How Ashar's custom silk costumes looked on stage

If you would like to see what Ashar's custom silk order turned into, you could look here: youtube

I'm not sure whether it was kosher for the videographer to post the video, so you might want to look quickly -- but they made beautiful long sleeves and panel skirts out of the three color schemes of yardage. It's a very creative and lovely performance. Go Ashar!

Crazy Fuchsia

Crazy Fuchsia
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

Even in a 10% strength solution, Fuchsia won't give you a pastel!

Cranberry Splash - sold 4/12

Cranberry Splash - sold 4/12
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

I find that Dharma Trading's Chinese Red dye does interesting things. This one's gone, so no better picture is forthcoming. By the way, blog readers, meet S... or rather, the back of S. S is one of my best silk customers. She's going to move out of town after she finishes her advanced degree in chemistry, so I will probably go out of business then. :-D

Blood Orange

Blood Orange
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

dyed this thinking about the blood orange juice they served to us on our Alitalia flights.

Forest Ribbon

Forest Ribbon
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

This is the mint veil overdyed with a teal dye -- I just put a single resist at the edge to get this little accent.

Veil table, BUW workshop show

Veil table, BUW workshop show
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

Here I am with my spectrum of 22 veils!

Gold Rush - sold 4/12

Gold Rush - sold 4/12
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

Here's the Gold Rush, with brown and warm gold tones. My dance teacher snapped it up... she had a brown and gold veil "vanish" after a restaurant show and bought this as a replacement.

A MONSTER veil-selling day

I took my 22 veils downtown, put my tablecloth on the table, and laid them out in roughly ROYGBIV order. I was thinking to myself, in this economy, I'd really like to sell four veils; six would be great.

TEN VEILS! I sold TEN VEILS! Woo hoo!

And I have a custom order. A rush custom order. That wasn't real great planning on my part, I am so busy, but it's for Jaz. There is no way I'd let Jaz down. And she has a new costume that needs a veil....

The other great thing was that I got to see what Ashar Dance Company did with their custom silk yardage. I did bi-color pieces of silk in three different schemes for them, and they made looooonnnng sleeves and skirt panels out of them for a "House of Flying Daggers" inspired dance. It was truly beautiful, and I was so happy to see my silk turned into something so lovely on stage.

I have a few new pictures... some are from the vending room, since I didn't have time to photograph all the new ones in the "studio."

a pressing update

Oh, the iron-y. (Sorry.)

Back in February I was pondering how to iron my big veils on my cutting board. Darlene suggested just working on a couple layers of folded sheets. Well, I had to iron seven veils last night, and lo and behold, a folded flannel sheet did a great job. I did wish that it would stay wrinkle free while I worked... I had to smooth it out somewhat between veils... but it was significantly faster to be able to iron more than a quarter of a three-yard veil at a time. And I did spend $0 on it, always a plus!

I also wished it would reflect the heat back just a big more. I still may get just a piece of one of the reflective fabrics to go on the top of my flannel pad.

Hot Overdye Action!

When I started to look around and make a plan of attack to bring my inventory back up to a reasonable level, I ran into a problem immediately: low on silk. I just didn't have very many veils prepared for dyeing, and I certainly didn't have the time to either order some more or hem some more before the show on the 12th.

So I looked a little harder... and found some "rejects." Thereupon I entered into the Can This Silk Be Saved? show.

There were two veils I dyed a while back that were meant to be a brilliant purple. I was going to leave one solid and use the other in a shibori project. Sadly, they came out a disappointing dusty mauve. I felt depressed just looking at them. Clearly they needed to be overdyed in a different color. My initial thought was to correct their shade with a superduper purple dye bath, but a glance at my inventory showed a whole mess of purple-toned veils in stock! Darn. But suddenly I realized... black veils! Black veils always sell eventually. So I mixed up a big pot of black acid dye and in they went. They look great. Later I realized why I don't dye in black very often... cleaning up afterwards is a pain in the neck.

The other reject was the second Shamrock Shake green veil. This was from the batch that was supposed to be "kelly green" -- they sure weren't. I was willing to be a bit experimental with the overdye in this case, as I really wasn't sure what this mint tone would do to the overlying color. I got out some teal dye, a very grayed out blue-green. I tied a single scalloped stripe along one long edge of the veil and just threw it in a soda ash immersion. I took it out of the washing machine this morning -- wet, it looks like the color settled to a pretty nice dark green shade. I'm very curious to see how it looks dry. But I have little doubt that it will be a more attractive thing than the Shamrock Shake was.

Pictures soon... I promise.