Nature's Creatie Edge

For the past 10 or so years Robert Friese-AIFD has sponsored a show of Florists work on his property. Each year there is a new theme, this years theme was Suspension. Floral artist come from all over the U.S. to display their sculptures. For three days/nights hundreds of people come and walk through the displays. The admission fees going to scholarships for young florists. There were 27 displays this is just a few of my favorites. The entrance began with two topiaries and large swags.

Surreal Suspension
This was an old wooden ladder full of flowers, moss and candles hanging in glass globes.
We went at dusk so I could take pictures before it got too crowded. But it's much more wonderful all lit up with all the candles.

Fast Food! This frog was covered with vegetation leaping out of a pond

to catch a dragon fly.

Saturn Rising
 (OK, Saturn didn't make the picture but I did get the Sun).

 

Orbital

Tubular Color, a please touch display.

Lotus Gate.
You can see in this picture the paths are all lined with candles, beautiful at night.

Time.
Four of the dials moved, including the hands of the clock.

One of my favorites, E.T. Phone Home.

At night the moon glowed.

Burst.
Looked like beautiful bridal bouquet.

 

Just between you and me I think my Earth Loom would have fit in nicely with this exhibit.

Natural Dyeing

I'd like to begin this post with a little of my personal natural dyeing history. I began natural dyeing around 1995 with my Kindred Spirit, Deb Hardman. We both are quilters and love the outdoors so natural dyeing fit right in with our life. We first began dyeing with cotton fabrics, the color was ok but not great. Once we found how wonderful wool took the dye we never looked back. I now have been dyeing almost 20 years and still love it just as much as the first day. When we started there wasn't much information out there, a few books but nothing like now.
 Next I discovered India Flint prophet-of-bloom.blogspot.com  and her book Eco Color, and a
whole new world in dyeing opened up for me. Thank you India for sharing your research and dyeing knowledge with us.  
This past weekend I spent the day outside with the last of my summer flowers and some rusty metal. I haven't dyed much with metal and want to explore it more.
With this first piece of wool I used a rusty piece (my grandson brought me home from the playground), dried eucalyptus, golden rod, cosmos etc.,   

 

next a piece of copper with woad leave, dyers coreopsis and eucalyptus,

rusty saw blade with flowers.

roll them all up and into the boing water.

in the bottom of the pot I put cut up oak branches and leaves.

A while later I had enough bundles to fill up 2 pots. I simmered them a  few hours and left them overnight.

Oh my gosh the fabrics turned out beautiful,

the pictures don't show the detail at all.

One saw blade gave a Chinese character look.

a fern became a blue print.

more rusty saw blade prints

And from India's other book "stuff, steep & store" I have a jar full of wool and flowers.

It's to pretty to open.

I hope this post doesn't seem to "choppy", I do my blog at work, while writing this post I've driven one customer home, answered the phone too many times to count, did up several work orders and checked out customers. So please excuse all the grammer issues.

Quilt Weekend - Herb Society Herbal Vinegars

Last weekend my girlfriends and I went "North" to Laura's cottage. We all needed to get away from the "real" world. This was perfect. But we weren't to far away from the real world we all worked on gifts for friends and family.  Laura making daughter-in-law to be a table runner.

Cathy making a baby quilt for a gift.

Joni quilting a table runner for a gift.

Jody making her new granddaughter a quilt with Minke Dot fabric for the back and silk binding for the edge. No baby can resist this combination.

(Don't look at this picture Deb C.)

I sat all weekend hand stitching my wool Santa blocks, I making them to exchange with my other girlfriend quilt bee at our Christmas party.
My girlfriends I was with liked the idea so much we're now making snowman blocks to exchange at our Christmas party. You make 6 of the same snowmen, keep one for yourself and give the other 5 away. You go home with 6 different snowmen (or Santa's). You can add more yourself or just use them to make a quilt. 

Our one friend couldn't make it so we all made her a paper-pieced Santa block. Cathy put the wall hanging together with paper-piece flying geese blocks. Miniatures are always so cute.

 

We also made these cute Origami mats (found on Pinterest). I made my mother-in-law two for Autumn beverage mats. Let me know if your interested and I'll post the directions. They take about 30 minutes to make.

Joni put batting in hers to make a Christmas mat for a warm pot. Too pretty to put a pot on.
Thank you Laura for the beautiful weekend.

This month at Herb Society we used our left over herbs from our gardens to make herbal vinegars.
Our speaker premade up gallon jugs the beginning of July filled with different herbs.

We brought in fresh herbs and our own bottles.

Her recipes written on the bottles.

Lots of good ideas.

 

You picked which one sounded good to you,

strained the vinegar into your own jar

already filled with a few fresh herbs.

My friend brought some wonderful jars from France to share. I hate to use this it's so pretty.
Thank you Marsha, Master gardener and herbalist.

Full Harvest Moon

The goldenrod is ready and calling me. I picked a lot, some for weaving and some for dyeing.

First I added a row of it to my weaving ( is it my weaving or Mother Natures, she seems to be weaving on it more than I am, the vines are weaving in and out, more everyday).

A row of goldenrod, then wool strip, a row of ornamental grass and another wool strip.

My thought was when I started this earth weaving that the dye plants would gradually dye the wool strip. Well, it finally happened with the cosmos flowers. After weaving them we had a hard rain storm. That did the trick the wool is now starting to absorb the cosmos dye.

Last night was the Full Harvest Super Moon, I could not miss taking pictures of it.

It was so beautiful.

The clouds just add to it's beauty and

mystery.

I tried to stay awake to get a good photo of it over the loom, but I didn't make it long enough. The last photo at 10:00 shows it peaking through the tree.