I didn't mean to be gone so long from blogging. But it's spring time and
even though I am stepping back from creating art to sell I am a very creative person
so I keep creating. And the wonderful part of not creating for profit (if you can call it profit) is that the
pressure is gone. I have been doing a lot of garden renovation. More on that later.
For now it's about the Erosion Bundle.
Because it's spring time there are so many flowers in bloom. So one fine
spring morning last week I decided to try adding some of their color to my
Erosion Bundle. These photos all show color added by "beating" the flowers
into the cloth. Once I got past the "beating" part I took some of the purple
Iris flowers and with one petal at a time. I covered the cloth and flower with a manila folder (wait till you see the manila folder it's gorgeous)
and hammer it. The color took easily and the purple became this beautiful blue.
I then took some leaves, as they are in abundance on the plants and did the same. Some worked better
than others. I was still having a hard time "beating" flowers but pushed on.
The pansies we're still blooming, but wouldn't be for long with the hot weather
approaching fast. So I took some of their flowers and transferred (I like that word better) there "faces" to the cloth. This way even though the plants were gone apart of them would remain with me and
even continue on in whatever piece of art I create with the cloth.
They transferred perfectly. The flowers all contained a lot of moisture so I
allowed the cloth to dry. I wanted the new "dye" to last.
I'm not sure how to best go about this (it might have to do with waiting, which I'm not so good at). So doing what I know best. I decided to
heat set the color before washing this time. So I ironed it. The heat from
the iron brought out the earthy smell from the transferred dye. So it had to be washed.
A lot of the color came out while I was rinsing it in the sink. So I didn't rinse too long or use soap.
I will continue with the washing to see what happens.
But in the meantime, I wanted to try making something with the cloth.
One idea was to create these little flowers with strips of the fabric.
So I ripped off the edge and began wrapping. The very edge of the cloth didn't have a lot
of color to it so the coloring is very subtle. I love it. This dying process is unique so the cloth
becomes unique in it's coloring also. I don't believe I could get this with commercial fabric.
I still have the other piece of cloth from the original buried piece to experiment with and most of this piece also.
I have yet to decided what to do with the remaining cloth. Perhaps part of a journal, or a collage, maybe even as ribbon for hand sewing, and of course more flowers ????
