PLAY DAY WITH SUZIE

Who's Suzie?
Suzie is a woman from Bellingham who travels to the waters of Desolation Sound every summer with her husband and friends. Last year she discovered some of my fabric for sale over at the Cortes Craft Shop and she was so excited, she just HAD to find me. She headed to Refuge Cove and asked for me but somehow we never connected. (All that searching made me feel so special!) She ended up with my e-mail and the rest is history!

Suzie is also a calligrapher, a very fine one at that! She does elegant work in a variety of formats. One of her modes is to write on my fabric. She stabilizes it with freezer paper (a friend of mine also recommended contact paper) and chooses her ink color to contrast with the fabric. Her pieces are lovely. This is an example of her work done on commercial fabric. I also love the beadwork at the bottom.

Her e-mail requested some more fabric, so when we drove through B-ham on our way to Mexico, I stopped and made a connection with her. The seeds of friendship were planted and on their way.

So once again, she found herself up my way and we planned for a play day in my studio. She deserted her boat-mates and was delivered to my house by her husband, Chuck, in their little inflatable.

She hadn't done much dyeing so I showed her a few techniques and we both just ended up with lots of experiments and fun! She was leaning towards oranges, and I was in a blue/purple mood. Funny how those color things go! I was a bit disappointed with our results as I could tell that the dyes were old and not up to the best color. But she was HAPPY! One of my favorite pieces of the day was made by making penny sandwiches on the cotton: a penny on each side of the cotton, then secured tightly with a small clamp. They produced a lovely dotted piece.And Suzie found a pine branch, attached it to her piece for dyeing, and yes, the form or impression of the needles could beautifully be seen on the finished piece.

We both had a great time and I can't wait to see what she comes up with. And I can't wait for next year's visit!