fiberhart

Painted Skies and PIF

I wanted to work on my Pay It Forward piece this weekend, before I'm preoccupied with other projects. I've had an idea percolating, even did a quick colored pencil sketch--



I want to capture a somewhat abstracted image of snow covered mountains against a gray or stormy sky, and use both machine and hand embroidery in the process. I'm not crazy about cold weather, but I love the look of snowy mountains with the evergreen trees. At the base of the mountains we have brown gray beigy sage and weeds, but there is another plant that turns bright red and orange in the cold weather- I think maybe it is called barmbrack, but I'm not absolutely positive. Anyway, for someone who feels color starved in the winter, they are a welcome relief from gray and brown.

So after getting the laundry started, I went down and tried painting a stormy, gray sky, maybe at either first or last light of the day. I've never felt as good about my results with fabric paint as with dyes, even trying to follow the suggestions in Mickey Lawler's book Skydyes.

Here's what I got, not completely dry yet. It may work for what I have in mind, I may try painting another one. The white blobs on it are rock salt, and I made folds in the fabric as it tried to try to create movement.



Hopefully, I'll get more done this weekend. We have the grandson Saturday afternoon to Sunday night, so that remains to be seen!!