Earth Day/ Birthday

 Earth Day one of my favorite days, it also happens to be my birthday!  I woke up to my favorite kind of card, hand-made cards from my grandchildren.

 This one said it all "Dear Grandma  I think you are going to do sumthing fun for your birthday. Sincerely (a new word he just learned) Paschal. He was right, Grandpa was taking the family North hiking in the woods and I was spending the whole day in the dye studio!!! All day with nothing to do but play.

 I love the boys pictures they draw (no coloring books in our house). This one is a cherry tree with a bee and butterfly.

 And from little brother a happy tree with butterfly's, bees, flowers and him (with the brown afro), me and someone else but he wasn't sure who.

I began my day by picking  myself a bouquet of lilacs,

and lit a fire in the studio.

 I'm still working on my wool dye/printed quilt and I'm out of printed fabrics. I love that I can't run to the fabric store to buy any I have to go to the woods! And I did.
This picture was taken without the flash.

 And this one with the flash. I want to add one more row on the bottom and I need more fabric to finish the top row.

I love this maple leaf print, I used  red Autumn leaves and got this wonderful green print. When I use green leaves I get a yellow print. I'd like to do outside boarders on the quilt with a leaf print like this, first a small plain boarder then this. But I don't want to wait until fall to print the boarder and who knows if I'll get the same color? Decisions, decisions.

 So off I went in the woods behind our house and found Blood Root plants. They have pretty white flowers in the Spring. The Native American's used the root as a red dye for their skin. Early American's would put a drop on a sugar cube to help a sore throat. I did not want to dig up the plant and kill it so I just picked a few leaves to try to dye with. Their a beautiful shape.

 The red sap oozed out of the leaf stem.

 Staining my finger. We'll see how it does on my fabric.

Ok, I don't know how I moved this picture to the side or how to get it back in the middle, they (the blog people) just did a major "update" and I can't find my way around at all. I hate it!

Anyway I also found these cute fiddle head ferns to try.

 Layed them out like they were growing. I'm hoping I get a nice print from this.

 My licorace plant has some nice dark leaves.

 I didn't print any but look at this beautiful patch of violets. Great to add to salads.

Purple and white.

So I rolled the plants up tight in the wool (I also did one with dandelion flowers), steamed it for 1 hour then left it overnight. When I looked this morning I can see plant prints starting. I took the wool out and put them all in a ziplock bag to set for a few days. Next week we'll see the results.