a strong contender for new favourite skirt

after my students all packed their bags and headed back into the whirled
I spread out my bits and pieces and began work on a few garments, pieced together
from bits of other garments

this evening I unbundled my new skirt...realising too late that I hadn't made any "pre-dye" pictures.
dang.

the dyestuffs are all locally gathered.
predominantly eucalyptus with a little casuarina and the odd acacia pod tossed in to spice the mix

the skirt is made from two pairs of mens trousers. the labels on both stated they were a silk/wool blend.
the dyepot says otherwise.

still, I'm fond of silver greys and taupes so I'm not losing any sleep over it

the skirt was stitched by hand using merino+silk thread. it's picked up the colour rather nicely

there are eleven pockets on the skirt, so it will be an excellent wandering garment
room for leaves and drawings and poems and a clean hankie or two
along with a small notebook, a pencil and the camera that thinks it is a telephone

the picture above shows the lining. it's a silk+linen mix I had from Beautiful Silks

something in the chemical history of the cleaning of the pants that make up this skirt has pushed the usual red tones of the Eriococcus coccineus infesting the twigs of one of the eucalypts to yellow

two patches of silk stitched on to the skirt show that the fabric of the original trousers was either not what it stated on the label OR had been drycleaned so often that it responded oddly in the dyebath

this bright bit WAS wool. it's part of a jacket I was cutting up, now a nice detail on the hem of the dress

part of the waistband of one of the trousers became pockets

and unfortunately I didn't have a real body to hand so this shot of the skirt on the dummy will have to do for now.
I'm planning to wear it on the New Mexico adventure, just in case it snows. but not with that top (which is really an apron in gestation)

for the record : no plastic or ferrous sulphate used, but there were bits of iron in the dyepot - which is all you need, really.

not quite zero-waste cutting experiments

a few months ago when my lovely friend
Marion Gorr went to China
she kindly thought of me while at a market

and on her return
sent me a delicious piece of soft white cashmere
about 2.0 x 1.4 metres
give or take a whisker

i thought about it for a long time
and pondered how best to use it

this week i finally
laid it out on the kitchen floor [after gently sweeping aside some cats]
braved the cutting
and reduced the cloth to essentially three large pieces
that fit together like  a puzzle

the bits that were cut away became
pockets
and
collar

here's what i had leftover
with a coin to show the scale
i don't think much was wasted

i sewed the big bits together with my overlocker
seams on the outside
so the inside would be really comfy

i used my favourite 35% cotton 65% silk thread
in the weight that Marion has had put on cones
in response to me asking
so that when i bundled the coat

and boiled it
the stitching would blend in
with the rest

i think it worked

thank you Marion...

when too much is too much

i sometimes sense an air of disbelief when telling students that there is such a thing as "too much" and that string-making is one of the solutions

the piece above was my travel companion during the recent European pilgrimage

it was stitched and dyed in various places

hidden in the surface are prints from hazelnut leaves in France

tulips in London

walnut leaves in Switzerland

but

the last immersion at home was simply too much

so

it will become either pockets on an apron

or

string