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browns

January 29, 2012

there are 3 seperate cloths. pretty much all the browns that i have dyed. the one on the far right is the one in the previous post. it's early evening and hard to get any true color. i had no idea i had these cloths…well, i knew that i had a basket referred to as Stuff i Dyed, but it was just a basket of cloth. all is cotton, silk noile, and linen. all just plunked in either an aluminum or cast iron pot and left in the Sun. Summer dyes.

and this. this one strip with a notation. Yerba Mansa. 8/10. this would have been when the thought of moving to California first arose. i think at that point, i detached from looking closely, here. but isn't it interesting. this is a color i have been wanting in the last months. the Yerba Mansa this is from was in a pot by the front porch. it died last summer, but i don't know, it also might be a biennial? whichever, i have access to endless amounts of it. it is common here. today i see that it is a color similiar to the colors of the eucalyptus that i have longed for.

this has been Some Day.

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31 responses to “browns”

Sandy

January 29, 2012

Grace, these look amazing together. Will you keep the as 3 seperate or make another larger cloth? I LOVE your crow/raven… He seems to be watching over your space. I have been trying to lay out cloth on my sewing table and not getting very far. I think it’s time to tack them up on a wall. I get the morning sun thru my sewing room.

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grace Forrest Maestas

January 29, 2012

Sandy…they won’t be a cloth at all. seperate or
together. they are just a way to
store
cloth
as opposed to my throwing it all in baskets
or piling it up.
so, it’s a storage thing. Jude posted about this in
the Magic Diaries 2. her’s was many seperate, sorta
unrelated white or whiteish pieces stitched together
WITHOUT PLAN. very beautiful and very different from
what i did here.
i will bring home the wooden clothes dryer rack on
Tues and just drape them over it. they can stay there
as is until i am wanting brown, then i can look and
cut free a piece i think i want to use. they are just
VERY loosly stitched. the smaller pieces just tacked at
corners.
the Crow/Raven is from my brother’s farm in Minnesota.
it’s plastic. you can get them at feedstores. i think
they are used to discourage birds from fields? when i
was visiting, it was out by his garden but kept falling
down into the grass. i stole it when i left. when i
got home, i confessed. he said it was ok.
putting stuff on the wall is magic. just tacking it up
there and then living with it, walking around, looking
at it out of the corner of your eye…….works.
let me know.
did you fix your comment thingy????? i’ll go see.

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Valerianna

January 29, 2012

Nice find – beautiful colors…. yerba mansa, don’t know it, gonna go google it..

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Sandy

January 29, 2012

My comment thingy is deceiving. You can comment, I just made the link to the comments a lighter color. Try clicking on it….. it still should work.
I see a trip to the feedstore in my future! I LOVE that bird!

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Deb G

January 29, 2012

I need to do this. I really need to do this… 🙂

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grace Forrest Maestas

January 29, 2012

i have a very STRONG sense that this is very important
to me. i don’t know what all it will ….cause…..
but….
i found it incredibly satisfying. tomorrow i will go
back to the grasses on the Diaries Cloth, but out of
the corner of my eye, i will be looking. i will be
thinking about all the blues and grey and green gray
s
that are left in that basket.
it’s like now i have liberated them to just hummmmm
in the light???? don’t know. but it feels really
good.

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grace Forrest Maestas

January 29, 2012

funny…i never looked. just did. interesting.
i knew it is a very much relied upon herb here by
the old ones.
hmmmmm.

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grace Forrest~Maestas

January 29, 2012

and an important part:
to just TACK them VERY looslely, so they can be
taken off and used at will.

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Michelle in NYC

January 29, 2012

Hey-just sent you this information in an email too-Yerba Mansa is amazing!
http://medplant.nmsu.edu/yerba.html
It was being touted as the net Echinacea
as a medicinal it has enormous potential and is being looked at for that
(a whole page of references)-https://www.google.com/search?client=gmail&rls=gm&q=yerba%20mansa%20%20plant%20%28new%20Mexico%29-maybe a cash crop for you as well as a medicinal and a dye. I extrapolate…but I can dream big for others.

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Mo’a

January 29, 2012

A great way to have your favorite fabrics in full view. A friend and I hung things on laundry lines in my studio…mostly whites. I wrote posts about it listed under Studio Magic.

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Nancy

January 29, 2012

My old dye stuffs are all neatly folded and stacked and waiting for me to get my act together. Since what you (and Jude) have done here is what Ive been seeing in my head. I think for me it would not be a place to store, but they would stay there, as is. My most fun part is the laying out, fiddling, choosing colors etc. Plus I just may be too lazy to stitch/tack them together, just to undo that! Ha
Love the browns.

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sandra

January 30, 2012

love this storing of cloth. I also have some dyed fabrics, this will be a good place for them. Perhaps a starting point. Looking forward to see them on your wooden dry rack.
And those baskets I just love them!

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;uie

January 30, 2012

Browns -earth cloths, the predominent color I work with from the gleanings of the fields. For me, brown is a universe of many shades and hews, cool, warm, fierce as in red clay dirt, soft as in the mocha color of decayed leaves,strong as in walnut dyes,cool as in the soft shading of tea. Brown can come from anything, a random gathering of wild privet with berries, thrown in the aluminum pot with onion skins and from that, the brown of the warm earth. I work with very small amounts of cloth so for me, a basket is sufficient. Spreading them out on the table, I make my wall hangings and at the end of each year, always feel the joy and need to create what I call my end of year cloth, using what is left in my basket. Working on such a small scale suits me. Equally, it is a good feeling to see your cloth holding wall grace for it gives a sense of sanctuary; hard to articulate the feeling of almost sacredness in these brown cloths; think it feels this way for me because of how I feel about land and its many gifts…

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jude

January 30, 2012

they are much happier now. known.

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Jill

January 30, 2012

i love them just as they are – they look fabulous hanging there – am off to dig out all my dyed pieces and do precisely the same thing – they are so inspiring – great idea of Jude, as you can see what you have and how they communicate with each other.

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grace Forrest~Maestas

January 30, 2012

it’s also a weed. or, a native plant. they grow
where and why they feeeel like it.
and here, it’s mostly along the river area, the Bosque,
or the irrigation ditches. it’s too sandy, too dry for me other than minimally.

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grace Forrest~Maestas

January 30, 2012

i remember your post very well. i can have only so much
dangling from the ceiling here….
i am going to just begin seeing if this works for the
cloth i dye. with Glennis’ indigo workshop coming up,
i hope to create a good amount.

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grace Forrest~Maestas

January 30, 2012

these are just stitched with HUGE running stitch. fast.
no big deal to cut apart and re stitch

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grace Forrest~Maestas

January 30, 2012

rack, tomorrow.
baskets, YES. they are sold at our Farmer’s Market
as fund raisers. i love them a lot too.

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grace Forrest~Maestas

January 30, 2012

marti..i was surprised by how much brown i had! i would
never have thought. so this has been a really great
thing. today i did yellows. tomorrow the rack.
maybe i can work smaller after this ? it just hasn’t
seemed to happen yet. i really don’t know why.

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grace Forrest~Maestas

January 30, 2012

they ARE. really. it’s just surprising to see them.
know them, yes. know them.

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grace Forrest~Maestas

January 30, 2012

yes. how they communicate with each other.
and with your thoughts.

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petrena

January 31, 2012

grace:
how did you do your yerba mansa dyepot?
and did you pre-mordant your cottons (i assume?)
just asking b/c I, too googled the plant (we don’t have them, i don’t think, up here in NEOhio.)
turns out, it’s a good ‘wetland’ plant; and with all the rain we had last year (twice the amount-over 70 “!!!,) i’ve got semi-permanent little ponds in the back yard, as well as the ditch. so i’ve been trying to figure out what i could seed in and around them that would be both pretty and useful. 🙂
knowing that this might also be a dye source is just fabulous!
did you by chance harvest any seeds? 🙂
btw-anyone-i still have a good amount of (hot-pink) morning glory seeds. and the flowers leave that color on (mordanted) cotton! Well, all i’ve done with them is bundle; i would imagine they’d be a good ice-dye…can’t attest to their permanence but it’s a pretty color.
anyway, i really like the way you place color(s) within your pieces.
you are moving? i’d really like to plop down in the s/w for a while. it’s so different from the midwest!
anyway, good luck and best wishes…treena

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ali

January 31, 2012

Yerba Mansa–i could say that all day, like a mantra

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handstories

January 31, 2012

this is a place to rest the eyes, and rest the rest, too.

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Nancy

January 31, 2012

What a beautiful comment Marti. Your words and ways working with cloth…lovely.

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Tricia

February 1, 2012

what a great idea for storing cloth together…
this post has just reminded me… I’ve a basket of browns somewhere too… must look for them…
have you seen this post over at ‘here with t’… some stunning shades of browns…
http://herewitht.blogspot.com/2012/01/fading-light-and-paper-wings.html

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grace Forrest Maestas

February 2, 2012

treena….i plopped self down here a little over 20 yrs
ago from Michigan. so yes. different from the Midwest,
YES!
no..no mordant. all these except the yellows were just
plopped into pots outside in the S U N and left to mind
their own businesses. there were significant differences in the cast iron pot, the aluminum and copper. this
summer i will TRY to keep track.
the Yerba Mansa propagates by runner, not seed. somewhere in all those google articles it said something about
a form of it growing in Midwest????? i’ll try to find it.
i looked for a while this eve and didn’t see it. maybe i
dreamed it?, no…don’t think so. i’ll look again.
today i cleaned out the stuff that had accumulated under
the front porch. it’s next to where the outside hose
faucet is that always leaks. also shaded north side of
house. so am going to get some rootlets from my friend’s
father who has it all over and see if it will do well
there. i WOULD send you a rootlet but i honestly don’t
think it would work without the Heat and the alkaline
soil we have here. but we could try if you want to. won’t be doing that for another few weeks or a month. March.
Moving…well, two days ago i would have said yes, but
sometimes two days changes things…now i don’t know.
would be to way N. Cal, by Oregon border if it happens.
looks in this moment like it may not, hense the “planting
thoughts”.

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grace Forrest Maestas

February 2, 2012

yes…isn’t it nice?, but all of Spanish is like that
to me. it’s a really beautiful language to listen to.

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grace Forrest Maestas

February 2, 2012

oh…i am just not good at resting the rest. i keep
jumping up.

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grace Forrest Maestas

February 2, 2012

Tricia, YES i DID see T’s browns and her chicks too.
i am even thinking of chicks. it MUST be spring.
and yes. if you can, you can see what JUDE said about
storing that way. it really has an amazing vibration
to it………….

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