Snow Brings Creativity

Yesterday,after barn chores were done, and as  my world was being blanketed in 6 inches of fluffy white stuff, - I decided to do something that I haven't done in a while-

                                                                                    SEW!!!


Not too long ago, I had ordered some drip catchers from Donna at My Cup of Tea. They were really cute, and I gave them all away as gifts- leaving none for myself.Check out the link to her blog to see the cute stuff Donna has!
Soooo, I was playing around yesterday, got scraps of some of my favorite fabrics, that would match my many teapots, and made a couple, just to see if I could. Then made a couple more!!!!
There was alot of ripping and tearing out stitches, and cursing, til I got it right-but I am happy with the ones I made.

Since I was on a roll, and the sewing machine was out (dragged upstairs into the warm - the studio was toooo cold!!!), I completed a pillow. I had a blog post last year about India Flint's technique of HAPA ZOME (pounding flowers), and this was the result. I had some lovely batik, and finally made the pillow. Hopefully, today, I will get out in the snow, and find a 14" pillow form in town!

I had a pile of "pinked" scraps from all this, and could not bear to toss them out. So, I got a scrap of card stock, and "artfully" placed/plopped them on the paper, and started sewing. I love the way it looks (looks better in person). Now, what to do with this? I have another small pile of scraps and batting to create another today!

Time to go feed the horses, and go play in the snow. Please check my previous post - if you would like to play along in Pay It Forward, I have room for  ONE more!!!.

Hapa Zome Tutorial

I subscribe to the online newsletter Quilting Daily, from Interweave. Today they featured artist India Flint, and interviewed her about her natural dying techniques.

It was really quite interesting. One of the things she spoke about was a technique she calls hapa zome- "essentially a "kitchen Japanese" phrase meaning leaf dye "

It seemed quite simple, so today, I gave it a try!

All you really need is:

     a block of wood, 

            a piece of paper (I used a section of brown paper bag), 

                       some leaves and flowers gathered from outside, 

                             some fabric (I used muslin- no silk available!), 

                                                and

                                        a big hammer!

*Place your fabric on the wood block.

**Place your leaves/flowers on the fabric. I did them one at a time- the paper tends to slide a bit when hammering.

***Place the paper over the leaf

****Hammer it to a pulp!!

The hammering beats the color into the fabric. I found that placing the leaves face down on the fabric bleeds a bit more color, and if you are lucky, the complete imprint of the leaf will show up. Some plants leave better imprints than others.

I tried cedar with berries, it smells great - but really doesn't leave the best imprint. I picked some wildflowers, lavender, lavender blossoms, sunflower leaves, clover, hyacinth bean flowers and pods, kale, spinach, broccoli leaf,  foxtail, strawberry leaves, and quite a few others. Some just left a green blob, some left a nice print.


India says the colors will set with a steam iron. She used this technique on a 6m x6m floor cloth for a theatre, and several years later, the colors are still set, even with folks walking on it!

My muslin square just happened to fit perfectly on a vintage "ventilator" I picked up at a yard sale last week, for $1 !!!

This was a square cut in an old log cabin, with a piece of screen over it, for ventilation in a kitchen. Pretty cool piece of wood- I laid the muslin on top of it to get a photo and it fits!!

The print even looks good on the reverse side of the fabric (see above). Once you figure out which flowers and leaves work best, you could fill up the whole piece with color.
This was just a practice piece, but I will steam iron it, and then figure out what to do with it!! Now, on to the woods, for more leaves and stuff to hammer into fabric....................................hapa zome!!!!