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Friday Fieldtrip::Mainely Foliage and Flora

November 7, 2014 by Heather Filed Under: Inspiration & Education, Photography

It’s Friday afternoon and I hope you had a wonderful week!  I want to leave you with some delightful moments from my trip to Maine in October…one of my favorite subjects to photograph is flowers and foliage.  That’s what this post is all about, eye candy!  We were in Maine at the most perfect time, while the flowers were still blooming AND the foliage was at peak AND the weather was perfect (60-70’s).  So, because I felt like this vacation was the best vacation my eyes have had in quite a long time I am sharing a few of these here with you…

Dogwood Reds

Dogwood Reds

Golden Susans

Golden Susans

Crazy Castor

Crazy-Beautiful-Castor

Fading Ferns

Fading Fern Foliage

For a few more from this trip you can check out my Maine Flickr album HERE…

Wishing you a fabulous weekend!

I had the Blues…The Rebellious Blues (II of II)

September 24, 2014 by Heather Filed Under: Inspiration & Education, Photography, Textiles & Pattern

I’ll continue to weave tale of Sea Island Blues here with this past weekend’s Indigo Retreat in Charleston at Rebellion Farms.  I’m calling this event the Rebellious Blues workshop! This event marked the launch of Sea Island Indigo workshops and retreats in Charleston and the surrounding low country area (& maybe further!).

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Here’s our swag bag which included a variety of fabrics, yarns and trim in both cellulose and protein fibers for each of us to dye.  There were additional yarns and fabrics for sale and attendee’s also brought their own goodies.

The first day included a (brief) history of Indigo in the southeast US, a visit to the Charleston Museum and a demonstration from The Gullah Lady, Sharon Cooper Murray who showed us all the traditional technique of Rag Quilting.CAM02423

On our second day of the workshop we all (around 20 of us total) gathered out at Rebellion Farms, just outside of Charleston.  This farm is a special place where Donna has been nurturing a crop of Indigo just for this workshop.  So we all headed out to the field to see the beautiful Indigo growing and to begin to gather leaves to learn the technique of Fresh Leaf Vats.

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We had not one but Two incredible instructors for this workshop, Donna Hardy of Sea Island Indigo and Kathy Hattori of Botanical Colors (Seattle WA).

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Above, Kathy collects leaves from the indigo growing on the farm.  Below, the fresh leaf vat process begins with water.

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We are all as excited as Donna to see this transformation from leaf to dye material.  Below, the blue is starting to show in the water surrounding the indigo leaves.

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Finally after a couple of hours the fresh leaf vat has developed the beautiful coppery sheen on the surface that tells us the vat is ready to be used for dyeing.

Rebellious Blues

While we waited we stitched, bound and clamped our fabrics using various shibori techniques.

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The blue that came from the fresh leaf vat was a remarkable vivid almost turquoise blue.  Each type of Indigo and vat yields subtle variations in the colors hue and saturation.

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Saturday was the final day of the workshop and we had several vats all going at once including the 1-2-3 Fructose vat and a couple vats each for dyeing cellulose and protein fibers.

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The farm pigs kept us company…but since there was a hog roasting right next to us we didn’t get too attached.

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And we stitched…

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And we ohhhed and ahhed over the beauty of the vats…

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We witnessed Sharon Cooper Murray create her indigo rope babies…

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 And we dyed so much fabric and yarn that we covered just about every available surface!

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Rebellious Blues

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Finally it was time to wrap things up and begin to transform this make shift dye shed into a farm dinner extravaganza!

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Within a couple hours we re-set the tables and adorned them with indigo dyed linens and farm cut wild flowers and indigo sprigs.  Every place you looked there were indigo dyed textiles draped on tables, lines and more.  It was truly a beautiful and magical setting!

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We were practically drooling over the smell of the Ossabaw hog that had been roasting right next to our vats all day.  This beautiful hog was donated by Holy City Hogs and roasted to perfection by Jeff Allen of Rebellion and his friends.  We finally came to feast with farm and fiber friends on southern favorites like okra stew, cornbread, Carolina gold rice (from Anson Mills), butter beans and hash while celebrating old traditions brought back to life.

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The evening closed with one last sunset visit to the field and the debut screening of Cotton Road, a movie about the global supply chain of cotton.  We were mesmerized, filled and satisfied in our souls with everything we came together to experience for this workshop and this feast in celebration of some of the incredibly rich southern traditions that are worth preserving.

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I left (& hope others did too) feeling sparked with curiosity and the desire to secure another string of our Southern American heritage.  These are traditions that have brought farmers and artists together over centuries. They continue to teach us and inspire us through friendship and gatherings like this one-touched by a rainbow, magically blessed and hopefully containing seeds of both our roots and our future that will sail the winds and be planted and cultivated by many!  I’m certain there will be many more great Sea Island Indigo events to come but this was the first and it was very special indeed!

In the Studio with SCAD Fibers

March 8, 2014 by Heather Filed Under: Art, Art & Design, In the Studio, Inspiration & Education, Organize, Photography, Systems & Techniques

A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting my Alma-matter for the Fibers Open House.  I am always blown away by the delightful work I see coming from this department and thought it would be a fun opportunity to visit In the Studio with SCAD Fibers students.  I have such fond memories of my time there and the department has grown tremendously over the past 15 years.  They are using the most cutting edge technology mixed with the best foundational teachings.  This is a recipe for success!

Here are (anonymously) some of the studio work-spaces.  Of course for the open house they were tidied up and I’d love to pop in and see how they look from day to day but in a setting like this you begin to see how different styles of organizing emerge.

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Farewell SCAD Fibers…Till later!  

Master Makeover

February 24, 2014 by Heather Filed Under: Art & Design, Home, Organize, Organizing Projects, Photography, Wellness & Mindset

It’s been awhile since my last makeover…I’ve been busy transforming spaces but sometimes I’m not able to share the before and after shots.  I’m really proud of this one though.  I began with this client right before Christmas and the project was put on hold for about a month.  When we picked up again in late January, we had done a full closet purge and were mostly through the sorting and purging of her dressers and remaining wardrobe.  This phase of the project was all about removing the obstacles in her bedroom and making her room a sacred space.  My client was not making her bed daily and not using her nice linens because the rest of her bedroom was such a mess she just didn’t see the point.  I encouraged her to make a comfort zone on her bed that felt as luxurious as possible and see if that radiated outward…it has and continues to do so.

Master Makeover

My main concern as we began was safety and beyond that I knew we needed to purge not just clothes but a lot of papers.  We also needed to relocate some items out of the bedroom into an office that is now partially functional.  Those photos will be coming along later this spring.  

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Do you see the chair above and the computer on that cart?  Well guess what…I tripped on a cable and that computer fell!  No, I do not consider myself a clumsy person and needless to say this was HORRIFYING to me but I have an accident clause in my contract and in this case my client was so gracious she knew it was an accident.  Really, this kind of thing doesn’t happen often and the Mac survived…We had discussed safety at the very beginning of the project so she knew what the hazards were.  Not only did we purge and remove boxes and other obstacles but we re-arranged furniture to allow for easier passage on this side of the bed.  There is now a wide open space and hopefully no-one will be tripping on anything here again!  Below you can see the table that was on the left side of the room which was moved to the end opposite the bed, the rolling stool is now also out of the way and there is much more open floorspace.  I don’t just organize, I look at the whole picture!

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You can see from these photos that there was a large pile of boxes, bags, artwork, baskets etc that was entirely sorted through and organized.  Eventually we will re-arrange furniture again and move the large file cabinets out to make space for a yoga and meditation corner but for now the room has been transformed into a safe sanctuary for this client to continue to heal her physical and spiritual body.  

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We met this client’s deadline to have her bedroom neatly organized and cleaned by Valentines, that’s a sweet and loving gift don’t you think?  

The Beginnings of Love

February 14, 2014 by Heather Filed Under: Art & Design, Inspiration & Education, Photography, Textiles & Pattern

Last fall I fell down the rabbit hole of into the world of quilting via a project I’m working on.  It took me back to Beginnings of Love, you know that feeling you get when you are super excited and start to LOVE something or someone? Well I’ve shared a bit about my trip to Quilt Market in Houston but not much about why…

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Here’s the why, I’m working as a design consultant for a local company who has recently launched an exciting tool for anyone who loves creating their own textile designs!  It’s called FabricMaker and it’s a commercial quality (means you can WASH it and expose it to LIGHT!) fabric printing system!  I was so excited to collaborate on this project because for quite a few years now I have experimented with various image transfer and print techniques to get my photo’s onto fabric!  I was not fully happy with any of the results, the fabric’s either came out faded looking, were not wash fast, would fade if exposed to light, left a residue (transfers) or involved tedious steps of soaking (pre, post etc)…ughh.  In the end I kind of gave up because I didn’t think the results were worth the hassle.

Well, along came FabricMaker via a serendipitous encounter…they found Spacecraft Studio’s here in Charleston and my dear friend passed my name along to them.

Now that I’ve had some time to play with this printer and learn all about it I’ve also decided to teach myself to quilt.  I have begun a sampler quilt using photo’s of flowers, foliage and other bits of nature.  I hope to get this quilt done for fall quilt market but in the meantime I’ve embarked on some smaller projects.

The Beginnings of Love

These little mug rug’s of love were something I did for the Charleston Modern Quilt Guild February meeting.  The pattern came from Here. The two are slightly different in size because the pattern was written for Die-cut pieces which I didn’t have and in the first I had to make adjustments to re-calculate…my many years of creating engineered and woven designs will serve me well in the world of Quilting!  Sadly due to weather and changes in schedule I was not able to make it to the swap, so I now have two!  I think they are pretty sweet and I LOVE working with my photo’s on Fabric.  If you want to print your own fabric designs, check out Fabricmaker‘s systems, they are affordable, amazing quality and really have the best color saturation I’ve seen anywhere on the market!  

Happy Valentines, Loves!

PS…These are the two images I used in the above projects…I didn’t create the text fabric’s but I will be making my own custom text fabric designs soon!

Capture

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