Colorful Sunday!

The summer of dying continues! I am leaving in a few days for a workshop with Rosalie Dace. I love her work, and she is an excellent teacher. I took one one-day class with her several years ago, and I actually retained quite a bit of what I learned from her. That is the sign of a good teacher. Anyway, hand-dyed fabrics are listed on the supply list for this class, so I decided to try to get one more dye session in before I leave. I cut 16 yard and half-yard pieces of the Kona PFD and muslin fabrics, and had four unsuccessful pieces from the last dye day that I wanted to try over-dying. I planned to prep them and dye half on Saturday and half on Sunday. After dying half of the pieces on Saturday, I realized that if I dyed all of them  that day, I could rinse all of them on Sunday and be done with the project. That was definitely a good plan!

Here is what I came up with.

This is the most unique piece–it was dyed in a ziplock baggie! I put some green dye in the bottom of the bag, and put part of the fabric in the bag. then I scrunched a bit more fabric in the bag and added a second color, and then added the rest of the fabric and added a third color. Honestly, I don’t even remember what colors I was adding. It looks like more colors than I actually added!

And this is my favorite piece from this session. It was done in the glad ware container. One color was placed in the container, and half the fabric was put in. Then I scrunched the rest of the fabric into the container, and dumped a second color on top. It is prettier in person than in this picture.

My takeaway from this dye session is that I don’t really need repeatable formulas, like I had when I was dying fiber for resale. But I would like to know what each basic dye actually looks like, so I will be more informed when I combine dyes. The fabric does not even look close to the same color when it is wet as compared to when it is rinsed and dried. I have a hard time remembering what I actually did/what dyes I used. So later I will do some controlled experiments.

And speaking of rinsing. That is driving me nuts. There shouldn’t be that much dye to rinse out. So I need to do some more experiments with applying a bit more heat or using a bit less dye. Its tiring to do that much rinsing, and then still worry that more will rinse out later.

But overall, it is quite thrilling to be dying my own fabric. My own colors, each piece unique to me. I don’t know why I waited so long to try!

 

Exciting News!

I just received word that my episode of The Quilt Show will air on December 8! I am so excited that it is airing so soon (rather than waiting until sometime next year.) Plus, is there a better way to celebrate turning 60? SIXTY? When did that happen? Anyway, if any of you are members of TQS, you will be able to see it that day. For everyone else, I will be given a secret password to pass onto you, and you will be able to see it a week later, starting December 15.

A Do-Over

 

Remember this quilt that I started way back when? And then I got the top put together here? I mentioned in that post that I was considering adding perle cotton embroidery to the ovals. And sure enough, I did do that.

I thoroughly enjoyed just adding my simple random embroidery to those pieces.

But after I had finished six of them, I still didn’t like the way it looked. I tried again, using only the running stitch, and connecting the ovals. Nope, I didn’t like that either.

So I took all that embroidery out. And then I tried to figure out what I was going to do with this quilt. It was on the wall when I took out some little oval pieces to play with on a different quilt top. When I do my zig zag appliqué, I often cut the back out carefully and keep those pieces for a future project. So these were the leftover pieces from this particular quilt. And I thought, Hey…..

So I tried putting these ovals on top of the other ovals. And I liked it!

Since the quilt sandwich had already been made and partially quilted, these motifs were zigzagged through all three layers of the quilt. I finished it with some “scribble circle” quilting.

P.S. I realize that those pieces are not “ovals.” But I don’t know what to call them. My BF says it looks like a Fleur de Lis now. I think that name will stick!