a quickly composed piece...

I was inspired by Judy Martin's tutorial here on making dots. I had done reverse applique before but wanted to try making these small dots as eyes, which has been a discussion over on Jude's Magic Diaries workshop.

the dots are hand dyed silk and the outer cloth is hand dyed silk/linen

The next day, I took the rest if the hand dyed silk/linen:  

















and started cutting and moving things around:

I'm calling it 'reflections of the moon'

That little 'eye being' has paper moon eyes right now but they will eventually be stitched. There will be lots of stitching done here. There's another eye and a bird hidden in the cloth that needs to be enhanced. This little 'eye being' reminds me very much of 'marcel the shell'. I have linked it, in case you haven't seen this delightful video.

I did some more dyeing this morning using the tin cans. This time I dyed 2 pieces of cloth in the colorhue dyes before wrapping around the cans.

before and after pictures

on the left is a cotton cloth that was soaked in soy and then put in a green colorhue dye. it did pick up the green color but is no longer visible after the dye pot. on the right, is a habotai silk dyed blue with colorhue and there is a hint of color left.

These were simmered in the dyepot for about 1 hour and immediately removed, opened up and washed. It seems the iron content of the can is the one factor that is giving good results immediately. I forgot to mention that I did insert some leaves in the can wrapping. You can see a hint of them in the photos, but most of what look like leaves are just folds in the cloth. I am especially pleased with the way the silk turned out. Silk seems to never disappoint.

AND REMEMBER THERE IS A GIVEAWAY HERE: if you are interested in winning a pouch with a bit of bobbin lace trim, just leave a comment over on that post. The drawing is on Saturday morning.