Last days of warmth

hiking

from the deck

pond

back yard fun in progress

frog

Me 

Michaelmass Marigold Capes

To celebrate Michealmass up here in the North East Kingdom we decide to use marigolds to dye silks and  make them into capes. For the past month or so we have been collecting marigolds. Cliona loves to help take the flowers apart and we end up with a big basket of drying petals. Over the course of several days I will shake them a bit to make sure they are drying evenly. We did this several times until we have a quart jar full of dried petals. 

We invited some friends to join us in the festivities. The night before I soaked most of the petals in a large pot of water.  In the morning about half an hour before our friends arrived I began to heat up the pot of marigold petals. I also filled another pot with water and started heating it up. When our friends arrived I invited each child to add a few more dried petals to the pot. We added about 6 tablespoons of alum to the pot of water then we added our silks. We let the silks simmer in the alum water for about half an hour to act as a mordant to hold the dye in the silk. We also let the marigold water simmer for while the children played outside. 

While we waited for the dye bath to cool, we have a short circle followed by a snack. Then we squeezed the dye out of the petals and strained the dye bath. We removed the silks from the mordant bath. Then we separated the dye into two large bowls so we could have two children working at a time.

We hung them to dry on the low branches of the apple tree. Then we went for a walk to see our neighbors pond. We closed the morning with a lovely Michealmass story about shooting stars.

I sewed casing a little ways down the cape so that it would be shorted for my younger one and also create a sort of shoulder lapel.  I put in a piece of elastic just big enough to go over his head. After I sewed the elastic together, I slid the seam into the casing. This style works well for both my kids because they can put it on independently. My daughter often fusses with things being too tight or loose, so this also works well for her because it is always the same!

I sent some extra dye home with friends to experiment with.

A Quiltish sewing project

Introducung my Vermont sewing space. More details to come, soonish.

Here is a very quiltish comfotor cover for Cliona's bed. This will fit over a large throw sized down quilt that covers most of her twin bed. The hearts will match her heart curtains, wich match the flags that Aunt Sophie made.

I decided to go professional with the heart applicays and went out and bought stich witchery. It is iron on interfacing that binds your applicay to the back of the fabric. After I carefully ironed all the hearts into place, again I went a bit out of character and made a test heart to check my stich width on. WOW, good thing I did because the background fabric turns out to be such a loose weave that the zig-zag stich totally went haywire and the result was a deformed and crumpled heart - and hey - who wants that?!

So, hand stiching became my only other option. And i am loving it! I happen to have a beautiful varigated spool of Valdani pearl coton embrodery thread. It was a gift from my sister, along with most of the fabric used for this project. The colors work beautifully together.

I am really happy about how this is turning out. I had hoped to do some applicay, but wasn't sure exacty where I thought it would be a cluster of hearts here and there. I used the white stripes because I needed more fabric - and then they because THE place to put the hearts. It works out perfectly and its another interesing axample of my no planing technique. However, I will admit that my that one part I did atempt to plan for was the over all size - and well due to the number of strips of fabric I miscalculated the amount of fabric needed for seam allowance. SO, I will be making a border around the whole thin, probably using white, but perhaps something else. we;ll see what the universe serves up.

Sorry, if my writting is a bit scattered, I'm happy to be back blogging. I want to be spending more tiem here and working the old muslce in my head a little more. But for now? Yes, this is good.

Valentines!

We had to make some Valentines, and quick. We were already a day late. I had wanted to paint some wet on wet  red abstract beauty onto think watercolor paper.  But that takes a long time to dry and since I never got around to it. I pulled out the paper and used our beeswax block crayons instead. We swirled and mixed and colored red and purple and orange. Then I traced out some heart shapes and started cutting.  I was a good start. Digging around I found some water color crayon and after dipping them in water I made some nice deep, saturated red hearts in the center of our paper hearts. But, we still needed more. OUt came the hole punchers and reminiscent of doilies we started punching little borders on our hearts. My five year old was writing her friends names and punching patterns. My two year old wanted in on the action. I got out some yearn and put a bit of masking tape in the end and each valentine became a little sewing card for him to decorate with red yarn. Of, he sewed and sewed. One after another, he loved it. Wow, I was surprised.

Now, my five year old decided hers needed more color. So more hearts and more color. Another surprise came when she decided to add a black smudge to each valentine. "Its just a little squiggly smudgy thing. Every one has one. See, I added it to them all."

Vision Board

Yoga. Unite. Breath. Mother Goodess. Laugh. Play.

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