I've been working in digital collage, combining photographs and line art printed on rust-dyed fabrics lately.

The piece above is a door prize to be given away at Wisconsin Quilters Inc. this weekend.

The Gerbera daisy is a photograph, painted with Earth Safe Finishes Colorants using a watercolor technique to help the colors flow and blend.

ESF makes it so easy to create beautiful colors on fabric, paper, glass, metal, wood, plastic, and more!

The 12" x 12" square art quilt above was made for Rust Tex's exhibition. If juried into the show, it will travel to England for their quilt festival.

The background began as a digital collage of photographs and vintage artwork printed on rust-dyed fabric. I added a wash of green for the forest floor, white for a shaft of light, and blue for the sky using ESF Colorant + Fabric Magic + lots of water.

Free-motion stitching in a variegated black/brown thread was worked on the main tree, while monofilament was stitched free-form to represent sunlight through the forest canopy and wind through the tree branches.

Glass and stone beads were stitched on the surface by hand and the edges were finished with satin stitches.

The composition recalls a trip to the woods in early spring with my mother and grandmother to see the wild flowers. I was disappointed when my grandmother gently informed me the flowers had to stay in the forest; they would be unhappy in the garden at home. To entertain myself, I pretended the wind through the tree branches was the voice of many fairies whispering to me.

It's remarkable to me that this image, the colors, sounds, smells, and emotions are so vivid to me after 50 years or so—and a pleasant way to remember a day with two women so influential in my life!

The photo above shows a pair of socks knit for me for Christmas by my friend Cheryl. She's a master with needles and hooks!

Back in July, she brought two pieces of knitted natural wool and asked me to dye them in my favorite color combination.

This is one sock panel soaking up a combination of ESF Colorant + Fabric Magic + the juice kids use to blow bubbles. The bubble juice was a perfect carrier for the Colorant mixture!

This is the other sock panel in a shallow foil pan, curing in the sun.

Once the Colorants dried and cured 24 hours, the panels were washed in hot soapy water. Next time I’ll try heat-setting the color with a dry iron before washing to try to keep the vibrancy of the color.

I love it that the socks don't match and really appreciate the time involved in Cheryl’s wonderful gift (we've been friends since 7th grade!).

Need a great last-minute gift? Try these fabulous padfolios! Once the fabric is prepared, it takes less than an hour to assemble and add the embellishment.

This is what it looks like when opened out flat. This is a piece of rust-dyed fabric with touch-prints of bottle caps and paper towel core using Opaque Shimmers in bronze, copper, and gold.

This is the padfolio inside. It features a pocket in the left panel for pencil or pen, small calendar, calculator, or whatever you'd like to keep close to the notepad on the right. The pad is 5" x 8" and is readily available at office supply stores, such as Staples or Office Depot.

Satin stitches finish the edges and the closure is a Velcro dot with a button on top.

This padfolio, as well as the two at the very top of this post are made of rust-dyed fabric with Earth Safe Finishes Colorant sprayed on while the fabric is damp.

The tutorial is posted as a downloadable pdf in the margin on the side. Hope you enjoy making padfolios as much as I have. I've made 12 in the past two days. Eight of them went to a gallery this morning and two had sold already by noon!

I'm having a blast tattooing T-shirts, sweatshirts, purses, scarves, and all sorts of surfaces with a mixture of Earth Safe Finishes Colorants (or Opaque Shimmers) + Fabric Magic + Thickener. The colors are crisp and clear—even on dark backgrounds, such as this black fabric purse.

The surface design is three different tattoo-style stencils layered with red on the bottom, then gold, and finally white. The original wooden button was removed and replaced with a fabulous polymer clay button purchased at the Textile Center in Minneapolis, Minn.

This is what the purse looked like before the tattoo-ing layers. It's a lovely black cotton bag with a wooden button, zipper pocket, and elastic-top pockets for cell phone and other essentials inside.

Isn't it amazing what you can do with Earth Safe Finishes?

Please don't think I'm neglecting you or the excitement of discover with ESF. DH and I are currently in Santa Fe, soaking in the vistas—and I'm working on a new book concept!

I just love Autumn! The colors speak to me. I love the crunch of the leaves, the trees as their branches are exposed again, and the squirrels scampering across the yard with mouths of acorns. But most of all the colors!

This white pumpkin was chosen for it's smooth surface and was going to be stenciled. However, the pumpkin was too small and the curve too acute for a stencil to work properly. So, out came the rubber stamps!



A few drops of black Colorant on an empty rubber-stamp pad (easy!) and the motif was ready to repeat around the top of the pumpkin.


The Colorant dried in just a few minutes, making it easy to fill the swirl lines with gold Shimmer Opaque and then highlight with copper.

This went so well, I'm thinking of using small pumpkins at each place at the Thanksgiving table. What do you think?