Sunflower dye results – not too shabby!

And then the details.

These are the books I have on dyeing fibers.

My plan for the summer is to learn about natural dyes from the plants growing wild on the farm.  To simplify my learning process, I decided to pick just one of these books to work through, and I chose Wild Color by Jenny Dean.

I also decided to limit myself to wool initially.  I got Crown Colony 2-ply wool yarn from Dharma Trading.

I had some basic equipment – a big enamel pot, some small enamel bowls, gallon-size glass jars, and an electric hot plate.  I bought a basic digital scale and a big candy thermometer, to keep records.

Day One – Prep Day

I wound the big skein into 25 little sample skeins of 10 grams each.

I prepared a jar of copper liquor and a jar of iron liquor, by putting scraps of each metal in a glass jar, and then covering with a mixture of water and vinegar, one part water to one part vinegar for the copper, two parts water to one part vinegar for the iron.

Copper scraps in vinegar and water on the left, iron scraps in vinegar and water on the right, about five days after initial preparation.

Evening One

I soaked the sample skeins overnight in distilled water – the water that drips from my window unit air conditioner into a plastic bucket.

Day Two – Mordant Day

Five skeins got no mordant at all, five got soaked in water from my pond (the thought was that it must be full of tannins). and fifteen got an alum mordant.

For the alum mordant, Dean recommends using 8% of the weight of the fiber in alum, and 7% of its weight in cream of tartar.  She offers different ways of figuring how much to use with ounces, grams, dry weight, solution, milliliters, etc.  After a lot of flipping back and forth in her book*, this is the method I ended up with:

Put 2 gallons of cool water into a pot dedicated to non-food use.

Boil about 5 cups of water separately.

In one measuring cup, mix 2 ounces of cream of tartar with 2 cups boiling water, until dissolved.  (I used Adams brand.)  When well-mixed, add 7 tablespoons (or a half cup, less one tablespoon) to the cool water in the big pot.

In another, mix 2 ounces alum with 2 cups boiling water.  (I used McCormick regular household alum from the grocery store.  The jar I bought had 1.9 ounces so I just used the whole thing.)  When dissolved, add one-half cup to the cool water in the big pot.  Stir everything well.

Remove the sample skeins from the water they have been soaking in, squeeze out excess water, and place into the pot.  Bring pot to a simmer, simmer 1 hour.  Turn off the heat and let the yarn cool in the solution overnight.

Day Three – The Fun Part!  Sunflower Dye

Here are the sunflowers in the garden.

Irresistible sunflowers.

I had basically two ways of dyeing with them – traditional enamel pot and heat source, and solar jar.

Dye Pot -  I weighed the sunflowers, covered them with water, heated to a simmer for an hour (without adding any yarn), and cooled overnight.

Solar Jar – I weighed the sunflowers, both fresh and spent blooms, and put them in a covered glass jar.  Dean talks about using a real solar cooker and a black pot, and tilting the reflector to catch the sunlight, but she lives in the UK.  I live in Texas.  I just poured boiling water over the sunflowers, enough to cover, added 30 grams of yarn, and let it sit outside in the afternoon sun.

I poured boiling water over sunflowers in an old Pyrex pot, and let it sit in the sun.

Day Four – The Dyeing Continues

Dye Pot – I added 3 small skeins (30 grams) to the pot of the cooled dye, with the plant parts still in the bath, heated to a simmer and let it simmer for one hour.  I let it cool and pulled out skeins at different times.

Top two – alum mordant, sunflower dye, traditional method of heating.  Bottom sample – dipped in the iron liquor for only five minutes!

You can see that whether I removed the skein after 4 hours or 24 hours, didn’t make much difference.  I even left the bottom sample in for 48 hours, and it looked just the same as the other two, so I dipped it in some of the iron solution.  After only five minutes, I had that dark gray!

Dye alone – meh. Dip alone – meh. Dip and dye together – good color!

The top sample shows the sunflower dye on unmordanted wool – a nice warm tan.  The middle sample shows the results of the yarn just dipped into the iron liquor for 10 minutes.  The bottom sample shows the combination of the two – unmordanted yarn soaked in sunflower dye for 3 hours, then dipped in iron for five minutes.

I will say that that yarn already feels a little brittle.  We will have to see how it holds up.

So those are my results with the typical dye pot.  I was much more excited about the results of my solar jar!

These samples are the results of alum mordant and sunflower dye in a solar jar.

The top sample is one of my favorites.  Greens are not easy to get!  And I like this one.

The temperature in the jar only gets to about 120 degrees F, and I pulled this out after only four hours.   It’s a little blotchy – this sample was in a weak alum bath because I had read directions wrong.  I later added more alum to its mordant bath, but I think I will purposely do a very weak solution to see if that boosts the blue-green color in other batches.

The next two samples look pretty much the same.  One of them was in a dye jar with the plant parts, and one of them was in a jar where the strained dye had sat for one week, but it didn’t seem to make any difference to the final color.

The last sample also had alum mordant, and sat in the solar jar for 48 hours.  I dipped it in the copper liquor afterward.  It does seem to have a little more blue cast, and the copper is supposed to make it more washfast, so we’ll see.

Samples showing the original wool, and solar-dyed samples with pond water.

In this picture you see the original wool on top, then an unmordanted sample from the solar jar, a very light pinky-beige.

I got the darker pink sample by using pond water as a mordant.   Dean is a big proponent of making tannin water with pounded acorns, rhubarb roots, etc.  Well my pond has 50 years of fallen pine needles and acorns in it, so I thought it might be a good source of tannins.  Its pH as about 6.4.

The bottom sample was just the same as the one above it, until I did the five minute iron dip on it, and got a good strong dark gray again.

So there you have it!  I really love how I can just throw some plants and wool in a jar, and go off to do my regular work, and come back to find a pretty surprise.  Lots of colors from one dye source, lots of ideas to follow up on.  I will let all the samples sit for a few weeks before I try washing them, and then I will also do a lightfastness test.

*Fifteen small skeins equaled 150 grams of wool.  According to Dean, you should use 8% of the weight of the wool in alum, and 7% in cream of tartar.  That would equal 12 grams of alum, and 10.5 grams of cream of tartar.  If they are in solution, that would be 24 teaspoons of alum solution and 21 teaspoons of cream of tartar.

From my growing up years, I remember him doing everything from building rooms to re-roofing to wallpapering.

Dad painting the dormer of his in-laws’ house.

I didn’t learn all his skills, but here are some things I did learn about renovating and craftsmanship:

• There are lots of things you can safely do yourself.

Lessons passed on to the next generation – we painted so often when I was growing up, that I didn’t think anything of having my three-year-old help paint her own room.

• Have a place for everything and everything in its place.  After downsizing and inheriting lots of stuff from three generations of family, I don’t always know where everything is.  But I try to!
• Do the prep work.  Good prep work makes for happy workers.  See the photo above.
• A change is as good as a rest.  If you vary your projects, you’ll enjoy your work.
• Take your time to do it right.

When I was in about seventh grade, my dad taught me to refinish furniture, using a piece of glass to shave off the old layers of finish.

Why, oh why, would we want to remove that green spray paint!

When I was about 8 or 9, he made me a fabulous doll house out of scraps of wood.  Years later, he remodeled it for my older daughter, and then built a new one for my younger daughter.

Dad remodeling the dollhouse.

The dollhouse is sturdy enough to really be played with.

I think the best lessons I learned, though, were on this day:

Painting the garage.

This was a Saturday when my mom went to work, and my dad told us we were going to paint the garage as a surprise for her.  Lesson learned – Projects are more fun when they are to make someone else happy.

Here’s the way the day went:

8 – 10 – scrape and sand
10 – 10:20 – coffee break
10:20 – 12:00 – paint
12 – 12:30 – lunch
12:30 – 2 – paint
2 – 2:45 – coffee break
2:45 – 4 – paint and clean up

See what happened there?  As the day went on, the work sessions got shorter and the breaks got longer.  We had great neighbors during my childhood, and I’m sure some of them dropped by to help, or at least to help us eat  – Mom usually had a fresh apple pie ready on weekends.  Lesson learned – Work is inevitable so you might as well make it enjoyable!

I don’t exactly remember how that evening went, because we had so many similar summer evenings.  Mom probably oohed and ahhed over the fresh paint, and we probably grilled hot dogs and ate watermelon.  Lesson learned – A finished project deserves a little celebration.

Those concepts are still part of my work habits.  I will clear dead trees or build a pen all day long, but I am going to need some breaks and some lemonade to be effective.  And a little apple pie doesn’t hurt either!

So thanks, Dad, for good lessons!  Happy Father’s Day, and tell Mom to make you a pie!

So many pictures to take, so many things to research….

I have been feeling that it was time for me to move from “Quilting 101″ to “202,” and I just couldn’t let myself wander off into any other interests until I tried a more advanced technique.

I’ve made mostly crib-size quilts, and with each one I have tried to improve my precision and efficiency.  I thought I was ready to step up from these small quilts to a larger quilt.  A local teen run-away center needed twin-size quilts for boys.  That seemed ideal for a project, because what boy is going to worry about the quilt being perfect?

I decided to try a Disappearing Nine Patch out of shirting and other masculine prints.

There are lots of possible variations on the arrangement of the blocks.

I had fun making the blocks, and sewing them into strips -  but that’s where I stopped.

I like to quilt-as-I-go.  Usually I place one large piece in the center, and then surround it with strips on all four sides, stitching through fabric, batting, and backing all at once.  For this larger quilt, I thought I would place the first strip across the center, and then add one horizontal row at a time.  It sounded pretty easy, but once I had everything laid out, it looked huge, and I thought I’d never get it through my machine.  It took me a few days to work up the courage to try.

So that’s what I did all day yesterday, and it came out pretty well!  I’m not wild about the color palette, but it’s not for me. Most of the corners even match!  And that is not my strong point.

The top so far.

The bottom row flipped up to show the construction – each row is sewn to the row before, and the batting and backing at the same time.

I think what helped the most was that I had absolutely wonderful backing fabric.  It’s strong and smooth and never even tried to pucker.

Detail showing the beautiful backing fabric turned up as binding.  It is by Faye Burgos for Marcus Fabrics.

I also used a fabulous little folding table at right angles to my sewing table, to support all the fabric as I sewed.  It has adjustable legs, so it’s easy to match the height of my table.

Great folding table with adjustable legs.

The hard part is done!  I still need to add borders and do the actual quilting, but I have more familiarity with those parts.  I feel like I’ve finished the essay portion of the exam, and all I have to worry about now is some multiple choice!   Hand me that syllabus for Quilting 202!

Fast forward to this year.  About 2 yards of a very narrow warp were still sitting on the loom.  It was too narrow and too bland to really do anything with.  Finally I decided to just use up odds and ends of yarn and make some little dish towels.

I added a few threads of a thick cotton yarn as thin warp stripes, and used a similar yarn in the weft of some of the patterns.

Here are the samples right off the loom.

Here they are after being machine washed and dried. If you look close, you can see how the threads have “bloomed” and closed up the gaps between them.

Here is the draft for the four variations.

They remind me of lemon sherbet.  I may cut them in pieces and sew them into a little table-topper.

Details for weavers:  5/2 cotton in warp and some weft; the weft in 4 is a cotton/ramie flake blend.  And if you need blank draft sheets, they are available (for 4 and 8 shafts) at Albemarle Handweavers Guild.

It feels great to be weaving again!  But I hear the quilts calling too… and the dye pots…

I didn’t keep notes on the exact dates I planted, I just checked the calendar to see if it was a “good” day for whatever crop I was planting.  But I don’t know if transplanting counts the same as planting!

This is the first year I ordered seeds for food plants from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange – I’ve gotten cotton seeds from them before.  I also really read the descriptions and ordered heirloom varieties that are supposed to be good for this area.  I didn’t get every seed to sprout, but the ones that did have gotten huge!

I also have red-foliated white cotton growing, birdhouse and luffa gourds, red onions and gold potatoes.  I need a bigger garden!

“You know they were paid by the word, that’s why there’s so much description.”

Well, that’s not really true.

I like books from the 1800s, and have read a lot of them – Dickens, Eliot, Trollope, Austen.  But I often feel the real story is not being told so much as hinted at. The allusions and innuendos go over my head.   And what really trips me up is the sentence structure – all those qualifiers, dependent clauses, and double negatives.  As in this sentence (feel free to skip ahead) -

The Honourable John was not, perhaps, so much accustomed to the ready use of his tongue as was his honourable brother, seeing that it was not his annual business to depict the glories of the farmers’ daughters: at any rate, on this occasion he seemed to be at some loss for words; he shut up, as the slang phrase goes, and make no further allusion to the necessity of supplying young Gresham with a proper string of hunters.

- Doctor Thorne, Anthony Trollope

I can translate that – “John realized that he was not as glib as his brother, and had accidentally insulted someone, so he stopped talking about the subject.” But when all the action is stated so indirectly, it gets tiring to read.

But as I was following my interest in the Impressionists, the name of an author of that era kept coming up – Émile Zola.  I had never read anything by him so I decided to give him a try.  And I loved him!  His style of writing seems so modern, so easy to follow.

I started with The Ladies’ Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames), which is a fictionalized account of the huge department stores that arose in Paris, and how they affected the small businesses that had been the norm.  Since I have also been watching Mr. Selfridge on Masterpiece Theatre, I enjoyed this look behind the scenes at a department store.

It opens with the main character, Denise, looking in the shop windows of the Ladies’ Paradise, and seeing -

…an exhibition of silks, satins, and velvets, arranged so as to produce, by a skillful artistic arrangement of colors, the most delicious shades imaginable.  At the top were the velvets, from a deep black to a milky white: lower down, the satins – pink, blue, fading away into shades of a wondrous delicacy;, still lower down were the silks, of all the colors of the rainbow, pieces set up in the form of shells, others folded as if round a pretty figure, arranged in a life-like manner…  At the back a large sash of Bruges lace, of considerable value, was spread out like an altar-veil, with its two white wings extended; there were flounces of Alençon point, grouped in garlands; then from the top to the bottom fluttered, like a fall of snow, a cloud of lace of every description – Malines, Honiton, Valenciennes, Brussels, and Venetian-point.

An author that actually knows textiles!!! *happy sigh*

I was hooked by that opening scene, and I wasn’t disappointed by the rest of the book.

Denise is not your typical 1800s female character – she is a working girl, not a lady of leisure.  She is neither a doormat like Little Nell, nor a self-centered weakling like Madame Bovary.   She is that rare character that can see more than one side of an issue.  She loves the Ladies’ Paradise and thinks it represents the future, but she also sympathizes with those whose businesses are being hurt by it.

I was fascinated with the business details as the Paradise constantly expands- the logistics of handling the merchandise, from its initial arrival through display, sale, and delivery by horse-drawn van;  the innovations such as using loss leaders and accepting returns; the deals to squeeze suppliers and turn the inventory.  All of the attempts to minimize cost and maximize margins would fit right into today’s world.

I enjoyed the way that the recurring minor characters  – employees conniving for promotions, and high-profile customers (including a wealthy kleptomaniac, a savvy bargain hunter, and a shopping addict) presented different facets of running the business.

Next I read His Masterpiece (L’Œuvre), which is an account of an artist trying to achieve recognition.  Zola had known Cézanne from childhood, and created a fictional character, Claude Lantier, who was a combination of Manet and Cézanne.  He also included a writer character that was based on himself.  Manet was already dead by the time the book was published, but Cézanne stopped speaking to Zola over the book.

It is not a happy book, but if you are interested in the Impressionists, it is worth reading just for the scenes of the politicking going on among the artists and jurors of the Paris Salon.

What I really loved best were the descriptions of Paris.

…this, the heart of Paris, had taken full possession of him.  The splendid evening seemed to widen the horizon.  There were patches of vivid light, and of clearly defined shadow; there was a brightness in the precision of each detail, a transparency in the air, which throbbed with gladness.  And the river life, the turmoil of the quays, all the people, streaming along the streets, rolling over the bridges, arriving from every side of hat huge cauldron, Paris, steam there in visible billows, with a quiver that was apparent in the sunlight.  There was a light breeze, high aloft a flight of small cloudlets crossed the paling azure sky, and one could hear a slow but mighty palpitation, as if the soul of Paris here dwelt around its cradle.

- His Masterpiece, Émile Zola

I think those words complement the Impressionists’ paintings of Paris.

Zola considered himself to be writing “Naturalist” novels, where he just observed the effects of society on individuals. He thought that literature could be like a type of scientific experiment. What I remember from my college literature classes is that this movement drew a lot of sharp criticism for focusing on the lower classes and on the ugly realities of life.  Apparently a description like this one was just too much for readers in the 1800s-

After shaking off the water, Claude went up the deep archway entrance, to a courtyard, where the light was quite greenish, and where there was a dank,musty smell, like that at the bottom of a tank.  There was an overhanging roofing of glass and iron at the foot of the staircase, which was a wide one, with a wrought-iron railing, eaten with rust.

- His Masterpiece, Émile Zola

It’s ironic to me that Zola and critics focused so much on “scientific” descriptions like that one, because to me a lot of his work is over-the-top romantic.  In the last chapter of The Ladies’ Paradise, as Denise is deciding on her destiny, there are pages of her running through all the departments of the store, every last one of which has only pure white merchandise on display.  It was a little too symbolic, even for me.

But over all, I feel like Zola’s choice of topics, along with his straightforward writing style, gives me a clearer picture of the era than any modern historical novel could.

I would never have noticed this female summer tanager, if I hadn’t seen the male fly right over to her.

Harper’s barking brought me over to see this Gulf Coast box turtle. It may spend its whole life in an area the size of a football field!

My husband held down this coral snake (gently) just long enough for me to get a picture – then we let it go.

The pollinators are out.

I have a huge crop of volunteer sunflowers, and the bees are taking advantage of them.

The prickly pear are blooming.

The bluebirds stay close to the house…

…because they have a nest…

…here in our old stair post.

A closer look – I wonder what that baby is thinking.

A pied-billed grebe has been hanging out here for the last month.

A little blue heron fluffs its feathers.

This little guy is only an inch long!

Added to all this, all my farm and ranch paperwork for this year has been accepted by the county, I got to take an 8-hour tree ID class from the forestry service, no critters have eaten up my vegetable garden (yet, anyway), and I had a wonderful visit with both of my daughters and their husbands for Mother’s Day!  We have had plenty of rain so far this year too.  My soul is refreshed and I think I am even ready to face the Gulf Coast Summer!

This is my entry in the Baby Quilt category.

Penguins and Friends quilt by Textile Ranger

I have written about this quilt before, here and there, but here is a summary.

My method is to quilt-as-I-go, for the whole quilt at a time.  I start by placing one small panel, in this case the blue penguin fabric,  in the middle of the crib-size batting and backing.

I place a sashing strip face down on one edge of that panel.  I stitch it in place,  flip the strip open, and top stitch it down.  I repeat this process on all four sides, just making one giant log cabin block.  I repeat this process until I’ve reached the edge.

Sometimes I use strips of plain fabric, but other times I use a strip made of scrap blocks.

After I have worked out to the edges of the batting, I go back and add more machine quilting.  On this one I was experimenting with different patterns in the different blocks.  Some were more successful than others!

This quilt will go to a local police department for their fund raiser.  It is 41″ x 58″.

I have already seen so many inspiring ideas at the Blogger’s Quilt Festival!  I encourage you to go look around there!

After reading that novel, my next venture into the world of art fiction was the Stephen Sondheim musical Sunday in the Park with George.  (I know Georges Seurat is a Post-Impressionist, so he doesn’t really fit in with my title, but he’s close enough for me.)

Sunday on the Isle of La Grande Jatte is another painting I would love to jump into (and my mother’s favorite painting), so I thought watching the musical about its creation would be a treat.

Maybe it was because I had just read Dancing for Degas, but the plot seemed identical to me – the model is desperate for the artist to stop working and fall in love with her, and the artist just wants to work.  In this case, the model (played by Bernadette Peters) just seemed unbelievably naggy.  Georges Seurat (played by Mandy Patinkin) sings a song that is just a continual list of the colors he is dotting on his masterpiece, and the model interjects, “George!”  about every ten seconds.  Every now and then they are interrupted by rich investors that don’t understand Seurat’s technique.

Sunday in the Park with George first came out in 1984, and the video is from 1999.  That maybe explains the dated attitude of  “woman interferes with man’s important work.”

The costumes are absolutely wonderful though, so if you’re interested in those, you might want to skim through the video to see them.

Next I came across The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan, also about one of Degas’ ballerina models.

Little Dancer Age Fourteen by Edgar Degas

from the usual place

I was surprised that another book about Degas and his ballerinas had been published within three years of Dancing for Degas, but I was curious to see another perspective, so I read it too.  I’m glad I did, because The Painted Girls was better in many ways.

The main character in Dancing for Degas, Alexandrie, is a fictional person.  But The Painted Girls was based on the actual model for Little Dancer Age Fourteen, Marie van Goethem, and her sisters Antoinette and Charlotte.  We think of the Little Dancer as an accessible work, a friendly, happy creation.  But at the time that Degas exhibited his statuette of Marie in 1881, newspapers said she had a “vicious muzzle,” and her face was “imprinted with the detestable promise of every vice.”  Degas exhibited the statuette next to some pastels he had done of convicted murderers, Émile Abadie and Michel Knobloch.  The juxtaposition made Buchanan curious as to his reason for doing so, and she decided to weave the stories of the sisters’ struggle to survive in poverty with those of the criminals’ trials.

The Painted Girls also seems firmly set in its era.  In Dancing for Degas, Alexandrie lives in Paris for years, but hardly mentions anything about it.  To me, it felt like the author tried to stick to generalities because she wasn’t sure of the actual details of life in that place and time.  But in The Painted Girls, rich details of work routines, neighborhoods, and even prisons gave the sense of a real world existing beyond the story.

In Dancing for Degas, the plot is pretty much limited to Alexandrie and whether she will manage to make Degas fall in love with her.  The Painted Girls has multiple interconnected plots.  Buchanan also adds depth as she considers a philosophy of the time that one’s physiognomy was one’s fate – that your facial characteristics revealed and determined your inner being.

When I read the interview with the author at the end of the book, I learned that she took the facts that are known about the three girls, and made her plot fit and explain those facts. To me that was even more impressive than if she had created a plot that she just thought was interesting.

The Painted Girls is not a comfortable read, because it is the story of very young girls coping with poverty, powerlessness, and crime, unprotected from the tragedies of life, but the bond between the sisters provides a tone of hope and strength throughout the book.