New Fabric

Two shots of my brand new fabric to play with -- off the loom yesterday, laundered, pressed and ready to use. The discharge warp piece is all mercerized cotton, and the other two pieces are tencel on cotton. The last of the three is small, about 30" in length and for that one I went back to the original treadling that produced the circles motif.

Handwoven fabricsHandwoven fabrics

Now this piece of peachy silk has been in my collection since the mid-1980s, when a girlfriend and I were in Hong Kong enroute to Bali. We picked up two yards of this beautiful silk, a yard for each of us (the price back then seemed prohibitive), and I never did anything with my yard.

So today I dyed it! And now it's sumptuous pea green, my favorite color. Here's hoping I use it in a project before another 24 years passes!

It seems like I've hardly gotten anything done today and the day is half gone or better. I'm in one of those places where it seems like I've got more things I want to do and try out than I'll ever have time for.

I'm also in a place where it feels like I'm resisting moving forward in some areas, and I think it has to do with fear of actually using all this newly-woven fabric to go crazy on with discharge-dye-stamps-stencils-paints-etc. Worst case scenario: I can't live with the results of what I've done and I've "wasted" time and materials. Seems like a foolish consideration when I put it like that, given how much time and money I've wasted over the years on any number of people and things, artistic and otherwise. (I'm giving myself a little pep talk, here.) What if I don't like any of it? Maybe I'll discover something startlingly new in the process, about myself and/or the materials. I can't take any of it with me when "I go" anyway, so who really gives a hoot?!

Just do it!

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