyed fabric from my last commission. It has laid in a pile on the floor for four months. Ugly colors. Splotchy, infected looking pieces. Nothing to do but toss them. I attempted to dye fabrics to match some computer generated colors from the client. Not just one piece at a time, but three pieces at a time. If I did not dye them at the same time, they would not look identical. And they had to look identical as I was placing these pieces side by side in a large wall hanging. So when I failed, I failed three times. It took four tries to get one orange right. Three failures times three pieces. I need to put that behind me now. It's time to create some new failures. I'm sure I'll love this piece in the end. I'm already loving the color orange.

Orange, Orange, Orange

Yesterday the new orange and gold fabrics arrived for my commission. Nine new fabrics. How many did I like?!? One! So on this rainy cool day, I sat in my attic and lightly painted each fabric with Setacolor paints. I blasted them with a hairdryer and came up with all sorts of lusious colors. A great day for orange! For some reason I cannot get enough of this color lately. Maybe its the fall leaves convincing me what a beautiful color this is.

I used to dislike orange, only having a handful of oranges in my fabric collection. Now its in loads of my latests pieces. Its in my home -- I just bought a beautiful (and cheap) orange throw from Target. It has even crept into my closet. I've even thought of purchasing an orange sofa. Don't think my husband would go for it though. But that's where the orange throw comes in. Might have to make some orange pillows to go with it.

After a couple hitches and glitches, the contract for my commission is going out tomorrow. I'm excited to get this underway! It will require much more indoor painting of fabric, but as long as orange is involved, I'm looking forward to it.

I'm going off to make dinner now. I'll shall look for something orange to make.

Won't Dye Until Next Year (if I can help it)

These are my favorite pieces from my last round of fabric painting. It has been in the mid-80's and sunny in central PA for a long time. Lots of time to dye. But the temp. will drop tonight & clouds will come in and my prepared for dyeing fabric has run out so that's that. I'm kind of glad. I get kind of loopy being out in the sun for hours at a time. The piece on the top was done with a mix of Setacolor brown and gold sun paints. The design was made with cutouts from kid's foam sheets. The piece on the bottom was made with the same colors and I used leaves from my favorite Japanese maple. The tree has been quite sick for a few years. Each year we cut out the dead wood and hope. I love this tree and I NEED this tree.

I tend to dye in small doses. Each piece is rarely more than 14 x 20". I tend to be a bit messy when I create these fabrics, so I cut my losses & do small pieces. Its quite irritating to have a beautiful piece, only to ruin it by spattering it with a different color as I do another piece. Another reason is my teeny back yard. The whole yard is 30x45' with most of that given over to garden.

Now, each piece I have created must be heat set. This takes a huge amount of time. And its extremely boring. Needless to say, I have a whole summer of fabric that needs to be dealt with. I need procrastination therapy. Off to iron!!!