JOAN MORRIS : The Final Day Of The Workshop

Can it be that we had really arrived at the final day of class? You could see the exhaustion in all of us - along with a sense of excitement for all of the things that we learned and will soon use in our work. The future is wide open and may well be shibori filled! It was a wonderful group of very talented women. I chose to leave the photo that includes me out. I was wearing my 'farmer-girl' over-hauls and looked much like the Pillsbury dough girl. I so much want to be able to take another class from Joan !

A beautiful piece of madder dyed cloth with a "spider-web" motif

More spider webs motifs on this beautiful piece of indigo dyed cloth
that my buddy Janet produced. She loves indigo!

This piece (above) was ndigo dyed by Patty (who also happens to be a superb calligrapher & chop carver). Patty tediously stitched very fine lines that were pulled together tight as a board and then dyed. What a fabulous piece of beautiful cloth she made!

Here is Peggy Hunt , above, with her sampler that absolutely WoW'ed me! She has taken classes with Joan before and so she knew exactly what to expect and was already well at work on this beautiful work before the class began. I think that making a sampler is such a cool idea. SHe did all - well many- of the traditional patterns and also made up some of her own to try. Peggy is also the one who had that piece of indigo dyed fabric with the cool metal knobs on it - that I showed on a previous day. I think that Peggy should do another class for us all....a sampler would be a great thing to do - one thing a month - or a week......More views of this amazing piece.

Please remember that you can double click for a better view!

I think that these may also be Peggy's work, but am honestly not sure. They might have been Joan's too. If anyone sees this that was in the class and can claim these fabrics please let me know and I will edit the post to include your name !

I think that this amazing snake-like pattern was done by Sheila Metcalf - but it might have been Peggy's too. Again, let me know if it's yours!!

Below we have our resident amazing weaver, Sheila Metcalf. Sheila nd Peggy are responsible for arranging this workshop. It's easy to tell that Sheila has also had quite a bit of Shibori experience and that she too has taken several classes from Joan before this one! She sure looks happy to see how wonderfully this piece turned out! The mystery of shibori is one of the things that I like the best. Sort of like making hot glass beads. You can't really tell what your beads will look like until the next day after they have fully annealed. Same thing here - you don;t know until you fully dried these textiles and undone all of the stitching. It's always such a great surprise ! Generally a good surprise too !

This is a beautiful indigo lightweight silk scarf that she created. Later Sheila over-dyed this piece in Lac-madder (I think it was). The scarf's background became a luscious deep purple and the 'spider-webs' became of lovely light pinky-purple shade.

Joan showed us one last Arashi technique that produces something like resembles woodgrain. As you can seee the folds are produced by horizontally gathering the fabric rather than by puching it up vertically. Wish I had gotton a look at the finished piece. I did discover that Arashi Shibori is very versatile - prior to this class I had, quite honestly, found it to be rather 'blah'. As with many things, the more you learn, the more you realize that there are many options to what might first appear to be a simple way to do something.

These last photos are the small pieces that I made during the class. I was always behind and played "catch-up" every day. I decided early on that I was going to relax and enjoy the ride and try not to get too stressed about what I was not managing to do.Above: Sand washed silk charmeuse Arashi (pole wrapped) shibori dyed in 5 indigo dips.

Above: 'Spider-web' on silk charmeuse dyed with cutch
Below: Rayon Twill dyed in Lac/Madder.
The top circles were stitched and gathered in the round
and the bottom two circles were done in the 'spider-web' technique

Below: Two yummy silk velvert scarfs. The lighter one is dyed in Fustic and the bottom one is dyed with Cutch. I am binding it again to discharge it and will then overdye the whole pieceBelow: CLose roes of stitching on rayon twill- dyed in lac/madder.
I still have some thread to remove in the area by the top of the photo

Below: Silk velvet dyed first in cutch, then 'spider web' wrapped and overdyed in Cutch.This is a simple wrapped piece that was first dyed in fustic, wrapped
and then overdyed in cutch. I plan to do some more work on it.

These next two photos are experiments that I did when I got home. I have been doing a lot of visual and art journaling and I always try to find ways to meld my passions together. I had to see if I could use the 'spider-web' wrap technique on papers. The first piece below is joss paper that I VERY carefully wet, wrapped with quilting thread, dipped in procion dye that I had on hand
(a mix of Safari Gray & Chocolate). I had to be ultra careful and very patient when I unrolled it, but all in all I like the effect and will use it for certain!

Next up is another piece of paper that I had around. It is a white, more fibrous, paper that has bits of gold thread like things in it. I know very little about paper mind you - so I am not sure what this paper is exactly. It seemed a little stronger than the joss paper was. Once again I like the result and can see how I might use some of what I have learned to enhance some of my art journal entries - or art cards for the mail. Now, of course I am longing to try some other papers our - so, for those of you who know what you are doing with paper, if you have any samples you would just love to send me - let me know! I would be grateful to try some more - with other paints, dyes and colors...... Ah! Yes! It was a very good class and I am so grateful that I was able to attend !

Tomorrow my vacation (stay-cation) is over and I return to my work-a-day world. I guess I am also grateful to have a job at this point too. Life is good. I am smiling broadly.