Maybe the Goddess is Camera Shy

Ah, here they are. An early picture of the face of the goddess.

I sun-dyed cloth in bracken, wrapped in chicken wire, in this galvanized bucket.

Here is the foxglove dyebath.

And I floated the background cloth in the pond to un-Ikea-ize it.

I'm still experiencing technical difficulties with the pictures that I promised. Unfortunately my sister-in-law's camera has eaten all the batteries in the house, so it will be another day or three before there are new ones put in and JPEGs forwarded. I'll be back to my own camera in a day or two, so I'll definitely make up for the lack of images then.

Meanwhile, the Castaway quilt is coming along quite well. My rigorous plan to use only materials that were at hand hit a snag (albeit a very generous one) when a friend gave me a gift of her stash of green fabrics. Suddenly I went from virtual dearth to overabundance. I have tried to be restrained in my use of this bounty - it is amazing how critical I have become of this piece once I had more choices. There is actually something quite liberating about working with a limited palette. But then again, maybe working with what you've got means joyfully accepting gifts! And crates of oranges do sometimes wash up on the beach!

In the stash there was the perfect fabric for the leaves/rays that surround the face of the green goddess, and I used every scrap. Another hand-dyed piece will become the ivy that loops around her face.

I have also learned a few things so far in my process of "making do". 1) I now know that terry towel makes a lousy batting for handquilting - it is too hard and shifts around because of the pile. 2) I have also made use of those colour theory classes back in art school and created a variety of interesting colour mixtures from the four spools of orange, purple, yellow and green thread. 3) Coloured pencils come in handy to shift the tone of small areas of fabric. 4) Straight pins are a highly underrated invention. I discovered this after trying to use needles to hold layers of fabric together.

I promise, pictures very soon!