Rowland Ricketts in Toronto

 I spent Sunday with Rowland Ricketts.

 He was in Toronto for five days and the last day was a master class.

The images in this post show his work with stitch resist (above) and rice paste resist (below)

Click here to read Rowland's inspiring story.

Rowland's wife Chimani, wove the 13 metres of 14" wide cotton kimono cloth shown above.
He dyed it with stitch resist.

We learned some of his techniques for stitch resist during the workshop.
Rowland Ricketts is pictured above in front of my stitch resist learning sample

Rowland's teaching sample with the studio's irons

The smell of an indigo vat just as it begins fermenting and springs to life is one of ripeness, a moment of rich potentiality when, as a maker, I momentarily stand between the history of the materials and processes that helped me get the indigo thus far and the promise of all the work that the vat is still yet to realize.  Rowland Ricketts 

I am aware of a connection that leads not just from my teachers to me, but one that reaches back to my teacher's teachers and the people they learned from, back into a past in which the processes I uses were developed through the accumulated experiences of all who have ever worked with this unique dye.   Rowland Ricketts. 

dyeing for beauty

 beauty crowds me till I die

 beauty, mercy have on me

 but if I expire today

let it be in sight of thee

 text by Emily Dickinson

indigo for the wedding

the moon and the stars

"Once I was beset by anxiety.
I couldn't tell right from left.
I could have cried out with terror at being lost.
But I pushed the fear away by studying the sky,
determining where the moon would come out

 where the sun would appear in the morning.

 I saw myself in relation to the stars.

I began weeping and knew I was alright." 
text: Louise Bourgeois
images: new work with indigo and stitch

To the Lighthouse

My mother's favourite novel was To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. I listened to it this week while doing these dye processes. There it was - her picture. Yes, with all its greens and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would be hung in the attic, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? With a sudden intensity,
as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre.It was done; It was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue,
I have had my vision.

(from the last paragraph of To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf)

wonky log cabin

indigo dyed silk, linen, wool, velvet, rayon, cotton, and hemp, hand pieced on 10" muslin square Log cabin is made by sewing strips in a spiral manner around a central square. A stitch and flip block, it has been used creatively for ages. I make log cabin on foundation fabric of uniform size, handy when it comes to joining blocks together. The pencil lines remind me to be wonky within that limitation. The playful hand painted bowl in the photo is a gift from Grace, brought back from Turkey for us. I've started the process of dipping and oxidizing the rye paste resisted fabrics in indigo - shall keep you posted on the results.