Equinox Cloth

I was inspired today to start a new stitched cloth.

First, there was this piece on Jude Hill's blog. All that dark and light got me thinking about the vernal equinox coming and the balance between light and dark.

Then there is the fact that my Healing Cloth workshop is next weekend...just about the same time as the equinox. It seemed a fitting piece to start.

I've been toying around with placing a lace "mandala" in the center...but haven't found the right one yet.

This is an unusual piece for me..but I'm thinking that I like how it's starting. The tan fabrics were ones that I tea-dyed when I was preparing tea bags for last summer's tea books.

The blue is painted with some subtle resists using salt.

Roy Reminder and Summer Fun

I'm a bit behind in my monthly Roy reminder. You can see that I've been busy having some summer fun with family.

So...here is the reminder...The Search for Roy G Biv (the colors of the rainbow) continues this coming Thursday, July 17. The color of the month is VIOLET. Hope you are out searching and plan to post up to five photos featuring VIOLET. When you do, leave a comment here or on Jennifer's blog and we will link to you for our monthly blog hop. It's lots of fun and we are always looking for more to join in.

Here are a few photos of this summer's project...small books of summer textures featuring teabag pages. If you want to know more about printing on teabags, read about it here. We made covers from brown paper and painted them...all the colors of the rainbow!

Poppy working hard on two book covers.

Kai's stripes became a plaid cover for his book.

Grandma printing leaves for the inside of her book.

We also printed with shells.

Poppy made tracings for one of her books.

A colorful selection of books!

Hope you are enjoying your summer too. I'd love to know about your summer art projects.

Prepping for the Summer Art Project

Drying teabags on fabric.

I spent some time in the kitchen today preparing for this summer's family art project.

Teabags waiting for the boiling water.

Black and green teabags soaking.

Why waste tea? The teabags are drying on cloth and more cloth is soaking in the tea.

Every summer, I put on my artistic thinking cap and come up with a project to share with my nieces and nephew and other family members.

In the past we've:

• made Jazzy dolls
• created woven bags on an innovative loom (my design) for collecting summer treasures
• painted and sun printed silk scarves and created story bags
• printed fabric squares for a 60th anniversary hanging

This summer, I was inspired by one of my Story Cloth students, Susan P. For one of her story cloths she printed designs on dried teabags. I even decided to write my upcoming Newsletter about Deconstructing Tea...using dried teabags, the little envelopes they come, the tags and string and even the boxes to create little pieces of tea art (Hope you'll sign up for Julie B Booth Surface Design News (if you haven't already) to find out more about it!)

Some of the teabag prints from the next issue of Julie B Booth Surface Design News.

My plan is for all of us to make little books using teabags for pages. We'll collect small leaves and other nature textures and print on the teabags. The covers will be made from softened and painted brown paper. As usual, I'm already getting excited to see what my nieces and nephew do. They always surprise and amaze me!