Tuesday, October 19, 2010

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.)

3 comments:

ColorSlut said...

Wow. These fabric are amazing and the feeling of nature is over whelming. Nice work

Aussie Jo said...

Your shawl is wonderful, beautiful prints

india flint said...

nice prints you have there...