every year i make a batch or two of scarves, with dyes on silk. they’re habotai scarves, 11×60, and i sell them around atlanta, and give them away as xmas presents.
i’ve been painting on silk since 2003, and my designs have gotten progressively more colorful. they’ve never been precise, i’m more interested in the happy accident and the leakage of color than i am with straight lines and other boundaries.
this year, to an unprecedented extent, my husband jim is designing most of my fall line (i almost need to put quotes around that). he started out several years ago designing a dragon scarf, and then a snake one, and then i had him do me a dragon for a kimono, and a stream and crane for another kimono, and now i’ve got him drawing fairies and toadstools, and fish and seaweed, and sea turtles in the ocean. and he’s just asked me to cut 4 more templates so he can do designs he hasn’t even thought up yet. (paisley)
i’m making the scarves in batches of four each design. i’m saving the templates. each set is more wonderful than the last. he’s drawn me some real works of art, and these will be my top of the line scarves.
he’ll help me with the wall hangings when i get around to making them.
so here are some of my new fall collection. i’m still in production; i bring the week’s output into my class on thursdays, and i’d like to enthuse about how i got some effect but they’re still grasping the basics so i’ll try to tone it down.
but how can you not be enthusiastic about designs like these?
these are this year’s dragon design. i use karo syrup resist for the scales and spines, and salt in the background.
this is fish floating around among seaweed fronds.
these are portraits of a pair of russian blues that i originally did as a present for my friend gretchen, their mom.
detail. they adopted a stuffed floppy dog to sleep on, showing the natural domination of species.
but wait. there’s more. i haven’t taken pictures yet but each one is more beautiful than the last.
Making Art with Fabric 