Dyeing and Sowing
Spring arrived early in Reno this year. On the 12th of May I harvested strawberries and culled sunflower seedlings from my overly dense patch. I’ve tried in years past to start a few Hopi Black Dye sunflowers from seed and failed. This year I think I may have done it! I’m nursing three seedlings that seem robust enough survive the nibbling insects and voles.
For the past month or so I’ve been prepping and planting my flower bed, foraging for cottonwood and other catkins, and making botanical dyes. The botanical dye workflow involves lots of waiting, or at least long periods of occasional attending. One starts some flowers simmering in a pot, and then one allows leaves the botanicals to release their color, checking occasionally to make sure the pot isn’t boiling too rapidly or, conversely, hasn’t cooled to stillness. Other botanicals simply need to sit in warm water for an extended period of time, perhaps being warmed intermittently in the oven to 160 degrees. One can’t abandon the dye pots, but they don’t require constant attention.
So while making dyes, I returned to stitching postcards. I’d been wanting to experiment with urban postcard scenes and new stitched designs for some time. Stitching is the perfect companion to dye making. It can be put down and picked up again easily. There are no worries about drying paint or pen nibs. I sketch designs, select one, punch it into a card, and then I stitch, a rather repetitive activity that can be interrupted without much consequence.
This urban scene of San Francisco had long interested me, and I could readily imagine the shapes of the overlapping rectangles echoing the buildings. Making this card, I was wondering how buildings would look against a geo-engineered sky. Would they stand out or blend in? Also, the written message on the back included the perfect title: Frisco is a pretty as they say.
Next I stitched the patchwork quilt of colors on “The Narrows”. I started this one with trepidation, not knowing exactly how all the patches would fit together. As such, I chose an unwritten postcard as my canvas so that, if I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t have ruined a unique postcard. Fortunately, I was quite pleased with the results. I find the quilt almost kaleidoscopic. It’s like we’re looking at all the possible colors of a geo-engineered sky simultaneously.
Finally, I lifted the self-imposed requirement that the postcard fit within my Why Was the Sky Blue? series and stitched a snaking path across Iceberg Lake. Reflecting on how the eye moves about landscape images, I poked about, framing some elements and bisecting others. I’m intrigued by the result and not sure where it might take me…
Then inspiration struck: why don’t I dye some thread! I had purchased some mordanted thread from Botanical Colors some months ago, and it was just sitting idle on my shelf. I had never dyed fabric, but my botanicals were creating more dye than I had paper to soak up. So I went for it!
Thread dyed with botanicals. From left to right: cottonwood catkins, Rudbeckia flower, annatto seeds, dyer’s chamomile, rabbitbrush.
Then it was time to stitch with my first hand-dyed threads.
I started with a Lake Tahoe postcard. Inspired by the three warm orange colors I had made, I wanted a design that would involve smooth transitions between the colors. I had been studying oscillographs of bird song for some months, but I hadn’t known how to incorporate them into my work. Here I saw an opportunity to stitch a sound--birdsong—onto a card. My husband also noted that the end results resembles an EKG readout, a heartbeat.
While encouraged by the concept, I was ultimately dissatisfied with this card. I used two strands of thread, but that caused too much friction during the stitching. Several of the stitches show separation in the threads because of that, and a couple holes tore too. So this postcard is a learning experience.
For my second card, I again wanted to experiment with color transitions. I had had the black-and-white Yosemite Valley postcard in my collection for some time, and it was one of my favorites. I thought a Rothko-like color field would “pop” on the card. Also, I loved the title I pulled from the written message: “Pancakes for breakfast, and good too”.
The Yosemite card is paper, not linen like most of the cards I stitch. Because of that and due to my previous challenges with friction between two strands, I opted to use one strand of thread but punch the boxes smaller. These choices worked beautifully. I’m excited to further develop this approach.
Just yesterday a second shipment of mordanted thread arrived. I have several new dyestuffs in my garage studio, and my dye plants are sprouting in my garden. Good times await!
As always, thanks for reading. And, if you’re interested in seeing more of my stitched postcards and maybe even purchasing one, please check out my Shop.
Take good care,
Andrea