Polyester Double Knit Re-Purposed

This past winter I bought a chunk of polyester double knit at Savers. The previous year I had rust dyed a polyester scarf and thought the way the water flowed through the fabric, called "wicking", was interesting. The scarf already had large graceful curves woven into it.

Yesterday I tried the double knit and Pow...Zap...Zowie...

I was struck by the results!!!

This piece is really flat. I didn't bunch it up for the picture. Those wonderful troughs and highlights formed as the rust dye wicked through the fabric. I have another piece out there without the little wire guy in the middle.

I wonder if I can get quilters to accept the idea of using this kind of fabric in their art quilts? Polyester double knit is indestructible and never needs to be ironed. Back in the 1970's everyone's grandmother had a pants suit made of this fabric. It was also the fabric of choice for leisure suits with wide lapels that were worn by guys with bad reputations.

Forget bamboo fabric, I am looking for polyester double knit at the next garage sale.

Strange Bottle Results

The picture today is the results of the bottle wrap I did on that strange bottle from a garage sale pictured in the last post.

It is not at all how I expected it to turn out.

Perhaps I should not buy eerily shaped bottles any more. This bottle must have had a demon trapped in it.

Can't see it?

Can you see him now? (A face formed because I folded the piece in half so it would fit on the bottle better.)

Who is using the Rust-Tex Studio...

...not me. I have been busy with my sick friend and lots of other things that unfortunately keep me out of the rust dye studio. I did venture out there the other day to mourn the loss of my creative time and I saw that spiders have been using the piles of rusty stuff to support their webs! Yipes! "Yipes!", not because I am afraid of spiders but, "Yipes!", because I think I should be the one using that rusty stuff. So today I did a bottle wrap using this bottle and some copper wire I found at a garage sale this past week-end. Any one know what this bottle is from?
I will post a picture of the finished piece as soon as I can.

Hanging-out with Friends

Saturday was the prefect day for rust dyeing and I was planning on doing that after lunch. The morning was reserved for the UFO Club workday. Seeing that I am the Queen of the UFO's, I thought it was important to for me to make an appearance, since I have not been there in several months. My phone rang while I was getting ready, and I ended up spending the entire day here.Mostly it was spend in this room.

And finally, when my friend was admitted to the hospital, this was the view from her window. You can see the what a beautiful day is was...sigh...

The up side is she REALLY NEEDED to go to the hospital, she is on the mend, and will be released on Monday. Friday night I went with a carload of friends, from the Madison Contemporary Fiber Artists, to the opening of our show in Plymouth, WI.

The above piece is by Wendy Butler Burns

The show is called, "Hanging by a Thread". All the pieces were about social issues. My piece was called, "Tire Reef Disaster". It is about an artificial coral reef made of tires that was sunk in the 1970. It never became a coral reef. It has actually caused great damage to the ocean floor. The cables holding the tires together have broken and tires are washing up on beaches in FL.

Yuck!!! What were they thinking!!!

Here is my piece, which is made of all rust dyed fabric. I printed the Associated Press article on fabric. It is in those two boxes below the ocean scene.

The picture of the day is what I wore to our eldest daughter's wedding. Many of my friends left comments on the Pirate and the Princess post, requesting to see what I wore. I call it my Rust-Tex Floater and wear it on special occassions.

The Pirate and the Princess

The marriage of our eldest daughter was on August 2nd. It was a themed wedding held outdoors. The theme was, The Pirate and the Princess. Here is the logo that was used on the invitation and...everywhere else, as you will see later in this post.

The groom rented a pirate costume instead of a tux and the bride wore a dress that made her feel like a princess. Here is a picture of the happy couple.

The cake was in the shape of a castle decorated with trailing vines and a meander quilting pattern in the icing.

Yes it is leaning. It was in the upper 80'sF that day and the poor cake had spent an hour being transported by car to the site of the wedding.

Our youngest daughter made these truly unique "cake toppers".

This picture shows how a pirate cuts a wedding cake.

This one shows how a well bred princess cuts a cake.And this one show how working together a wedding cake can be properly cut by a pirate and a princess.

I baked the cake on what turned out to be the hottest day of summer so far. But my sister-in-law the professional cake decorator, is the real hero in this story. She drove from Waukegan, IL to Madison, WI after she got off work on Friday night to decorate the cake. She arrived in Madison about 7:15 and the cake was done about 12:30.

During transport one of the turrets fell off before the cake was one block from the house. SIL has done enough wedding cakes that she knew to bring along a repair kit. I have no idea what all is in a cake repair kit, but my SIL knew and she had it with her so the cake looked fabulous all day. When I went to take one more picture before we cut it one of the turrets fell off. I took that as a sign that it was definitely time to cut the cake.

Thank you Carol!!!

It was an amazing cake!!!

Theresa Finally Meets her Namesake

My good friend Theresa from Washington, DC, is here for our eldest daughter's wedding. So she and my studio companion, who was named after her finally meet. And the picture of the day proves it.