Some Fall Inspiration

A couple of weeks ago I read a blog post on the Quilt or Dye blog about dyeing with natural materials. I thought the work was interesting, thought it sounded fairly easy, and thought that I'd give it a try. Check out Judith's post here http://quiltordye.blogspot.com/2010/10/playing-with-flowers.html. Judith mentioned that she thought her piece with the leaves was "a lot of work for little color and pattern." She liked her piece using mums better. I didn't have any mums to use but thought I'd give the rose leaves a try. For good measure, I threw in some Black-Eyed Susans I was getting ready to cut down for the winter (just to see what they might do). My attempt at this process gave me a light "soft" colored piece of fabric. It isn't finished by any means, but I will definitely be putting some more layers on it and using it later on. Thanks, Judith, for the inspiration.

You can click on this picture to get a closer look at the piece. You can see the details a lot better. It isn't a great piece by any means, but I think it will be useable--and it was fun! The dark places on it come from the centers of the Black-Eyed Susans. I threw in a few purple flowers from my yard. (I don't know what they were.) I think that is what shows up as dark purple. The Black-Eyed Susans also caused some areas of yellow to show up.

I just love the fall. This year it has been so dry around here that we didn't get the usual beautiful fall colors. However, I did get some really pretty leaves on a bush in my backyard. I'm thinking I might do a fabric piece with some paint and threadwork from these pictures. Aren't the colors and textures wonderful!