FALL ECO PRINTS

I continue to gather plants from the areas surrounding where I live and from my garden/yard. I have been using these gathered plant materials to do eco printing as talked about by India Flint in her book Eco Colour. I am fascinated by the beautiful colors that come from these plants. Here is a wool sweater.

A sleeve

The back.

Close up of front.

I have since done some hand stitching around the collar and down the button band with my hand-dyed handspun yarn.

I finally finished piecing together the eco print shawl I worked on during my trip to the Taos Wool Festival.

I constructed this shawl using many different sized pieces of silk charmeuse and wool crepe that I had eco printed. Although the silk charmeuse was recently purchased, the wool crepe was formerly a skirt (from my days as a lawyer) that has been redeployed into this shawl so there's a part of my past in this project.

This shawl was all put together by hand stitching. Then, I took strips of silk charmeuse and used them as an edging, sewing them by hand all around the edge of the shawl.

This is still a work in progress as I plan to do more top stitching on it. I may try some embroidery.

We have had wild thunderstorms starting about 4:30 a.m. this morning when the power went out for the first of five times today. Much lightning and thundering -- something we don't often see here in Southern California. And hoards of rain, hail too. We definitely welcome this precipitation. And, now, I am hunkered down for the evening, with a glass of merlot and my stitching to keep me warm and content. (My husband is at a conference in Dallas, Texas, where it is 85 degrees.)