Wednesday 17 February 2010

More dash than stitch!

Yesterday was hectic, what with managing guests and Nilo being back at school. I didn't have much concentration for stitching either. Although, I have started to stitch down the pinwheel patches. Doing it as invisibley as I can, given my crude stitching. Let's face it... it's going to take me forever to finish this and the chikankari/dessert inspired cloth, which you can see here.

By the way, whatever you do, never run a google search on the word chikan, it must be chikankari (easy to remember if you think of chicken curry!) Turns out that chikan is a slang word for public groping in Asia! If you search for only that, you'll be in for abit of a surprise. Don't say I didn't warn you!















Stitching down the patches with a hem stitch (is that what it's called?)

Instead - snatching a half hour here and a half hour there, between cooking for guests and getting homework done - I've been exploring... stuff... and taking snapshots around the place, as well as following up on favorites (and favorites of favorites) on Flickr.

Here are a few of my favorite snapshots from yesterday. You can see more on my Flickr profile (there's also now a mini slideshow of my images over on the right hand side here).



















Clouds above Cecropia trees.















A tank garden that I'm experimenting with, with the view to later creating a small ecological pond in teh Los Charcos gardens, and somebody has just put hundreds of their tadpole offspring in there!



















No time for self-reflection... I have dyes to rinse out!



















The cloths I've been solar-dying with the seeds of Genipa americana or "guatil". You can read more about that here.















Hanging on the line to dry. I got some very pale(!), but very lovely, blackberry tones, all on natural fibers.



















Silouhettes of the inflorescence of Stacharpheta frantzii dancing behind guatil dyed cotton weave. Colored shadows... Hmmmmm.... now there's an interesting concept!















Guatil dyed cloths once steam ironed and dryed.



















Amazing forms created by dried tree fern fronds...



















... on guatil dyed cottons.



















It was all purple and brown. What a majestic combination! Cadbury's obviously know their color stuff! ;}

Speaking of color... For friends who are buried beneath the snow right now, and anyone suffering from sunlight deficit... here are a couple of extra snapshots that I took in my garden yesterday. Wish you were here! :)



















Heliconia latispatha
and Cecropia trees.



















A small sunlit patch of the garden. Color and form!

7 comments:

Marika said...

Very good paints your substance .
The flower wonderful i love it we does not like a climate unfortunately .
Parrot I know it as a flower there is a stem for me in a flat, which is mini, .
A tooth did not bloom yet after only many years ,but I wait for it very much.

jude said...

your pictures aren't loading here.

arlee said...

ooh i like the stripey purple and brown one--and the heliconia sure beats the ones we get at the flower mines!

Anonymous said...

Wow, your fabrics are fantastic. And your garden...! We have the tiniest green shoots here; no snow, but some on the way and very cold. I have to google tapa cloth, I don't know what that is. Isn't the internet a marvellous thing? Not only do you get to meet great people all over the world, you can find out about all kinds of things.

Sandra said...

Hi Catherine,

You've been very busy. Thanks for sharing a bit of sunshine, I really need that with all the snow here. Ohh, those ferns, they're gorgeous! And you've created a tadpole friendly pond. I love them , we call tadpoles, kikkervisjes, meaning little frog fish or dikkopjes, meaning little fat heads.

XXX

Anonymous said...

Ah, it's bark cloth!

Eva said...

Thank you for the sunshine! And showing the interesting vegetation and fabrics too :) I like the way your pinwheels are shaping up.

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