What I’m Working On

I showed y’all some of this before but thought it would be fun to show and tell a little more about it.
A while back I found this tunic at Goodwill. It was a pale gold-ish tangerine color linen, and of course I couldn’t resist:  one of the things that’s most fun for me is to take things that are one color and make them another color, keeping in mind that dyes are transparent, and the original color is going to effect the outcome. So I love to take a khaki, which I HATE, and figure out if it’s a brown khaki or a green khaki (I don’t even bother with gray khaki, as it’s from Satan). If it’s greenish, I can make it acid green. If it’s brownish, I can get a semi-decent orange—kind of a burnt orange, but sometimes pretty bright. If it’s really pale, sometimes I can get purple.
For this tunic, the challenge was to see how bright I could make it. While it was all cotton, the thread was polyester, so it won’t dye. After I got the garment a nice bright orange, which made me REALLY happy, as you might imagine, I had to figure out what to do about the stitching. I had no desire to stick with the red and yellow—nope. Uhn-uhn. Way too Ronald McDonald. At first I added the fuchsia and thought that was OK, but as I stitched it, I realized that was too plain and still too red-and-yellow. So I added purple and green. Check back here in a little while and I’ll show you what I use to help pick the colors I use—it’s the coolest thing ever.
I didn’t think to take photos before I started—I’m just not a real photo kind of person. It’s not the first thing I think of. Some people take pictures of everything, all the time. Although I carry my camera around with me, I just don’t think to pull it out. I don’t think in terms of photographs until I want to show someone something. So:  sorry there are no from-the-first photos.
Here it is after it’s dyed and I’ve done the fuchsia stitching:


And here it is now, as I finished up the flowers.

You should be able to click on those.
I’m going to do a lot more to it, but I’m just not sure yet what. Next month we go to Grapevine to the bead show, and it would be fun to pick up some cool beads. Except:  any kind of beads you’d want to sew on clothing you’re going to wash—mostly seed beads and others that aren’t too big or fragile—I already have. Duh.
I’ve never been a big fan of linen, since 1) it wrinkles like crazy and 2) guess who doesn’t iron? But it’s nice to work with—I like stitching on it. And lots of people buy tons of it, apparently, because I find it everywhere—Goodwill, garage sales. I’ve got a huge, long, bright orange dress that I bought for a couple dollars from a teacher in the neighborhood. It looks like it’s been worn maybe once. I couldn’t resist the color:  it was already the orange I’m always trying to mix. I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with it:  take out the seams up to the knees, so it has slits and I can sit cross-legged in it? Or cut it off right below the knees? I don’t know—I’ll have to try it on a couple more times to decide. As it is, it’s huge on me and looks like I’m wearing a bright orange tent. That’s OK—I don’t much care what it looks like, but big clothes get in the way. I used to wear long dresses a lot, but then I noticed I was always gathering them up to sit down or walk fast or climb on a ladder or whatever. Kind of dangerous, really. And a real pain in the butt. So. I’m thinking I’ll probably cut it off and appliqué something purple on it—big graphic shapes would be fun, and then I could stitch inside of those. I thought about grackles, since they were fun to work with, but the black on orange would make me think of Hallowe’en every time I wore it. Which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, as I adore Hallowe’en.
Who knows? So if you like linen, now seems to be the time to hunt for it. Let me know what you find~~