Solar dying

I had to laugh when I saw these jars filled with fabric, the last time I used the jars was when I canned fruits and vegetables. Well, enough of that. I saw on http://riihivilla.blogspot.com/ (a wonderful natural dyer in Finland) that she solar dyes, layering the dye stuff and wool yarn. Check out her blog and be sure to go back to the June 21 blog where she begins to tell about solar dying. I tried a few jars last Thursday. The jars are layered with (premordanted alum and cr. of tarter) wool fabric, The one on the left I pushed some of the fabric in and added some annatto seeds (orange color), a little more fabric then osage orange wood shavings (gold color) and then another layer of the annatto seeds. The next jar is layered cochineal (red), osage orange and the top layer is chopped up madder root (rusty red). After I layer the jars I poured simmering hot rain water over the top and capped them.

The next morning the madder root and cochineal jar was beginning to work. I hope the fabric turns out with a layered look.

Four days later after sitting in the hot sun and adding a teaspoon of washing soda to the annatto (nothing was happening until I added the soda and then magic!!). The fabric is becoming darker and darker. I'll probably leave the fabric in the jars until the weekend then rinse it out. I'm trying not to move the jars and disturb the colors.

Last Friday my husband and I packed up the camper and our fishing boat and went north for a long weekend. Michigan has so many beautiful inland lakes and if your lucky a pair of loons on the lake. We spent our days on the lake, my husband fishing while I quilted and took pictures.

The water lilys were in full bloom, which I added to my turtle, frog, snake block (forgot to take a picture of it).

A pair of looms, they have the most wonderful haunting call. Every evening and early morning you can hear them.

Usually loons are very shy and when you boat up to them they dive under the water and reappear a long way away. I was happy we got so close to this pair.

And overhead was a bald eagle fishing. (a little fuzzy).

And on every fallen log in the waters of Michigan we have turtles sunning themselves.

On our way north we went by my husbands grandparents home where his mother was raised. This will be the next house in my family tree quilt. And along side the house will be the little outhouse they had.

One note on my fabric soaking in the birch bark water. It was looking great after a week, then I decided to simmer the bark and water and add the fabric to see if would become a darker peacy/yellow. Well, that was a bad idea, it became a dull tan. I think the heat made to much tannin in the water. So tonight I will start over with soaking the fabric in the bark just out in the sun.

Roof top garden

Last evening was my Herb Societies 25Th anniversary. We celebrated at our local college where they had a roof top garden put in. We also have a herb garden there for the people to enjoy.
The live garden on the roof should last 50 years with very little maintenance.

This is a portion of the gardens. They were planted in a checker board pattern (looks like a nine-patch to a quilter) using different types of sedum. They are a succulent plant that hold a lot of water. They are very efficient plants for water conservation.

close up of the 9 patch

One small area also included some native grasses.

Down from the roof garden through a court yard is the Sensory Herb garden. We planted it years ago and maintain it for the college. A lot of the different herbs are planted in these tall sewer pipes.

Clever idea using these as planters, each plant identified with markers.

A pretty sundial in the middle.

This morning as I was leaving for work I noticed these cute mushrooms in our lawn, they are paper thin and look like little mix drink umbrellas. I wish I would have planted them in a pot, right now my husband is home mowing the lawn and they'll probably on their way to being chopped up, darn.

Another cute plant I have is this cinnamon basil. The stems and flowers are deep purple. It smells wonderful and they use the leaves in Asian cooking.

This is my rose scented geranium, there's many different varieties of the scented geraniums from apple, coconut, rose, pineapple etc. Their not grown for their flowers as their very small, just for their scent. I learned last night you can make a wonderful lemonade punch from the leaves. You pick a handful, rinse and pour boiling water over them. Let them seep, discard the leaves and add the liquid to a pink lemonade. Last night at our party we had lemonade punch made this way using lavender blossoms, it was real good.

Deb asked about using birch bark in Alaska for natural dying, I sure it will be great, just don't use too old, dried out bark (years ago I tried some and didn't get much). The books say you should get a pink with it, mine so far is a wonderful light peachy yellow. I still have it soaking in the hot sun, I'm trying a little solar dying. Next week I'll show you.

Pow Wow / birch bark dye

Fourth of July weekend we camped at the Manistee Pow wow, it's always well attended and beautiful. One special group that was there were native people with Aztec ancestry from Mexico. They put on special dance performance. They began by burning sage and blessing the arena in the four directions.

You can see the man blowing a conch shell during the ceremony.

After the blessing a women took over on the drum. She was a powerful drummer.

Dancing with the drum.

After the Aztecs, the Pow wow resumed with the traditional Native dancers. This was a great men's traditional outfit. The head piece is a traditional piece from the Mamdam (sp?) people of Northern Montana and Idaho. His appliqued was beautiful.

This bustle on the dancers back was all eagle feathers. If made correctly the bustle sways with the dancers movements.

I love how kids play together, skin color is invisible. This little native boy is wearing a traditional grass dancers outfit. Traditionally grass dancers lived on the plains out west and before a pow wow or important ceremony they (much older dancers) would stomp the grasses down. When they dance the fringe on their outfits sway as the grasses move in the wind. It's a beautiful dance.

They have a Miss Princess contest with quite strict rules. Katie (the girlfriend of one of the drummers on my husbands drum) won the contest. She will represent the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians for the next year. She is a wonderful person. She did the red, white and blue floral bead work on her outfit.

Well, our kids have gone back home and it's time to get out the dye pots! My girlfriend called and said she had some birch bark and wanted to know if I wanted it for dying. I went there was quick as I could to pick it up (thank you Sandy). I chopped it up and put it in a bucket of water to set a week or so before using it as a dye. They say you should be able to get pink.

I put in a couple of rocks in to hold the bark down. This is the color of the water after 12 hours. Next week I'll add the wool.

After the 4th

I hope you had a wonderful Holiday weekend. We were busy, busy, busy ending with the fireworks, which we're great this year. The little ones were so excited. When we arrived home one of the twins grabbed this little quilt from a chair and promptly fell asleep under it. He's the one who uses their Halloween wall hanging for a a quilt on his bed in the fall. I made this small quilt in 1991 with blocks I won at my quilt guild.

Frog Pond

After spending a sunny day at the beach on the first day of summer, we went back to our camp site and I made this sun block to go in my "earth quilt" (using my hand dyed background, my hand stamped and dye painted nubby silk and hand woven sun's rays from Guatemala). After the beautiful day that night we had thunder storms and heavy rain (I love to sleep in the camper during a storm).

The next morning the twins made "stormy" pictures with my wool scraps and glue I brought out camping. They love to draw but this was a little harder, just cutting out pictures without drawing it first.

This first picture is a lightning storm with a tree, alligator, and a snake and red clouds.

The second twin working away. I was loving it!!!

And his picture, mountains (he found the precut triangles in my scraps) with two suns, a fence and lightning coming out of the clouds.

Little brother made one later (no picture of him). The big red spot in the middle with the yellow side is a lightning bug they learned about at the children's program with the rangers. They have the best nature programs for kids.

One day we went hiking and found this wonderful frog pond. (I've camped here off and on for 25 years and am still discovering new places). This pond was full of croaking frogs, turtles and most likely snakes. They set about trying to catch one of the frogs.

They found it wasn't easy, the frog would swim or jump away. We had a lot of wet and muddy shoes by the time they were done.
But in the end they caught one, which after everyone looked at it and watched it hop they put it back in the pond.

It made a nice idea for the next block in my earth quilt, not finished.

And the last sunset of our camping trip, but the kids are still here for two more weeks and we have a lot more nature exploring to do. Maybe a few more quilt blocks will come out of it.

Camping in Michigan

My daughter and grand kids are home, we've packed up the trailers and went out to the campground. The kids are so excited they love camping. We have no t.v., DVDs, electronic games or radio, and everyone is having a wonderful time. This is a picture of our beautiful lake shore. We spend every afternoon here. (I had to come into work for a couple hours, we're very blessed to live 15 minutes from the campground, so while I'm here I thought I'd send out a blog).

Our campsites are right along this beautiful creek that empties into Lake Michigan.

When were not at the lake the boys are playing in the creek. One of the twins is learning to balance on the logs.

Big turtles hiding among the logs.

Swallow tail butterfly's land along the beach and "eat" from one of the minerals in the wet sand.

Nettle

.In our back yard by our brush pile we have an over abundance of stinging nettle, it's a awful plant that grows like crazy. Years ago it used to be made into fabric, the same long procedure as making linen. I read you could use it for natural dying so last weekend I gave it a try

With gloves on I picked enough for two pots, one stainless steel and one iron. I poured boiling water over and let them set overnight. The next morning I simmered the leaves for a couple of hours, then added the wool fabric.

I first bundle the wool with string, I love the mottled look I get when it's bundled and put in the dye bath dry. You get many different shades of color. I simmered it together for awhile.

After around 24 hours in the pot I washed out the fabrics. The gray green on the left came out of the iron pot and tan from the stainless steel. The green is a beautiful color in real life! I make small samples to test the new dyes then if I love them I dye a larger piece of fabric.

These are two greens side by side from my iron pot, left is nettle and right is carrot greens.

My good friend went to Hawaii and sent me this cute little bag. It was made using recycled vintage fabrics from Hawaii. The name of the store is Muumuu Heaven.

I have to show you this cute little project my friend at work made for me to put in a tomato plant, ( it's like the container you can buy for hanging tomato plants). He took a empty coffee container, drilled some holes in top to water the plant, put on a wire hanger.

On the bottom of the container he drilled a 1 1/2" hole for the plant to grow out of. I painted it with plastic paint. Filled the bottom with sphagnum moss to keep the plant from falling out, tucked the plants roots in from the bottom and filled the rest of the container up with good soil from the top. Watered well and hung them in the sun.

This is one on a shepherds hook. It's been in the pot for about a week and now the plants starting to grow upwards. Well see what happens when the tomatoes come on.

And another one hanging on a hook at the back of our house.

Last night was our herb meeting, this month it was held at the Utopian Marketplace, the topic was organic gardening. It was very informative. The store/restaurant has beautiful herbal arrangements around. This is a few of them. A six pack on the front counter.

A 4 pack on another.

Another single bottle, the wonderful feathery herb in the background is bronze fennel.

This is a ceramic plate with rocks glued on. Clever ideas to use with you favorite beverage bottle.