Week 5 in the Studio

Either I didn't get much done or I just didn't take many pictures! I think it was a week of finishing loose ends and tidying up - I keep the studio pretty organized, there's little room for storage but I think its time to purge a few things - maybe next week!

First off, I made more of my Shibori Shiraz fabrics - I have another piece I want to work on and I need LOTS of water fabrics...

Each colour requires a new dye bath, so while it takes a while each step is fairly quick. Here they are drying on a rack....

They get washed and rinsed by hand and then ironed before putting back on the bottles. The top one is finished, the others will need at least one more dye bath.

I painted some canvas for my sketchbooks and then realized I had painted the wrong weight (did you know its available in different weights?) - so it might be repurposed for some of the vessels that I've been making.

I finally got the ice machine going again - yes, I have a table top ice machine in the studio! And I made more ice dyed fabrics - some 20" squares and some full yards. Not every piece is a raging success, so a couple are going back into the ice and dye next week.

Did you know that I have an online Colour on Ice Workshop? You can learn more about it here: https://www.susanpm.com/2016/11/23/colour-on-ice/

I noticed a strip of painted paper hanging on a rack and thought it might work into a book form - I added some "grass" lines along the bottom and then sprayed some matte varnish over to keep it from smudging. Not sure how this might evolve but I'll work into it a bit more next week.

In the Zoom meeting this week with my Cloth to Codex Workshop, I mentioned how students might like to keep track of how different paints work on fabric - I used a piece of cotton sheeting and then applied different paints - keeping track of each one. Its an easy reference to see how much they bleed and how they feel after drying - some are much stiffer than others....an important consideration if you are planning to stitch afterwards.

.....and in an unrelated part of my week, I was opening a box of books and found an old bible with an inscription - I wasn't too sure who Willie Martin might be, although its a surname of one side of the family. I sent the image to a relative and she was able to find out it was my grandfather's brother and she even found out that Mr Bates was a local farmer. Another family mystery solved with more questions..