leaf dress

This wonderful dress/top/jacket found a home today.
Thanks Jane!      

It is silk chiffon, which I have dyed and printed.  The pattern was adapted from a 1980 or so disco dress.
It's sort of like a leaf.                                                                            

sunflowers

I have been working on a series of sunflowers, to be pins.

Here are some at various stages.

Then I saw this on etsy:

I fell in love and had to have it!  It is by Jen at walrustusk.  I now know from experience how hard it is to sew beads on in a neat circle.  I really love the perfection of the beading and the artist's exploration of variations of one form.  And the colors.

work space

A peek into one of my work spaces.  That is a cat's foot.

This is the cat.

One of my other work companions, Mowgli.

new stuff

The last of the yellow, for now.
This runner is on etsy.

sunshine

I am making yellow things.

This one is on etsy.

pinks

scarves at Modela

I am taking a bunch of springy scarves into Modela tomorrow.  They are mostly cotton and dyed in various ways.

One is a great silk-linen blend.

and a couple are dyed with madder, a natural dye.

dyed tyvek

Isn't this great!  It is made of dyed tyvek.  This bracelet is the work of Carol-lynn Swol.

a beautiful shirt

Isn't this lovely?  My clothes are feeling more special since I haven't made any in a long time.
It's silk chiffon,with hand dyed silk ribbon and hand knit lace cuffs.  It's for sale at my shop, I haven't really tried much clothing in my my etsy shop.

dyeing with madder

I used madder to dye for the first time!  It was fun!

I started by measuring the weight of the 2 scarves I wanted to dye, they were already premordanted.

Then I measured the same weight of madder sticks, and cut them up smaller.

 I simmered the madder for an hour, strained it and simmered the silk scarves for an hour.

One of the scarves was previously bound over plant materials, an eco print experiment.

I will take a picture of the scarves tomorrow, but here are some of my other eco print experiments.

my process, or why I was rejected by house beautiful

I want to document, and share my process.  I was contacted by house beautiful this week with the possibility of appearing in their fabric column, but when I told them I work in limited quantities they said they weren't interested because their readers need access to large amounts of fabric.  I want to show why produce individual lengths of fabric, usually about 5 yards each.  I really have a hard time exactly replicating things so every piece is unique.

It's hard to document everything!  Here is a start.

I print a tables length of linen, or cotton, or silk on a huge printing table my husband built for me.

I use small silk screens, and a yard stick to help place the screen.  This keeps the piece nice and loose, some people use much more precise registration.

The fabric gets rolled with the base cloth underneath it onto a tube and gets steamed for 15 minutes.
I forgot to take a picture.

Then it gets thrown in the dryer to dry, them the washer to get wet, and rinse off excess printing ink(dye) if desired.

Now the dyeing!  In this example I am trying to match the colors in this silk chiffon scarf, so I compare it to dyed samples,

I make an educated guess about which dye to use, and the amount, remembering I can always overdye it darker.  Lately I have been dyeing in buckets, which can easily hold 5, or even 10 yards of fabric.

There are 2 buckets because I have 2 lengths of fabric and I am experimenting with various amounts of salt and washing soda.


I got a beautiful color, but more blue than the color I was going for.

I have listed this on etsy, and dyed another length today, with 1/4 t sage and 1/4 t cayman instead of 1/2 t cayman.  I can post a picture of this tomorrow.

this gorgeous fabric is for sale here

Saturday at the store

I photographed and posted some new remnant packs in my etsy shop:

see listing here

and I had several great repeat customers in!  And someone looking for doll clothes.

a beautiful barn near the Wolf River

beautiful dyeing

http://www.jurgenlehlshop.jp/image/j_jewelry_naturalstone/main_img07_en.jpg

 I am at my Mother's in northern Wisconsin for a few days.  My only project is knitting this sleeve and petting cats.

textural adornment

I am gradually adding the jewelry I've been making to my etsy store.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/susanshinnick

stores

I have an etsy store:  http://www.etsy.com/shop/susanshinnick

I also have a brick and mortar, or more accurately 115 year old leaning wooden, store.
The first pictures show it as I found it.

Then a zombie movie came to town and painted it so they could use it and now it looks like this.

pieces from pieces

Back when I used to make clothing, I did a series of garments made from old quilt blocks which I pieced, printed, dyed and quilted.