Raven and Sparrow

De plan, de plan

I have been working on the plan for Lynne's butterfly runner and tried to take a pano picture with my iphone. It didn't work very well, but I think it is kind of funny, so I am including it here. Click on it and you can see the placements of the butterflies and the markings for the stripes. I got this far and thought...okay I know what to do, or try to do, but I realized I wasn't really happy with it. I added stripes in the background because I thought my trial cloth was too messy looking for Lynne, and I could control things better if I contained my colors. Here on the plan, though, it looks like butterflies in jail...drunken jail because of the picture, but still too static and confined. Then, in the middle of the night I remembered my circle silk screen and that immediately felt like the right thing. If I screen the circle behind the butterflies it should hold the design together without confining the flutter. I think they want to be messy, so what can I do but bow to their wishes?

Well....darn.

I put my butterfly test strip into indigo three times. The first dip turned the yellows green. I waxed over the butterfly shapes and dipped again, but the pot was weak. Although I liked what I got when it was wet I was afraid it would be too light when it dried so I dipped again. Mistake. I do this often, when will I learn? The wax was compromised and broke down, obliterating some of the nuance I had worked so hard to get in there. I didn't bother to remove all of the wax. Disappointing as this is, I have learned quite a bit. I won't be using pomegranate in the background, but I will be using log gray. I am considering stripes instead of free-form strokes. I won't be screening little images into the background either....they just don't help. The butterflies are washed out, but I still love the veining that the wax produced. I think I can fix the problems in the next go round. I'm still working out the pattern on paper, which has proved surprisingly difficult. I can't get the different butterfly shapes to flutter together smoothly when they aren't just lined up in a row. 

Tiptoeing through the tulips

My sisters and I made plans to meet in the Skagit Valley to view the tulip fields this week, but when I woke on the day, it was raining. Tulips are ever so much prettier in the sunshine when the light gathers in their colored chalices and makes them glow from within. There are few visual experiences in the natural world that are as intense as a tulip field on a sunny day. Having postponed the trip once already we decided to persevere, and I'm so glad we did.The rain went away and the fields were glorious. Some people turned the remaining puddles into recreational opportunities.

My sisters and I wandered amongst the fields and display gardens soaking up the sunshine and the the color.

There is no better way to welcome spring.

Our cameras got a real workout as we tried to capture what we saw.

It was a wonderful day.

My pretty sisters, Erin and Lisa.

P.S. I'm so glad Typepad is working again. What is to be gained by attacking a blog host? It doesn't make sense to me.

Painted ladies

I am still playing around with my waxed butterflies. I started by painting random patches with logwood gray, weld and pomegranate of various intensities and then stamped and screened any little motif I thought might work with the butterfly shapes in myrobalan...mostly dotted circles. My plan it to dip it into indigo and see what combinations I like the best. I'm also trying to lay out the larger cloth using these butterflies, since I have found that I can wax them reasonably accurately, but I think the spacing and placement will depend on what the test cloth looks like after indigo. Do I want overlapping shadow butterflies in the background or will random brush marks be enough or not good at all? Stay tuned. 

Butterfly summer

I've been struggling to come up with an appropriately elegant design for Lynne's summer table. My cloths often look rough because of the processes I use, but Lynne needs something more finished. Looking over my accumulated work, I realized that my most subtle stuff is the most layered. The more I put on a cloth, the more sophisticated it looks.

The other question is what images to use. Leaves are always my first thought, but I used them for spring (the sheer vine square, still being embroidered), and I will probably want to use them for fall (still undecided). I like natural motifs and so does Lynne, but nothing captured my enthusiasm until I thought of butterflies. Today I waxed some butterfly images on scraps so I can begin to play with colors and layering. They look pretty in wax...pretty enough to make me excited about working with them. I have tried to design a butterfly cloth twice before and abandoned them because they just weren't working. I hope this time will be different. I'm planning to make a runner using my silk/linen blend.