Fiber stuff—surprise!

What with remodeling one house, sprucing up another house, babysitting, laundry piling up and the other boring details of ongoing life, I am not finding a lot of time to spend on art these days. But the deadline for Farmer Girl aka It's Good to be Green, aka Green Thumb (which will be the official title I'm thinking) is looming, so I am sneaking in an hour here, an hour there. I am finally quilting. Here's a little peek.

Those lilies still need stamens, but those will come later.

A couple of months ago I joined the Complex Cloth list and so far I just lurk and listen. I'm not much of an original cloth maker, but am kind of fascinated by the processes used. Gerrie is so into making art cloth that I get to live a bit vicariously when she shows us her newest shibori and indigo dying and screen printing. It seems to me that her work just gets better and better, so I keep wondering if I am missing out by not incorporating some of these techniques. I have, I must admit, an aversion to "moosh"—my own term for that indistinct, sometimes muddy smooshiness that results from some of the artcloth techniques, especially dye techniques. I really like crispness. Still. . .

There has been talk lately on the Complex Cloth list of resist dyeing using school glue as a resist. Hmmm, I have an old bottle of that blue, gel-ish glue and some very cool carved wood stamps. So I cut a square of fabric late last night and stamped some glue all over it. This morning I painted over it (no, I was not up for mixing dyes and all that entails), let it dry, then stamped some more and painted some more. Here is the result. Not sure what I will do with it, but I think it's kind of pretty!

Batik-ish, but without the gacky wax. (I made a lot of batik in my distant youth and have had my fill of that kind of messiness) Only a little bit mooshy.

Here are the stamps I used.

They are really very cool. I have had them for so long I can't even remember where I got them. They are wood and are from India I think. Their original use was for batik, for stamping wax. I've used them in several ways, including directly inking them and stamping.

So, now I feel like an artist again. Back to the dishes and laundry and floorplans—