Ten! Single Digits Tomorrow!!!

A lovely day here today. The wind has finally stopped blowing and the sun was shining brightly. I think our temp must have gotten close to 60 this afternoon, which is great for this time of year. C worked in the garden all afternoon, pruning and straightening up. I cleaned up both studios a little bit, finishing up some old projects and beginning new phases on other works in progress. C also smoked some chicken breasts......enough so that we will have them in our lunch salads for quite some time! This is the new smoker that I got him for Christmas:

It's made by Cookshack, and he just loves it!

As part of Susan Sorrell's monoprinting class, I had ironed some freezer paper that had gingko leaves cut out onto a piece of muslin and then applied textile paint. The paint was too watery and I wasn't really thrilled with the outcome, but the piece of fabric was laying around in the studio so it was fair game, right? I threw it into a soda ash bath for a few minutes, wrung it out and then squished it into a glass jar and dumped some turquoise Procion MX dye onto it, let it sit, microwaved it a bit and voila:

Sorry that the pic is so blurry, but it was pretty dark in my dye studio when I snapped it. The fabric was still wet, so hopefully when it dries there will be some more contrast.

This is another piece that I batiked a month or so ago:


It was an oddly shaped leftover piece of muslin but I just couldn't throw it away, so I played around with some soy wax and my chicken tjap, and then threw the fabric into a turquoise and blue dye pot for a while. I've decided to free motion quilt it and make it into a pillow. You can see the beginning of the quilting. I'm not pleased with the eyelashes that I'm getting on the top of the fabric. I've decreased the tension down to almost nothing, and I'm still having trouble. Any suggestions?

Tomorrow is going to be a fun, fun day! I am off early in the morning to Greenville, SC to take a Fiber Collage workshop with Susan Sorrell! WooHoo!! Greenville is just a hop, skip and a jump from home, so I should be taking advantage of Susan's location, don't you think?!!!

Have you been creative today? Hope so!!

PEACE!!