Reconnecting

Mar 9, 2015

blue-kona-2014Its astounding that more than a year has gone by since I last posted here. It certainly wasn’t because I didn’t have anything going on! After 14 months of putting together all sorts of details that go into running a Main Street Gallery and hosting different art shows every month, organizing classes and websites for others, I found that I was doing a lot…but with more stress and less and less art. The owners and I had different goals, and came to a parting of the ways.

I learned a great deal, and will take it all with me to the next gallery or retail emporium in my future. I’m already checking into several different ways to integrate creative arts, instruction, and sales into a space in my community, and that’s where the focus will be: creative connections. I love having music, art, film, writing–all sorts of creative things going on, and I love sharing the buzz that you can get going with creativity. Creativity makes every day a little brighter. Perception and communication are my goals, and I promise to keep sharing them, here, there and everywhere.

I’ve moved my studio home just in time to take advantage of the upcoming warmer weather, and I’ve got outdoor classes in shibori, dyeing for textile artists, fabric painting, metal etching and polymer clay coming up. I’m also working on more dolls, and have a new PDF on creating ball joint dolls with polymer clay that is available EXCLUSIVELY through the Polymer Clay Adventure. I’m also back to work on the video for that, now that the studio is set back up at my house.

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A Splash Of Color

Jun 13, 2011

tie dye fabricActually, it involves LOTS of splashes and lots of colors–I think we had 43 colors this year at our Annual Dyeing Days event.

As always, it was a marathon event, spanning 10 days of mixing, dying, rinsing, washing and of course cleanup!

This year we added a pole vaulting event. That is to say, we raided the vault which is our garage full of precious stuff–like old pvc pipes–and did some shibori arashi.

Susan's shibori shirtThis form of resist dyeing (shibori) is done around poles to create an effect that can look like rain in a storm (arashi).

Or it can look like feathers, or leaves. You can see the shibori arashi designs we did this year on garments and fabric yardage in the tiedye slideshow.

Our friends come to dye along with us at these events. Here’s Susan shown unwrapping a shibori arashi dyed shirt.

Here’s the pattern it created on the shirt.shibori arashi

This year as always I dyed lots of fabric–cotton jersey and kona cotton this time as well as some lovely cotton gauze. I also did lots of doll bodies, silk handkerchiefs and lace for making up more Spirit Doll kits, and this time I even did feathers. They took the dye beautifully!

feathers