Painting summer

One of the things I’ve often found to be a great remedy for artistic blockage is fabric painting and dyeing. Painting more so than dyeing, truth to tell. Having completely depleted my hand-painted fabric supply over the past few months, I decided to have a go at some skies and oceans. Normally I paint outside,…

Bedevilment and details

Over the last few days, I’ve been preparing summer stock for two of the shops I supply. Most places around here like to be in full swing by mid-May, so I generally aim to have things in their hands by mid-April. This week has been a week of birches. I use hand-dyed cotton fabric (low…

All that glitters….

Ah, I love having an chance to play with some new products. Recently I wandered through Kent Hardware store (Kent are the spawn of Irving, a New Brunswick company) and discovered that they are ceasing to carry the Pebeo line of art supplies. The remainder of the paints were seriously discounted (I paid $1.30 CDN…

Feeling fuzzy-handed

It’s not really “work” work, but… I’ve been knitting a lot, lately, in and around other things. I don’t knit in the warmer months as I find my hands just get too sweaty, but cold winter evenings are perfect for clicking together needles (I like bamboo) and wool. This winter, I’ve discovered the joys of…

Bloody addictive

Dyeing fabric is an addiction. Painting it is bad enough, but requires more work and drying space and is therefore self-limiting, in some respects. But low-water immersion dyeing? Fast, easy, accomplishes large volumes in a batch and seeing the results is incredibly inspiring. Two evenings’ work, spread out on the ironing board…. Now to chop…