Lisa Call

Work

Here in the US it is labor day weekend, a 3 day weekend that essentially marks the end of summer basically because all the outdoor public pools close. We’ll have plenty more warm, just no more water parks, at least here in Denver.

 
I spent the last couple days doing the labor portion of the weekend. I didn’t plant a garden this year because I moved mid planting season so I’ve been visiting farmer’s markets to get my fresh garden veggie fix. Armed with a 25 box of tomatoes and 1 1/2 bushels of freshly roasted green chiles from Hatch, New Mexico, I made a large batch of salsa yesterday and canned it. (I also made chile rellenos - yum - these are probably my most favorite food.)

I’ll usually can 2 batches salsa but this year, because I have to pay for the tomatoes and they aren’t coming from my garden, I’m likely to do just this one batch. Some how I’m going to have to make these 10 jars last through the winter.

More Fabric Dyeing

 
The other major chore for the weekend was to dye fabric. I was thinking I’d do about 50 or 60 yards but on saturday it somehow grew to 102 yards. I’ve never dyed that much in a single day at it was a lot of work. About 8 hours of set up (I miss my dedicated dye studio), mixing and mushing fabric in the dyes.

I then spent much of sunday (in between canning salsa) washing the fabric and ironing it. Around 9pm last night I pressed and folded the last piece.

Fabric dyeing is a summertime activity as the chemical reaction requires heat to work properly. I keep my house pretty cool in the winter so it’s difficult to reach the requisite 70 degrees and I always think the fabric turns out better if it reaches closer to 90 or hotter.

As you can see in the photo (click on it for a larger image), I got some very deep saturated colors. Really great stuff. This color palette is brighter and with more clearer colors than I might normally dye. It’s what I felt like doing, so we’ll se how this translates into my artwork through the winter as I use this fabric in my art.

I’ve struggled over the years to get good lighter purples with the method of dyeing I use - low water immersion with layering for gradation. The red dye gets used up in the first layer and the lighter pieces all end up blue, not purple. So this time around I’ve decided to overdye many of the light blues to get a nice range of light purples. So later this week I’ll take about half of the light blues and dye them a second time with some read. I’ll post my results when done.

Play Time

After putting in 2 very long hard work days it’s now time for the relaxing portion of the long weekend. I’m taking the kids up to the mountains for a hike. Then a bbq with good friends. I’m bringing the salsa (3 different kinds).

I hope those of you in the gulf coast are all safe and that this hurricane continues to weaken as it moves closer.

And - I’ll start back on my scrum posts next week.

Structures #97 (In Progress)    ©2008

Structures #97

I spent a few hours this evening moving the lines and changing colors on this new textile painting. I see a few minor things I’ll tweak now that I see the photo on the screen then it’s done and time to start sewing the composition together.

Shelia made an interesting observation on a previous post about the colors of this work being all cool colors and wondered if it was a reaction to the hot weather. She’s definitely right, cool greens and browns and almost definitely a result of the current environment, not by design but by influence.

I think a lot of my color choices are a result of my mood and my environment. Often I can tell how I’m feeling based on the colors I’m using.

Tonight I added a few warmer colors but once it’s sewn together they will be much less noticeable. This is definitely some art to cool you off on a hot day.

Handdyed Fabric

This morning I finished ironing and folding the fabric I dyed over the weekend - 72 yards of beautiful colors. All told I spent about 15 hours doing the dyeing, washing, etc. At least I think that’s about how long it took. I’m curious so next time I’ll try to figure out how much time I do spend. I’m engineer, I like numbers.

I love having this fabric stacked up on my cutting table to look at for a while. I see some color combinations in there that are really great and might make their way into a new piece.

And check out the middle stack of fabric - more very cool colors. Although I’m happy to report I was actually cold for about 20 minutes on sunday as it rained a bit during my hike/walk up in the foothills. It was the best feeling.

Twitter

I’ve been watching twitter for a while. Wasn’t sure I’d ever do anything with it but signed up quite a while back. I started posting (I refuse to say tweeting - that’s just not a word in my vocabulary yet) a few days back. If it takes a ton of time I might not keep up or maybe I’ll get addicted. We’ll see how it goes. It’s kinda funny.

You can see my profile here if you want to follow me: Lisa Call’s Twitter Profile.

For those of you not familiar with twitter - think about a mini blog - what would you write if you could only type 140 characters? Not a lot. The idea is to answer the questions "What are you doing?" several times a day. Each post is called a tweet. Makes me feel like a yellow bird to say that so I stick with "post".

Maybe it falls under the too much information category. Or maybe it doesn’t. We will see. I think there could be some real value there, I’m not sure what it is yet but I think over time my twitter participation will need to evolve into something a bit more than a few posts about my life and a public conversation with others. Or then again, maybe not.

If you are already following me you will know I bought a new laptop computer. Actually 3 of them as the kids each got one. More in my next post as to why and what and how happy I am about owning an orange computer.

Dyeing Fabric

Yay, finally some art content for my blog. This weekend I dyed fabric with my best friend from childhood. It was a trick in my new house but we managed to get it to work. I had ordered 200 yards of fabric to dye but it didn’t arrive in time so we only dyed about 60 yards. So I’ll be doing more soon with 200 yards on it’s way.

The PFD (prepared for dye) fabric torn into 1 yard pieces ready for the dye bath:

There is no where in the house and no basement so dyeing is done outdoors at the new home (isn’t my big crab appletree awesome?):

The dyes are mixed (powder added to urea and water in the water bottles) and we’re ready to begin:

Kelly adding color to her fabric:

The dyes are on the fabrics and the table isn’t quite as clean as when we started:

Another cool tree picture - couldn’t resist:

The final results - washed, ironed and ready to make a new textile painting:

Dyeing Details

A few years back I was on the TV Show Uncommon Threads demonstrating how I dye fabric. In conjunction I did a series of posts with all the details. If you have any questions they are likely answered in the Dyeing Fabric series of posts.

Comments

Thanks to everyone that left comments over the last few months as I sold my old house and moved. I tried to keep up but many times was too busy. I appreciate all of them. Today I feel I’m an artist again and can get back to my "normal" life. At least until the remodel to add on a studio begins.