Antique Inspiration

Vintage Rayon Seam Binding

Altered Prom Dress

The 1950's formal I altered for Clare for her prom.  I added ribbons under the dress so that it could be hitched up giving it more form, then added an underskirt with tulle so that it would be poofy.  To break up the color I added a velvet belt with on of my vintage brooches, the colors in the brooch compliment the dress beautifully: smokey quartz, quartz, blue topaz, and silver.

May's Fibery Giveaway

May's fibery giveaway (found out it wasn't spelled give away) consists of natural dyed cotton and silk fabrics, acid dyed silk carrier rods, the hot pink carrier rod fibers were dyed with cochineal, and hand dyed yarn bundle and cotton pearl cotton threads. What you don't see are some extra goodies I'm tucking in with this bundle, in the same color palette of course.

What you have to do is post a comment AND you MUST have an email addy so that I can contact you! No I won't use your email addy for anything other than this giveaway! You can sign in as anonymous but please leave your addy in your comment ~

Names will be drawn out of a hat, I'll have John do that part, and tomorrow I will announce the winner and contact the winner via email at Noon Central Time (gives you time to comment and me time to go to garage sales).

Be Mine

Knitting Tape

I'm looking for a source of ribbon or knittng taple like this, I left the files largish so you could click on it to see the texture/weave better. This is what I have left over from the 1980's. It is approximately 3/8" wide.

This and That No. 3 in progress

It's stitched to a base, with quilt batting in between, of pink gingham fabric and its more of a rose color actually. The pom pom trim is sewn onto the bottom and it's now ready for embellishing. Buttons, beads, ribbons, glitter and maybe even a few suprises - been wanting to make some more paper beads.

Indigo Prairie Seeds

Indigo and cochineal dyed silk fabrics tied with a lovely pink silk ribbon (also dyed with cochineal) Available in my Etsy Boutique.

Another Peak

I dyed the silk velevt ribbon with cochineal - a natural dye - it compliments my hand painted silk fabrics and ribbons beautifully. Now no more peaks until Lynn recieves her faerie.

Silk Ribbon DeStash

I'm destashing my studio so there'll be more space for working, so have decided to wrap silk ribbon around shipping tags and will be listing them in my store sometime today!

Wrapping Paper

We have a wedding reception to go to later this evening and I didn't have any wrapping paper for the gift, so I made some. It was so sweet seeing John's jaw drop when I pulled the present out of the bag - yeah baby I did THAT! The tag could use a little work and I'm thinking of redoing it before we leave - well actually I'll use my wacky scissors and make a pretty edge to the tag.

There's about 9 yards of vintage binding ribbon, and threads, on here, I had to go around it several times to make it look like there was something on the package. Hmmmm I don't see any buttons, I have just enough time to fix that as well!

I used white butcher paper, distress inks, metallic paints, and a stamp to create this lovely covering.

Green Ribbons

Here's a half pound of wool boucle as well as a half pound of 7 mm silk ribbon. The top picture is a bias woven sheer silk ribbon, which I really wish I could get more of as I absolutely love this stuff for embroidery - but alas it was an italian knitting yarn, not a true ribbon, for knitting sweaters, scarves and the like.

Rust Dye Ribbons

Here's a before and after rinsing shot of the silk ribbons and silk fabrics. Then a post dyeing shot, I'm using an acid dye, that for once doesn't make me sick, to get the green and no I know don't the formula as this was in the pot post dyepainting some rovings and I just had to use the color for something! I'm finding it difficult to photograph the ribbons while they are in the dye pot so bear with me, I have a skein that is in the exhausted vat that should come out lighter.

I'm using these pieces in an extreme embroidery class I'm teaching this fall which I'm making into a zine with DVD. I am looking at duplicators, my computer will NOT burn a DVD to save it's life for some odd reason (and it's on it's second DVD burner but just doesn't like them for some odd reason). I'm hoping to get all of my previous DVD's burned and shipped out to former students and soon. Until now I've been using the neighbors laptop to burn DVD's.

The oragish fabric is commerical cotton that was rust dyed and then painted with seta color paints. The back side of the fabric is the most interesting part of the fabric