i'm all about the mud

I was talking to a fellow fiber artist today and she was lamenting that all her dyeing experiments lately were producing nothing but mud colors. She's a happy-go-lucky-bright colors kind of gal while I'm a give-me-brown-so-I can-muddy-this-color-into-an-earth-tone kind of person. Needless to say, I was pretty tempted to not try to help her figure out what was going wrong since I'm pretty sure at some point I can get her to trade me for all that muddy fabric.

Later on when I was in my studio, I looked around and realized just how much I love that color palette.

Fabric that used to be on my print table as a base that will get turned into something else.


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I even want mud from commercial fabric.

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Scraps that are being worked into new Remnant Collages.


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Remnant Collages in various states of completion.


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One of my hand dyed fabric baskets.

I always frown when I read a book that deals with dyeing or painting and they are quick to alert artists to ways to avoid producing mud colors.

There's a lot of beauty in this color palette. Not all of it is sharp contrast or intense differences but there is a depth that draws me in every time, makes me fall in love no matter how many times I see it.

I took a week long dyeing class with Carol Soderlund (which I can't recommend enough) and came to appreciate a lot of colors I normally avoided like the plague. But my favorites didn't shift, I still remain married to a rainbow of mud.

Guess I'm just that kind of gal. :)