Day Seven: A Week at FabricDesigns.com

The REAL day seven turned out to be a non fabric day. I am skipping it because it probably wouldn't interest you. Things happen. Being self employed has its benefits IF a friend is in need and can't get to the store. I can take her. And then, it turns into more errands, and then this and that, and before you know it, the day is gone. So - skipping ahead to today - Tuesday - even though it is slow, you should know that not all days are glorious dyeing days with bolts of silk going to exotic places and people clamoring for more gradations of cotton than I can supply in one day's work.

Here is what I did today. This cotton shirt that I LOVE got a speck of red dye on the front. I was going to throw it away, or use it as a dyeing shirt, but then decided to over dye it because, after all... it fits well and makes me happy when I wear it. The speck is red. I need to figure out what color to use. I'll decide what color to make it as I pre-soak. This is actually a really cool picture if I do say so myself. I love gray and the gray shirt in the stainless steel sink is a beautiful study in tones, don't you think?




I'm going to use up some of a maroon dye that I bought a few years ago. It is getting kind of old so it's better to use it up soon.

Into the dye it goes. How long should I leave it in? Oh, whatever...

I ended up leaving it in the dye about 4 hours. The actual color is NOT this pink. It is a good maroon and of course the stitching is white as not many companies use all cotton thread these days. The thread is a poly mix so it remains white and that's okay with me. Got some nice mottling. Wish the color was better in the picture. I thought I had fixed it when I edited the pics but oh well.

After the shirt came out of the dye, I needed to order some more fabric. Here I am on hold. Gurrrr... nice music but this irks me. Irk you too??

Now I've got my sales rep on the line and we are talking bolts and how many are left in the storeroom. Some of my students from this last session at QuiltUniversity know that these guys had 7,000 yards left but the thread count was wrong so they had to "find" more, which they did but it left me without ANY Aurora muslin for about 4 weeks. Somehow they "lost" the order so there were a whole lotta bolts of cotton sitting somewhere else until they "found" them. How this happens I'll never know. Anyway...mission accomplished. I then needed to order some more dye. Talking to Dharma always is fun.

The next mundane project is to wash some of the towels I use to wipe up dye spills and excess dye that runs off the tables and onto my studio floor. I do laundry for Fabric Designs maybe three times a year so you can guess that I have a lot more towels than this and a lot more loads to do today... Boring!

The next bit of extreme excitement is to wash the buckets I've used in the last two days to dye the shirt and a few other odds and ends. The fun never ends.




Now it's time to cut some 5 and 10 yard runs of muslin because next month sign ups for Quilter's Palette class open and orders will start to come in for the fabric for this very popular class. Being ahead of the game will save me time and energy during the month of December when I have other things I would rather do than cut up fabric. Stockpiling is mindless work that I rather like. Here is the "before" shot of the supply shelf.

Steve carried the last box down to the studio which contained 6 bolts so I'm getting down to the end of the last order. Good thing I called this morning to get more. I usually order 24 bolts at a time.

Here is the "after" shot. Interesting to note by the clock on the wall that it took me 1 hour to cut all that.

Here is a picture of the small piece I did last year that I am now making about 10 times larger. It is always a challenge to enlarge pieces and keep the same energy alive and well. There is a certain "zen" about art that is contained in your first effort so to bring that around a second time is really hard to do. We'll see if I can do it. So far I do not think I'm capturing the essence of the smaller version. Need an attitude adjustment before working on it again.

Here is a detail of the small piece. Lots of spunk. Lots of fire. Lots of zeal. I'm not getting it this time around. What to do about it? There are a few ways of gaining back the zip - I can detail out just what colors are missing and how they were placed on this one and see what I am NOT doing on the larger one. I can also get excited about doing it the second time. That's the main ingredient missing. My art (and most artists will agree with me here) will always show my attitude while making it. The new piece says, "hooohum". Why am I doing another piece? Because I love this first one and am challenged by the thought of increasing the size so dramatically. The simple thought of "can I do it?" is the motivator.

So that's one week at Fabric Designs.com. I will keep blogging as I work on this larger piece, as I hear from the church in Alberta about the silk panels, and as I have other interesting work that comes in to show you. It may not be every day but I will let you know when there is something worth looking at or talking about. If there are things you want to see or hear about let me know.

Thanks for being interested in what I do. Thanks, Myrna for showing me how to do this and helping me get started. Blog on everyone. Dye hard and dye often.

- MM