Playing with Paper

This morning I was looking through one of Steve's books with plans of Bronze Age settlements in it. (I was reading it because it was on the couch where I'd flopped down; I don't know why he was reading it.) I don't know what attracts me so much about these maps, but after looking at the illustrations for a while I went off and doodled my own little settlement plan with some dyed and printed papers. I think it wants to become a small quilt; the question is whether I dare start even a small piece in the sewing room which I have just cleaned up to make room for one of my nieces to stay next weekend, because when I make a quilt I do tend to fling fabric around the room with abandon. Oh well, I can always use the Shovel-It-Into-A-Large-Box approach to temporarily cleaning up the leftovers.

Raiding, looting and pillaging

At least that's what it felt like this morning, when Hill Country Weavers (probably the best yarn shop in Central Texas) had a sale and invited their customers to come and set up tables to sell off the odds and ends in their own stashes.

Knitters, I suppose, think in terms of multiple balls of yarn, and haven't much use for one ball or worse, part of one ball of yarn left over from a project. For me, a single ball of yarn is like a lifetime supply; I may use a couple of yards to embroider with, a few more yards to couch to a surface, a few more - especially if they're glitzy - to loop over the surface of a jewel scarf. So here were all these lovely ladies selling off their leftovers at bargain-basement prices, and I felt like a kid in a candy store. I filled up a shopping bag with odds and ends of fantastic yarn and fiber, and my friend Vivian did nearly as well scoring interestingly colored yarns to quilt with.

(It's not that I don't like knitting. I love freeform knitting and crochet. But in central Texas, what's the point? I already have a Good Wool Sweater, and I haven't worn it since I got back from Ireland in the summer of '97.)

Wimberley mini-vacation

And a very pleasant couple of days it was - until the homecoming. We stayed at the Creekside Inn, which has a wide green lawn meandering down to Cypress Creek with wicker chairs here and there for guests to sit and read, or just watch the creek flowing by. The public room inside (think living room squared) was decorated with glass art from the studio of local artist Bill Meek.


Then...we came home and faced up to the reason for our flight - fogging for roaches! It's been a relatively dry May and they've been showing up, not single spies but in battalions which all my scrubbing in the kitchen has failed to eradicate. I doubt that setting off a few fog bombs will do the job either but there certainly were a lot of dead roaches on the floor when we got back. Ickkkk. And then, of course, every dish and surface in the kitchen had to be scrubbed.

I need a scullery maid.

There hasn't been much time for art in these last few days, but last night in an insomniac moment I stayed up trying to turn one of the photos of cypress roots into a header for a fairytale:

Defining the SolvyLace border

So far we've been making ragedy-edged bits of SolvyLace that are fine for making bowls, or appliqueing to a solid fabric to make an interesting base for embroidery, or setting a lacy window insert into a dress or a quilt. But suppose you want to use the SolvyLace on its own - for a scarf, for instance? You might trim the edges with a rotary cutter and hope they stay even. You might bind the trimmed edges to make sure they stay even.

Or - and this is my preferred method - you might start making your Solvy sandwich by laying down a wide ribbon all around the outer edge, and then make sure your stitching goes into the ribbon so that it'll be well anchored to the rest of the grid.



That's how I bordered this sample, as well as the "Jewel" scarf to be seen here.

And that, I think, is quite enough variations on the Solvy sandwich; and a good time to end the series, because tomorrow and Thursday I'll be out of town.

SolvyLace - Dyed After Rinseout

This, like the heat distressing variation, requires a little planning ahead. You want to use only threads or fabrics that you can dye - and, if possible, thread that you can dye also. For this piece I layered a variety of smooth and textured whire rayon yarns for the Solvy sandwich. I didn't have any white silk sewing thread - and, as DharmaTrading points out, when you need it is a bad time to go looking for it - so I used white rayon thread and hoped for the best.



After sewing the sandwich and rinsing out the Solvy, I soaked the piece in a soda ash solution for a while, wrung it out very gently, and applied minute quantities of dye with an eyedropper. The Madeira rayon embroidery thread didn't take the dye; it must have some finish that made it resistant. The rest of the piece, though, dyed very nicely indeed.

Color Blended SolvyLace

Select a collection of fabric scraps (as usual, I prefer sheers, but it's up to you) and blend across the spectrum like this:













When I put this piece together, clearly I was thinking too much "blend" and not enough "lace."
So to get a lacy look afterwards, I heat-distressed it just like the previous piece. This almost worked, because nearly all the fabric was synthetic. I had, however, used some hand-dyed green/aqua silk to make the transition from green to blue. That's the big ugly brown spot in the lower left. And that is why it pays to think about what you're going to do next with the piece, and what type of fabrics you want to use, before you get the wrong stuff neatly stitched into the grid!

We Interrupt this Series of SolvyLace Variations...

....for a day mostly consumed by Nap Attacks. I got up this morning, made coffee, got dressed, started to list a beaded pin on Etsy here, and fell asleep in the middle of uploading pictures. I got up again this afternoon, poured a Coke, got dressed, started to list this scarf, and....didn't quite fall asleep until the listing was complete, anyway.

Tomorrow I'll show a Color Blend variation before and after heat distressing...I'm too sleepy to write it up now!