the cooler weather inspires more creativity...

i left you last time with some cloth in a black bean dye solution. i'm pleased with the results but expected deeper blues. the cloth was a purple/blue color when it was removed but after being washed, they are all a bluish grey.

click on the images for close-ups.

i think the velvet turned out the prettiest color

i've been stitching on the white dupioni silk that i showed you back here based on the watercolor painting. i made a patchwork lining out of bits and pieces of leftover cloth. lots more stitching and embellishing to do before putting it together.

cotton lining of bits and pieces and white dupioni silk with bumpy bits

i've been wanting to try putting silk velvet through my pleater and did some experimenting this week. i ran it through 2 different times with a different number of needles and pulled the threads out both times and steamed it to take out the holes made. i liked the effect but the pleats were not pristine enough to be able to do smocking. the velvet is just too thick for that. i wound up doing the honeycomb stitch by hand.

the color is off here. it's actually soft pink. i marked the velvet in ½" spaces

when i was in New York several years ago, i visited a yarn shop and couldn't resist this beautiful cranberry colored lace yarn. i finally decided to do something with it. i got to use my new yarn swift to make the yarn cakes and am knitting the scarf pictured here. a different texture than shown in the picture as the yarn is much finer but i think it will look good once rinsed and blocked.

hard to get the actual color of the yarn

the yarn is a linen, mohair and a bit of nylon and so soft

the weather is cooling down slowly....cool mornings in the 60s and in the 80s by afternoon but beautiful and pleasant. wishing you a good weekend.

mostly pleating this week....

i'm making good headway on the pleated nine patch i showed you last week. it's here if you missed it. i have 3 more patches to do before i sew it all together and a few more bands of embroidery need to be done.

click on the images for close-ups.

doing the embroidery on such a narrow band of silk is a bit fiddly

i did find a good buy on ebay for a pleater so i now have a new toy to play with...i'm loving all the experimenting with different types of cloth. i'll probably just make a sampler with all the experiments to use as a reference.

lots of needles to thread. moving the needles into different positions takes some patience. i should have taken a picture of the needle. it is a strange shape as it curves in the middle to fit properly into the roller.

my first try was with habotai silk. the fabric is rolled on a dowel so i could feed the fabric into the roller evenly.

a 56" length of silk made a 5" pleated section. this machine eats up fabric voraciously.

the next 2 experiments...the cotton lawn was a bit too stiff but the organdy or nylon (not sure what it is. it was a runner with a ruffle around it) pleated like a dream.

the cloth has to be quite fine to go through the bars and needles. anxious to put some of my hand dyed cloth through but trying to experiment a bit before doing that. the pleater didn't come with instructions so i need to find a good reference book for some help and ideas.

i acquired another piece of beautiful lace that looks like tenerriffe lace but i'm not really sure. it might be machine made. it will be perfect around the collar of the linen smock i showed you a couple of posts back. i took a small section and washed it in oxy-clean and it turned to pure white which was probably its original color. i might wash the whole piece now and then tea dye it a bit since the linen smock is a beige color.

the lace has crocheted balls on some of the edges. i have instructions for those so i can make a few more if i need to.

here you can see the little section on top that was washed in oxy-clean. i love that stuff.

and last night i was playing with the light and some of my free motion embroidery.

free motion embroidery with bits of lace stitched in...on cheesecloth

it is September but the weather has not cooled down much. still mostly very hot days. thinking about all of you who have been dealing with a bit too much rain. hope you are all staying safe.