Dorset buttons moving right along

To date, the buttons for the cotton vest. Seeing them through a lens is helpful for doing subsequent ones. Also you can see tiny thread ends to snip. The idea is to vary the patterns, just to experiment with the idea. This won't be very evident once in use, but it's one of those hidden pleasures in making things.

This is really calming work, needed right now.

Dorset buttons in production

This afternoon being one of torrential rain, it was a good day to make the Dorset buttons needed for the blue vest. So, before my hand started to cramp up, I got a few done. They're small, as you see, so I couldn't do any fancy footwork with the designs, just stuck to needleweaving wherever it fitted. I'd already tested that they would actually fit through the buttonholes.

When I do the other vest, I'll use a finer cotton thread and have a bit of a good time with more designs. The thread I've picked out is used for whitework embroidery, so it can stand some use, as buttons will need to.

Vest complete, Dorset buttons next

The cozy vest is now done, and my inner stitcher comes into play, because I now need ten Dorset buttons. Both front and back of the vest are buttoned. Shown here not yet blocked and pressed, but the iron is two floors up, and the makings of the buttons right to hand.

That's what all the little threads are about, marking both buttonholes and buttons. The holes vanish into the fabric as soon as you make them, so it seemed advisable to mark them. Keeps the volume of cursing down to a dull roar.

The ball of yarn is crochet cotton, which I dyed with blue, variegating as I went. It's proved useful, what with knitting budgies and tiny doll clothes, and now it will be good for the buttons, able to stand up to buttoning and unb. Without fraying. At least, usual disclaimer, that's the plan.

Photographer's note: the vest is a sapphire blue, not with the purply cast shown, and the crochet thread is sapphire to white mix. The rings for the buttons, since I don't have any sheep horn handy, are from a fellow stitcher's grandmother.


The pattern designer airily says hardly any finishing, just the shoulders. Which is true if you don't count stitching ten buttons, and in my case, making them first, as finishing. I did enjoy the design though, just a minor quibble. Pattern is from Sally Melville's The Knit Stitch.

I'm halfway through another, in cotton thread, for a different season. As you see, the stitch definition is pretty good in both the wool and the cotton.

Whether it gets Dorset buttons depends on how the current ones work. Oh, and credit where it's due, the idea of the buttons came from Mary Anne of Magpie's Mumblings. This is all your doing, MA!

Out of the studio to draw, back to the studio to muse and plan dyed linen piece

Early morning drawing of marigolds on the deck, for #drawingaugust.  I'll be sorry when this month long project is done, but I plan to create an artist's book from the portfolio of august drawings.

Then I was back in the studio, now that the heat has abated enough to be up there more than briefly, and I'm moving pieces around on the piece of linen I dyed with turmeric, shibori wrapped, to see what comes of the combination of Dorset buttons (may be more of them) and beaded fishlike shape, which may or may not stay, depending.  The yellow is much more pronounced and variegated in rl than my camera captures. None of these is stitched down yet, still at the moving about and throwing out stage.

Anyway, I thought you might like to see what's up, to date. There will be more foliage of some sort, or a net overlay, something or other of that nature.  I'm thinking another Vilene piece of netted stitching, maybe using a drawingaugust drawing for the template.

The Intersection of Art and Food

This post doesn't know where it belongs, in Field and Fen, since food comes into it, or in Art the Beautiful, because art pushed its way in.  So it's here, with a link over there!

It all started yesterday, out shopping for various vital ingredients for the next food adventure, when I came across a great buy on a bag of red and yellow onions, one bag of each, inside another bag. So I figured since I'm always using the yellows and wishing I'd remembered to buy reds, here's the chance to have a good supply of both in the freezer.

Then one thing led to another, as they do, and in a few minutes' of boredom this morning, not in the mood for anything, this is usually a sign of trouble for me, because it's when wild ideas come, I thought, hm, since I'm dyeing Dorset buttons for use in my Big Doorway piece, instead of silk dyes, why not take a shot at onionskin dyeing? been thinking about it and not doing it for years.

And then, oh, I have two colors of onions, yay, two sorts of dyes.  So out came the trusty knife and a couple of bags, and I cut the onions across the equator to freeze them -- this will give me the option of rings or dice when I later come to use them, always a good choice to have -- and noted the art of nature in the color and shape of the red onions.

And there were little net bags, thrown in, which will definitely find a home in my textile mixed media.  So I have two bags of onionskins and will transfer them to paper once I find paper bags, better than plastic.  And with my usual Ready! Fire! Aim! methodology, then checked out how to use them in dyeing.  Not too difficult, should be fun to do. I don't need big quantities anyway, and I don't have big quantities of skins.

Then once the onions were labeled and stowed in the freezer, very smug feeling there, and the skins temporarily housed in bags, I sat for a minute then remembered Quinn dunking cherry leaves in I think water....

aha, I pruned the cherry bushes a couple of days ago, to let the spice bush have her day in the sun, and I retrieved the prunings, a lot of leaves on them, and shoved them in a container of water.  

This entailed emptying half the storage place to get at the container and extract it, empty it of other containers, pausing only to repair the wheeled plantstand, which had cast a shoe or two, and put back all the pots and tiles and things.  I did find a handy big pot for another planting purpose, so all this heavy labor in the hot sun was not wasted.

And now I have all these preparations made, for the studio and the kitchen.  Where do artists who don't cook get their raw materials, I wonder?

One of my upcoming art capers entails the use of Vilene, a soluble fabric you stitch on, then wash away the fabric, leaving only the lacy stitching.  So now I'm wondering if I can do the Dorset buttons and intermediate joining stitching for the Big Doorway, on the Vilene, then, instead of dyeing separately, do the dyeing and the dunking at the same time...this could be interesting.  

I've done some dyeing where floss took the dye and the gold threads resisted it, very nice results.  Or it could be one of those what was I thinking operations. We'll see.

Stitching at both ends of the spectrum, in various ways

Three projects at work simultaneously, each worked on daily where I can.  The Big Doorway is shaping up, very free form, designing as I go

The yellow stitch painting of the flower, very exact and fine and satisfying work, I love to angle the stitches to try to show the movement of the petals and their irregularities

And totally following orders, here's another tissue box, using the tapestry yarn I scored at the thriftie this week.  Probably to be a gift for someone.  

This is the sort of stitching you can do while you watch Pie in the Sky which I'm rewatching this week. 

No design work, just happily follow the patterns.  I like very much the way this Bucilla tapestry yarn gives a good stitch definition, and the light and shade that play on it give you a lot more color than just the basic cream.

Up next, when my package arrives, Dorset buttons. I gave up on trying to find curtain rings or any rings that were within a reasonable price, some of them really silly, half a dozen little rings for half the cost of my groceries for a week, I ask you...anyway, while a fellow stitcher is searching her house for her mother's stash of curtain rings, which she will find at some time, I ordered up O rings from a science sort of category.  

Right size, not sure of the texture, but we'll see how they work when they get here, which will be today. And at a couple of dollars for a package of 100, plenty of room for experiment without tears.