- Almost a week

Retrospective (11/7)

Patch #288 Hi bird

What didn't get written into the original post was our visit to the Austin Nature and Science Center with G. In addition to trails and hands on artifacts such as fossils, the center has a small menagerie of injured and imprinted animals that can't survive in the wild.

One in particular breaks my heart ... an imprinted roadrunner that spends her life spinning in circles, then stopping while her eyes jerk back and forth. After which she begins to spin again.

Except, G and I quietly crouched down and I coached him to softly whisper "Hi bird" over and over again. It worked. She stopped her endless spinning, turned her head to the side, and listened ...

The memory patch came about as I looked at a printed fabric and saw a stylized roadrunner, so I stitched it with images of Mesoamerican gods gliding behind my eyes.

Original Post

Yesterday was a productive day ...

with retrospective patches completed for October 2

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016_10_02_archive.html

featuring an overlay of Texas ...

on Europe ...

October 3

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/10/on-edge.html

showing two rounds of pomegranate dyeing ...

using liquid concentrate ...

and aluminum acetate mordant purchased from Dharma Trading ...

October 4

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/10/comment-alert.html

featuring my first attempts at Inktense Shibori, the first of which reminded me of the queen butterflies in our garden ...

And October 6

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016_10_06_archive.html

featuring the second bit of Shibori, a tribute to Hazel's wonderfully wild hair ...

Today we're headed to Austin, where we plan to have some more fun with G while his mom and dad celebrate their 8th wedding anniversary (a little early).

- Three-fer Thursday

Retrospective (10/14)

Patch #280 Hazel's swirled

I loved seeing what Hazel did to her hair in this post at Handstories 

http://handstories.typepad.com/blog/2016/10/continuing-my-mid-life-metamorphosis-.html

She called it metamorphosis, which fit perfectly with the bit of butterfly Shibori in this patch/homage.

Original Post 

I finally finished the September patches with this trio ...

For those of you coming over from Jude Hill's SunMoonStars, I've been making a patch for each day of 2016. Sometimes (okay, many times) I get behind. So when I do finish a patch, I insert it retrospectively into the original post. I've even got a subject heading titled Retrospective in the Index with 100+ entries.

So today I finished the patch for September 19

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/turning-redux.html

which was inspired by Jude Hill's post Turning. In the original post, I pictured a close-up shot of my antique clock reel, which coincidentally resembled a rising/setting sun ...

The original post for September 20th

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/golden.html

promised a take on yellow indiangrass. So I cut a stem to better see the colors ...

then found a variegated floss that would work ...

resulting in this ...

Last, but not least, I conjured up memories of my teenage peace activist years for the September 21 post about Vietnam

http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/war-and-peace.html

My mom's family was quite conservative (as was my mom), but I took after my liberal-minded dad. Consequently, I wore black armbands and clothing embellished with peace signs quite frequently ... including at family gatherings. One uncle used to disdainfully point out that I was wearing the "sign of the American chicken," but in spite of the glowering looks and shaking heads, I persisted. I'm proud of it to this day and my only regret is that I stopped wearing peace signs after the Vietnam War ended ...

I guess I could remedy that anytime, right?

- What if ...

Retrospective (10/14)

Patch #278 Shibori butterfly wing

Original Post 

What if I tried doing shibori with Inktense pencils? Couldn't find anything when I searched Google and Pinterest.

So I tried wrapping a small bit of blue linen on a tiny Cracker Barrel maple syrup jar. Scrunched it down, spritzed it with water, then layered on some blue, green, and gray ...

Then I stitched up another bit ...

gathered it ...

spritzed it with water and hit the edges with black. Here's how it looked after being rinsed and pressed ...

I think it has potential. Now if I can just figure out how best to imitate these beauties on the mistflower ...

which Don just identified as queen butterflies by checking the Wildflower Center website ...

- Turning redux

Retrospective (10/6)

Patch #263 Almost Equinox

Original Post 

I just had to show this in response to Jude Hill's post entitled Turning (http://spiritcloth.typepad.com/spirit_cloth/2016/09/turning.html) ...

It's an antique clock reel for winding skeins (which I mistakenly called a click reel for years because of the loud sound it makes every 40 revolutions) gifted by my parents back when I was the Needleworker at Colonial Williamsburg ...

Later ...

Three more patches ...

I'm slowly catching up with this month.  The patch for September 8th (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/never-say.html) started here with a print of the Hot Springs fountain and some indigo shibori that I made last year ...

the mirror imaging was too good to pass up, so I went with it ...

I originally planned to do a Celtic knot-like take on the GPS clover leaf in the September 9th post (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/drinking-kool-aid.html), but as I looked back at the Google search image collage of Magnolia Market near the end, my eye caught on the interior shot of the metal roof and light strings. It sure did remind me of the thrifted multi-color jacket I just got.

Sure enough, there were some patches of color that looked very similar to the metal roof panels. A few Jude Hill thread beads later, the lights came on ...

Interesting side note: my needle literally squeaked through the cloth, which I had hoped was linen since the fabric content label was cut out (my Cursillista readers in Tidewater Virginia will get a kick out of the maker's label that remained) ...

Looking more closely at the frayed edges of the patch, I realized I was working with wool. But hey, it made it through the wash, so onward!

The last patch for today came from cloth that I had been invited to bring to Deb McClintock's native natural dye workshop on September 10th (http://imgoingtotexas.blogspot.com/2016/09/dye-stuff.html). It was originally a vintage linen tablecloth ...

that I dyed last year with Prairie Tea (Croton) gathered in the yard. Better yet, it bore a striking resemblance to the Texas Persimmon dyed linen blouse that Deb was wearing ...

Gotta love what the land gives us!

- Cloudy with a chance of no rain

Addendum

Patch #205 Summer sky

Somehow I managed to forget to include this patch yesterday. In any case, it was cut from this indigo-dyed shibori cloth made last November during Maura Ambrose's dye workshop ...

Original Post

"Clouds," I thought to myself yesterday, "that's what I'll write about tomorrow."

As with last summer, depicted here in the cloth Land of Flood and Drought ...

there has been no rain this July either ...

And while there was still enough residual moisture in the ground last week to raise some morning mists, this past week has been bone dry.

Amazingly, though, there are often clouds in the afternoon, hence these streaky white patches ...

Sometimes there are even enough clouds to raise the (false) hope of rain. But rather than massing and turning somber gray, the clouds of Texas summer stay white and puffy, if they stay at all ...

Meantime, the floodplain belies its name, turning the dormant brown of an east coast field in midwinter ... 

And irony abounds as Snow-on-the-Mountain and Frostweed are the only wildflowers that are coming into bloom. 

- Violet and the Blood Moon

Morna Crites-Moore had a beautiful post today. If you haven't seen it yet, click here to take a look ... I'll wait.

Her post, along with the news of David Bowie's death from liver cancer inspired today's violet patch  (not that I was a fan, but Ziggy Stardust, Major Tom, and Suffragette City did play in the background of my teenage years) ...

Patch #11 Discharge bleach dyeing on linen

I haven't done any discharge dyeing with bleach for over a year, mostly because I wasn't wild about cutting freezer paper masks. Having long intended to try using Don's foam paint daubers as an alternative, Morna's post gave me the incentive finally to give it a try ..

Note: Jude Hill did not recommend Lemon Soft Scrub, but it was all they had at HEB

So even though it looked promising ...

Looks can be deceiving ...

nothing much happened. Reading the label I found bleach waaaay down the list of ingredients. Hmmm.

Not to be deterred, I dug out a bleach pen, squeezed some out on the plastic lid and gave it a try. Whoa ... talk about fast acting!  The first couple of moons went way too far. Then I tried rinsing sooner, and others didn't go far enough ...

In addition to the moon variations,
I was seriously debating which was the best violet representative

Fortunately, the moon at the beginning of the post was just right. Because it only takes one, right? Which reminds me ... gotta buy one of those billion dollar lottery tickets today.

Before I head out though, here's the final batch of pictures from the natural dyeing workshop ...

A blurry picture of Maura hanging the first demo

Ten of the sixteen participants

Three vats of red

into which we all dipped cloth we brought with us for the workshop

Brazilwood (which Mo informed me is an endangered species)
samples of which were cut up and given to each participant

Silk, cotton, linen and wool dipped in
Cochineal and Madder were also shared with everyone

 The second day of the workshop was dedicated to Indigo magic
1 ...

2 ...

3!!!

Once again, we were all given the opportunity to dye our own cloth

which everyone was prepared to do

The afternoon was dedicated to creating shibori

graced with a rare touch of sunshine over the blackland prairie