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My bird friend Bruce sent out a note the other day commenting on the number of warblers that could be found at a place called Greenfield Lake. I had passed by this many times going back and forth to Charlotte but had never stopped so thought it was a nice day for a leisurely drive. Surprisingly, it is literally a couple of blocks south of downtown Wilmington and is a very large lake. There is a drive completely surrounding it with three or four places that you can park your car and walk around. I think it would be a very long walk to walk around the whole lake as even driving and just walking a bit, I was gone for over three hours! I didn't spot too many birds but then it was late in the afternoon and I am not all that great at spotting birds in foliage and was really looking to get a feel for the area so that I could go back and explore further. A very pleasant surprise was that there were lots of gardens with flowering azaleas (or something that certainly looked like azaleas) which I didn't think flowered this time of year! There were lots and lots of butterflies there. The first one I spotted was this Red Spotted Purple -- not sure if I hae seen this one before and it loved the butterfly bushes that were there.
The same butterfly as above but from the side. There will definitely be a butterfly quilt in my future!
Just one more Purple!
This is a Silver Spotted Skipper -- one of three different Skippers that I saw. You could see the flash of white as they flitted around.
This is a Fiery Skipper -- saw a lot of this one.
I believe it is an Ocola Skipper.
This was one of the many Cloudless Sulfurs sucking on the nectar from the azalea bloom.
I believe this is a Green Anole Lizard which I saw hidden in the undergrowth.
I was told that the lake is filled with alligators and this one sure fit the bill -- he was proably 12 or 14 feet long and had been sunning on the shore right next to the playground just minutes before I arrived. He was surrounded by a whole bunch of turtles.
This is a Cardinal Flower in the woods which I thought was very pretty.
I believe this is an Amanita mushroom which according to Wikipedia is highly poisonous, not that I go around eating wild mushroom! I just thought it was really pretty!
This is, of course, one of my favorites - a Piliated Woodpecker. There were two hanging out by the Amphitheatre and they were not happy about me being there taking their pictures!
This is an American Redstart which is in the warbler family. I had not seen one of these before although it is one of the common fall migrants. There were quite a few of these, both male and female flying around.
Another picture of the Redstart -- a female I think.
The whole lake area is really pretty. There are brdges and wooden pathways as well as a paved pathway around most of the area (if not all). This was looking out over the lake.
Another view looking out -- you can even see some slight change in color. I will have to come back in a month!
You can see the reflection of the very blue sky.
There were ibis and egrets in the lake -- hopefully there will be ducks later on (although with Snapping Turtles, who knows!) I passed some other ibis locally driving up there as well.
I also might note that I saw my first hummingbird on the island the other day so I can add that to my Pleasure Island list. I had thought it was one of my dragonflies until I blew up the picture!
I definitely will be returning to Greenfield Park!! I am beginning to think that Wilmington is one of the South's biggest secrets! Any naturalist would have a field day down here!
The weather has been truly wonderful down here with skies a deep azure blue -- the perfect backdrop for the sea oats and stones on the beach at Ft. Fisher. Ft. Fisher (and Wilmington for that matter) attained some notice because of the recent film Lincoln which talks quite a bit about those last battles in the Civil War during the first 30 minutes of the movie. My youngest daughter's FIL was extremely intrigued by the history of this area which he read up on after his last visit. Evidently Wilmington was (unknown to the North for much of the time) one of the main ports through which the South got their materials from foreign sympathizers. How cool is it to live in such a historic and also beautiful area.
I know I have showed pictures of the Live Oaks before but the lines are just so beautiful and they are all around the park.
Look at that blue sky!
This was not Photoshopped. I wasn't even sure that the camera would capture the gradation of the blue color in the sky -- not often you take a picture of 90 per cent sky!! I wanted inspiration for a piece I am going to make this winter using some lovely batiks I was gifted last year.
Again, I was just taking pictures of things that appealed to me. Here were Painted Daisies (which are everywhere down here) growing through the planking leading to the gazebo.
Another very tiny wildflower. I thought it was in the aster family and it is -- Youngia or Hawk's-beard. It grows year round and I think I saw it in the spring as well.
The weather has been stunningly beautiful the past few days and cool enough in the afternoons to resume my afternoon walks while the sun is still out. I headed down to Ft. Fisher as it is really too early for birds but knew I would spot some butterflies down there among the Painted Daisies. I always see different butterflies there than in my neighbor's yard but I have included one from there as well. This is a Gulf Fritillary which looks totally different on the top and bottom. This is the top view.
This is from below -- notice all those white large spots and the stripey body.
This shows a side view so you can see both sides. It is a lovely burst of color this time of year.
This is a Common Buckeye, I didn't notice this petite wildflower until I blew up the picture. I was wondering what was attracting these butterflies.
This is a Common Sootywing which is quite small. I was surprised I managed a decent picture.
This is a Phaon Crescent. The butterfly books shows this as being further west but it definitely was this butterfly . I should note that this is really a "macro" as this butterfly is only about 7/8 of an inch across -- you can see the blades of grass for comparison. This was in my neighbor's yard.
This is most of a Common Green Darner (dragonfly) which our cat caught the other evening. I decided the remains would look nice in my Christmas Cactus which sits outside on the porch. The top of the body is bright green and then it is aqua. It is a good sized dragonfly.
This was a HUGE bug -- probably three to four inches long when stretched out. It was late in the day but it was green. Thanks to the entomology group on Facebook, I now know this is an Obscure Bird Grasshopper described as a HUGE grasshopper which it was!!
Finally after living down here part time for the last couple of years, I made it to a meeting of the local quilt guild . It is about half the size of GVQC and had a more intimate feel than the meetings up north. The web site is Quilter's by the Sea Guild of Wilmington. Needless to say, I did join the group and very glad of that!
Our speaker for the evening was Susan Edmonson (her website). She teaches classes on creativity, collages as well as all sorts of embellishment techniques and makes her home in Concord, NC. Hers was about the only southern accent I heard all evening!! The above was one of her pieces that featured many of her techniques as was developed as a sample for one of the fabric companies she designs for. One of the features of many of her pieces was text which you can see on the far left hand side of this piece. She also markets a series of patterns and has recently published her first book.
This was Susan talking about the above piece. She interjected a lot of humor in her presentation.
She had a table absolutely heaping with all sorts of really nice examples of her work which is very whimsical!
They had Show and Tell after the program. I have to get these ladies better trained as they lifted up and showed their quilts so quickly, I couldn't get the camera focused so here are a few of the quilts from their show and tell which they held after the program! Although a very simple pattern, this was just a beautiful way to use up your colorful batiks.
I don't know any names yet but hopefully that will come with time as there is a reasonable number of people to get to know in this club! This was the first quilt of this proud lady and with good reason to be proud, I might add -- very nice!
This was one of several quilts shown by one very prolific quilter who showed several quilts but so quickly, this was the only one I got a shot of!!
Another very pretty quilt!
This was a pretty quilt which was quickly donated to the Guild's contribution to the Neonatal unit at the New Hanover Hospital.
This was a collaged piece by Patricia Mattison (her website). She has her work displayed and teaches at a local gallery down here in Wilmington. She happened to sit in the same row in the back as I did and recognized me and she looked slightly familiar as well. After a short chat, we found that we had many mutual friends and she was from Syracuse until a year ago. She and I had pieces in an exhibit several years ago and we believe we took some of the same classes at Quilting by the Lake. Definitely a small world moment! I met several other quilters from New York who introduced themselves to me.
This and the following quilt were my two favorites!! I love scrap quilts anyway and these two had such pretty colors.
Luckily these two ladies held up their quilts long enough so I could take a picture!!
We had a house full of guests this past week! My youngest daughter and her husband and my beautiful granddaughter were here from Seattle, her inlaws here from Myrtle Beach, and my older daughter from Charlotte. Here is my exuberant granddaughter and her grandpa! There were getting ready to go fishing. DH put a bell on the fishing line and she played "catfishing" with one of our kitties! The shirt was dyed by her mother!!! It seems that I have brought her over to the "dark" side and she has taken up dyeing clothes -- now to just get her to use something other than RIT dyes!!
Here is Amelia with her newest friend Danny, a stuffed seal from her aunt LJ. LJ was a big hit with her niece.
That's me in the background and my youngest daughter in the foreground. She is a blonde right now but has been every color in the rainbow over the years!! It should be no surprise that she has taken up dyeing -- so she will be a third generation dyer!!
Our other visitors have been the butterflies. This was taken from the third floor balcony of a Palamedes Swallowtail butterfly in my neighbor's flower garden. They have butterflies most of the time.
This was Black Swallowtail which was flitting around with the Palamedes butterflies above. He is a bit more colorful.
Two of the Palamedes butterflies in flight. There have also been an abundance of the sulfurs which gives butterflies their name (from the yellow color).
The weather has been glorious and the ocean temps in the 80s. I had to buy a new bathing suit, though, as I managed to leave all of mine at home!! What was I thinking?
My ice dyeing process is really, really simple. When I first heard about ice dyeing, I wasn't tempted and never read any articles or blogs about it. I just built on the process I was using with snow dyeing of which I had done a lot in the past. Since I am not here in the north for much of the snow season anymore, I decided to try my own version of ice dyeing.
There are several components but all very easy.
1. Set up your workspace -- this involves finding some cookie racks or anything else that water can pass through easily and is big enough to accommodate your fabric. I found some that were about 11 x 18 inches at Target. I then had to find plastic boxes of similar dimensions to rest the racks on top of. By the time I ended, I had four of these racks set up -- one larger than the other three (18x24 maybe). Buy some ice. I prefer to buy the largest bag I can with the smallest cubes and don't use cubes from my fridge except in desperation when I run out and just need a little more. Gather some of your MX dyes. I used my very oldest dyes that had been hanging around for up to 15 years in some cases. In my case these oldest dyes were mixed dyes (not pure colors which is what I work with almost exclusively these days). Try to have at least one black and one dark brown. I also lay wet newspapers around the tubs to catch errant dye particles.
2. Prepare your fabric - Cut your fabric into desired lengths after prewashing (I only do this with fabrics that are pfd but aren't marked as such like my sateens and Egyptian cottons). For me, pre-washing insures that they will sop up the soda ash liquid really quickly. I then fold them into the sizes I want if I am going to do a repeat. If I don't want a repeat, I just toss into the soda ash solution (1/2 cup of soda ash to one gallon of water). I generally make up a three gallon bucket of soda ash solution. For the repeat fabric, I carefully lay them in the soda ash solution all folded. I let them sit there for at least 10 minutes making sure the solution goes through all layers. I then just wring out by hand -- I don't try to squeeze out every drop -- I want them wet.
3. Scrunch your fabric -- wet fabric is very easy to manipulate and I just squish or scrunch it up with my hands on the rack. I generally get two yards per rack and more on the larger rack. I try to keep the scrunching very even and both ways -- horizontal and vertical as it makes the patterns more interesting. I do this when doing low water immersion as well. I want to give the dyes an equal opportunity to hit all the fabric fairly evenly.
4. Applying the ice (or snow) - I apply the ice only the thickness of one cube or in the case of snow about 1 1/2 inches all over very evenly. I have found that the really frozen cubes from my freezer actually adhere to the fabric. Those that don't, I move around as they are not touching fabric. I try to cover the whole fabric and will put the larger cubes around the outside to kind of hold in the rest. I do this for each container at the time I am going to apply the dye, not all at once like all the other processes. I don't want the ice melting before I apply the dyes as all that will do is wash the soda ash out of the fabric.
5. Applying the dyes - At this point I put on a mask as I will be working with dye powders instead of my usual liquids. I think it is important (at least for the repeating patterns) to have a good variety of light and dark value hues (colors). I found from experience for me it is essential to use a good dark color somewhere in the piece or the pattern won't stand out. The ice dyeing itself will provide for some lights. I also like to include both warm and cool colors in a piece if at all possible (I like contrast A LOT). With my ice dyeing, they don't mix much so there is little "mud". I then take a tablespoon or ideally a shaker and place the dyes all over the ice cubes making sure to cover it all. This is a colossal waste of dyes but so what!! I have had them far too long anyway!! There is probably at least a tablespoon or two per yard of fabric. I do like to "outline" in my repeat pieces by putting a dark color all around the outside of the piece. I try not to put complementary colors right next to each other as well but put blending colors between them.
6. Batching and washout - I then just leave it alone but will go look at it after about 4 hours. By then most of the ice has melted and that which is left is clear. At this point, I remove those clear ice cubes (all they will do at this point is wash out the dye and soda ash). I then take a container and usually two yards at a time, keep it scrunched as it is and put it into the microwave (I have a very old one down in my dye area). I use a styrofoam meat tray as a lid and set the microwave to 3-4 minutes/yard. Mine doesn't even rotate, it is so old. While that is "cooking", I fill up a 3 gallon pail with cold water and another with warm water. After the microwave has dinged, I make sure the fabric is nice and warm (blue dyes especially need a little warmth to bond with the fabric). I then unfold and soak in the cold water. I wring it out and then move it to warm water. Once more I rinse in another bucket with warm water and then the fabrics get put aside in an empty bucket. As each bunch gets nuked and I finally have about 10-12 yards rinsed the three times, I take them upstairs and wash them with a little Synthrapol in my washing machine using warm water for wash and rinse. I take them out and make sure all the threads are unwound from the fabric and not bunching it (you know what I mean). That gives me my first preview of what they might look like. I then put them back in the washer and run through a hot wash cycle with more Synthrapol-- turning it through so that it gets a full 30 minutes of hot water. Then I dry. If I am selling the fabric, I would put it through the hot cycle again and still warn people to wash it before using (they may have hotter water or different water than me).
That's it!!
I have found that yellow is the most difficult to work with as a powder and have on occasion actually made a very heavy liquid concentration but even that doesn't work well as yellows are one color that want a decent amount of water to dissolve fully. Undissolved they just won't bond with the fabric. Reds tend to "speckle" the most -- i.e., if a tiny speck of powder hits the fabric without liquid it will just sit there and bond immediately causing a freckle. The fun part of the mixed dyes is you never know what colors are going to appear on the fabric!! Sometimes you get the mixed colors and sometimes you get the separate colors and sometimes both!
Note: I did get the stones attached to the lapidary quilt using my dear husband's epoxy which seemed to work well -- hopefully they will stay on long enough for the show!
The autumn Lapidary show sent out a request for some different kinds of exhibits for this year's show. One of our RAFA members was given some minerals to use in our pieces. The only requirement was that it not be jewelry! I was intrigued by this piece which is about an 1/8th of an inch thick. It inspired me to construct another Strata quilt as that is what it looked like to me -- a piece cut our of a strata. I was going to mount the piece on the front on a piece of marbled fabric that looked like stones. Par for the course, I took this picture and then managed to lose the stone although it will show up sometime well after the show is over I am sure. Luckily I had a box full of polished stones, some of which were the green color in this specimen. It won't be the same but.... I will mount a picture of the inspiration on the back of the quilt! This is a shot with no flash so the color isn't as true as the piece below. The colors are the same.
This is the almost finished piece (missing the stones which I have yet to fully figure out how to mount). It ended up being about 33 inches x 24 inches and is fairly heavily quilted. You may have to double click to see closer.
So now I just have to put on the sleeve and the stones and the label!
I am also getting several quilts ready for an exhibition in Clifton Springs at their Art Center later this fall.
It has been darn difficult to get a picture of the hummingbirds which are frequent visitors. This was about 50 feet away so not too bad. They love the butterfly bush and chase each other off and move much too fast!!
This is a picture my next door neighbor took of three Pileated Woodpeckers going for the suet he placed on the tree. He sees them quite frequently.
The same afternoon I saw the hummingbird, I spotted one of the above woodpeckers in a tree over my driveway -- he stayed just long enough to get a picture -- they never get very close!
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