A Clean Up Day

I took another day off from rust dyeing to clean up the room where I store the fabric, chemicals, and protective clothing i use in the Rust-Tex Studio. I should have taken a before and after picture but it is painful to admit part of my house looked that bad.
This room is just off the kitchen. You pass through it on your way to the deck. When we moved in almost 20 years ago it was a mud room with a sink and toilet bowl. That was great when we had little girls playing in the yard. As they grew up, it became the recycling center. We sorted recyclables into 12 different categories and each had to be processed a different way to get them recycled. Now our city uses a single stream method of recycling so it all goes into the same bucket. “YEAH” to that but “BOO” to the way the mudroom filled up with other stuff. The final straw came when that nice blue tub you see in the picture, which is full of fabric on its way to becoming Rust-Tex, was forced to sit in the middle of the room because there was so much other stuff in the mudroom that you couldn’t squeeze around it. At that point, I felt something well up in me. The useless stuff disappeared and everything organized itself neatly on the shelves. I am not sure how what happened. It might have had something to do with my reading the last Harry Potter book over the week-end.

Oh Where, Oh Where Have I Been?

Time sure flies when you are having fun. I had not realized that it has been over a month since my last post. I was busy in July not with rust dyeing per say, but with events that Rust-Tex puts in my life. First I wrote an article on rust dyeing for Fibre and Stitch magazine. It will be in their premiere issue which comes out Sept 1. There is still time to subscribe. Follow this link to find out more about Fibre and Stitch.

Second I was a vendor at the Batavia, IL Quilt Show. Here is a picture of my booth at that event.

I use clear plastic hanger to display the Rust-Tex fabric. The hangers are hung on horizontal rods so people can browse each piece of Rust-Tex. Each piece is totally unique so I want to give everyone the chance to select the piece they can see in there own work.

The very next week-end I was at Crystal Lake, IL at the Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Show. It was a well organized show. She even arranged perfect weather. I introduced rust dyeing to quite a number of people through my live demos and the great pictures on the Rust-Tex Instructional CD which I had loaded on the laptop. Here is picture of my both at that show. We were in a giant tent as you can tell from the picture.
My friend Merry helped me at this show.

We wore matching Rust-Tex t-shirts.
(Not exactly matching but as close as you can get Rust-Tex to match.)