Wednesday, June 29, 2011

The Plainwell Silk--a Dyeing Adventure in Michigan!

Hello again.....My fiber adventures have continued all spring and into summer...but my blogging about them..hmm..not so much!

I'm back in blogland now..... and here's a bit about dyeing, nuno felting and the friendships that come from fiber. When I was in Plainwell, MI in May (more about that soon) one of the special bonuses was dyeing a some habotai silk with Suzanne Petzold Higgs www.hookedonfelt.blogspot.com After a fine dinner, made by her husband, Jim, she pulled out this giant piece of habotai silk and lots of great colors and we created a piece of silk that has the colors of sunrise, dusk and sunset. She gave it to me to take back to Seattle. (I call it 'The Plainwell Silk"..maybe to be a fiber based mystery novel title?!0

The first picture is of the large piece back here in Seattle.

The second one is after nuno felting. I chose colors that I thought would work well for the color palettes of sunrise/dusk/sunset..most of them worked quite well..I will do some different things with the remaining piece of silk.


This photo (below) is a close up of the dyed piece before felting. The second one is a close-up
of a silk flower of the same material layered on. I made 7 flowers and I was happy with 5 of them..this one especially. As felters know, some of the wool/fabric mixes blend well, some no so much...



These guys who live in pots on my little porch, modeled in the absence of another model. Also the flamingo pink was more prominent than I expected, so a good match..and some good contrast.

This is the ruched/shirred side.


And this photo shows the nuno felted scarf in the front and the shawl size piece waiting for my next project. Thanks for the silk and the dyeing adventure, Suzanne.

More soon on dyeing and other fiber adventure on this blog..soon...very soon....