Busy little bee

I wasn't going to apologize for being gone so long...(AGAIN) But...I'm sorry. I haven't had time to blog lately. Here's what I was working on yesterday. Sorry it's blurry. It's from my cell phone. This is the beginnings of our fabric garden. The flowers are a variety of hand dyed and commercial fabric that have been cut into small petal-like shapes, gathered at the bottom and sewn together. That lovely piece on the ground is our "moss". It's a cloqué piece using wool, silk and Tencel. It has been washed, causing the wool to felt and shrink while the silk and Tencel do not shrink causing these sections to bubble. :) I think I'll probably end up keeping it as a scarf after it's done being moss in the garden. I LOVE it.

I don't have a picture of this, but I also did some low water immersion dyeing on 4 yards of silk cotton batiste to match the orange flowers in this picture. It came out beautifully. One of the girls working on the project with me dyed 4 yards of silk organza in a dark green to be used for Spanish Moss that we will be putting in the tree. It's coming together! It's due in two weeks. I'll be sure to take many pictures of it. Hopefully I'll have a chance to post them sometime soon after it's finished.
~JoAnna

Easter!!

Happy Easter! I like those silly cards or pictures that are a picture of a bunny that says, "Hoppy Easter". Cute. Anyway just a brief update:

I washed the scarves and the sock yarn scarf is even softer than before. (It's wonderful) and the acrylic one didn't soften up AT ALL. So it's a bust. Mom said the yarn would probably be good for rugs. That's definitely true...I could cut it up in squares and make a small rug out of it. Like a welcome mat or a bath mat or something. I'll probably just stow it away somewhere for a long time and then do something with it later. :) But at least I got to experiment.

Future projects:
I'd like to weave with more sock yarn. I really like that stuff. And it weaves up quick.
I would love to try honeysuckle overshot with red and yellow. I was thinking about making a set of place mats using those colors.
Towels. I wove some of the extra warp off into rags when I was weaving the place mats for my senior project and they are wonderful! I'd like to make more. I gots more yarn!!

More dyed warps. I'd like to experiment with "low water-ing" warps and see if I can make it work. I just hate solid shading and messing with laying the whole thing out and painting it on plastic. So perhaps I'll try it this way.
~JoAnna

More scarves!

I don't think I'm actually going to get back to blogging regularly until after graduation... (May 8!!!) I have been working on more stuff though. I wove up two more scarves in the past day and a half. :) I wanted to try some different yarns. I had some acrylic(?) yarn on this HUGE cone and I've never used it before...mostly because it's really scratchy, but I figured I'd try it and see what it does. I mixed it with my 6-ply rayon in the warp and weft both to try to soften it up a bit. I need to wash it and see what it does now.

I was at the fabric store buying some 2" foam to upholster one of Ben's chairs for a class he's in (the chair is due Monday!!) and I wandered through the small yarn section they have in the store. (Bad plan for someone addicted to yarn) I ended up buying two balls of sock yarn to try weaving with. It's wonderfully soft. I was a bit sad that it was 50% superwash merino wool (ick...superwash...), but that's okay. It was weird weaving with something so stretchy!! The tension has to be a lot looser, but thankfully I had a little experience with wool/stretchiness from the cloque sampler we did in my weaving class this semester. Anyway, the sock yarn scarf came out really soft and wonderful. I can't wait to see how it fulls in when I wash it. :) The first images are of the acrylic/rayon scarf and the second set is of the sock yarn scarf.
~JoAnna