Earth Girls Are Easy Too

January 13, 2016 by curvylou 2 Comments

Spanish Moss, dry, rough, and uninteresting.

After the yellowdock misadventure, I wondered if a moss overdye (I think I’ve decided this is moss—Spanish moss, possibly*) would add some golden tones and improve this brown.

Its performance in my last (and first) trial resulted in lovely, glowing goldens and browns, so I thought it might be the ticket.

I weighed out what I thought would be an appropriate amount of moss, and plopped it into my dyepot.

I love the transformation that occurs once this moss begins to heat. First, it softens. Then it begins to yellow.

Over about an hour, the yellowing intensifies—and then it begins to golden.

It makes my heart beat fast. It’s SO beautiful.

After an hour of this goldening, I plopped in my cottons, simmered them for an hour, and let them cool overnight on the porch.

When I pulled them out and let them dry, this is what I had:

You can still see little bits of moss stuck to these. They are beautiful—still brown, but rich, glowing coffee with cream, chocolate, and a deep ecru.

Still, this wasn’t quite enough, and as long as I had my pot, steamer basket, and all those leaves out on the counter, I thought I’d try bundling with these, too.

I laid on the flora, then wrapped the fabric around three little pieces of mahogany scrap that Matt picked up for kindling, from the carpenter’s scrap pile, down the street.

Then I steamed them for one hour, and this is when it got all Earth Girls Are Easy.

See the resemblance?

Women and men who love men—and women who love women, for that matter—if you have never seen Earth Girls Are Easy, starring Gina Davis and Jeff Goldblum, you are missing out.

It’s silly good fun; Davis and Goldblum are in their youthful primes, just SO beautiful, still in the middle of their off-screen, deeply romantic love affair, and it shows. I had a MAJOR crush on Jeff Goldblum for years after seeing this movie.

These fabrics are developing quite finely. Like the others, I’ll leave them alone and let them develop for as long as possible.

I’m not expecting a lot of action from these leaf prints, since the fabrics are already rather dark. Instead, I’m hoping for rather a suggestion of drama, a subtle richness, some character.