Tuesday, September 27, 2011

I played with dye printing my coreopsis flowers. Look at the wonderful color they dyed. The yellow of the petals gave a beautiful peachy orange. The inner red of the petals dyed navy blue! And the dark center dyed red. The fabric looks a little like leopard spots.
Double click on the picture to see the blue.




My cosmos dyed fabric is a completely different peachy orange. I'm going to make this piece into a winter scarf, blanket stitching the edge with the wool yarn I also dyed with cosmos.





I planted two different types of eucalyptus this year, the long oval shaped leaves didn't give the orange color but the stems did.
This piece will be beautiful in my quilt.







I love how translucent the leave prints looks with the orange stems.







The silver dollar eucalyptus leave give the dark orange color.




My grand kids have never really seen the changing color of leaves in fall so off we go taking picnics and color tours up North. Even though the color isn't at its peak yet we're enjoying Autumn hikes with many more to go.



I believe this is a artisan spring bubbling up from the ground and spilling into the waterfall.





Of course, if there is water and rocks the boys will be in them.

















Wednesday, September 21, 2011

We're home

We're home and our family is here too! My husband and I went to Florida to help pack up our daughter and her family and help them move back to Michigan. Talk about a lot of work, but we made it and everyone is getting settled in. What fun we'll have, everyone is excited to be back and looking forward to spending more time with family.




The guys drove the moving truck.



One final time buying Southern boiled peanuts.





Last night at our Herb Society we had a special guest speaker who is a chef at Disney World. He prepared a special meal for us, making dishes from around the world.





Our tables are always wonderfully decorated. Guinness cupcakes, (recipe from the United Kingdom).





Wonderful ceramic Mickey Mouse kitchen figurines.




Disney sugar cookies.




Our chef Justin.






Marrakesh Curried vegetables with curry powder over couscous.




Pineapple bread pudding, (Polynesian).




Raspberry Fool. Rose & Crown Pub-United Kingdom.
We also had Kjottkake, traditional meatballs for Norway with Lingonberry Demi Sauce.
Tandoori butter on pita bread, and spiced ice tea.





Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Coreopsis

I spent some time this past weekend dyeing with coreopsis. They are tiny little flowers but hold a lot of color. They're a few different varieties, the type I used was coreopsis tinctoria, I've noticed if the Latin name for the plant has tinctoria in it, it is a great dye plant.



The flowers are about the size of a penny.





I simmered them about a hour then put the wool fabric in, it became a beautiful peachy orange color right away.




Some of the fabric I bundled so it would have different shades. The wool yarn I had dyed before. it was a brassy yellow so back into the dye pot it went.




This is the collection of vintage linen napkins I've been dyeing all summer, starting with daffodils last spring.







And cotton fabrics. They seem to take the color the same as linen.




I don't know if I showed this before but I just finished needle felting the rabbits tails in. This is one of the lattice strips for my family tree quilt. This will go around the husband's childhood home.





My sunflowers are beautiful this year, I think they're about 10 feet tall. The plain yellow ones are Hopi sunflowers (I sent away for the seeds). I'm going to try dyeing with the seeds later.

I won't be posting for the next couple of weeks, I'll be visiting with family.
See you the end of September.


  • Deb Hardman
  • Allie Aller
  • Jenny Bowker Cairo
  •