Dyeing, Crochet and Quilts

Somewhere in my blog readings I learned about Tumble Dyes, and of course I wanted to try them.  You don't have to pre-treat your fabric (soak in soda ash).  The bottle reads "non-toxic, washable, ready to use, water based, easy clean up".  You just shake the spray bottle and go.  Once your fabric is dry you heat set, an iron will do.  I haven't washed any of my experiments, I don't think I'll use this on any quilts that need to be washed.  The top right is my sample card of the colors I bought, I used a paint brush on dry fabric.  On the left (orange) is one I sprayed on a white on white printed fabric.  The bottom piece shows where I used a leaf stencil, the one on the left bled some so I used a dryer brush on the right leaf.

This is a larger piece I did.  I started with wet fabric, sprayed different colors on it and let it dry flat.  The wet fabric had some wrinkles in it and the dye does some migration which caused the ridges

In other projects, I crocheted these darling booties.

And I entered 2 of my quilts in the Northwest Washington Fair this year and got blue ribbons on both of them.  They give out a lot of ribbons, there are lots of categories.  My Zinnia quilt, which for some reason I've started calling Dahlia, won for Adult Division, Small Machine Quilted, Machine applique.

My house quilt won for Adult Division, Small Machine Quilted, Group quilt.   The house blocks were a prize from a raffle at a quilt retreat.

Adventures with Paintsticks

What??? These aren't Paintsticks, no they are Peony buds.

Look how many are on one plant, it will be wild if it ever blooms. I do have a tomato cage around the plant so hopefully the flowers will not fall over. I decided to pick one bud and bring it inside to see if it will open up.
I don't think I've shown you my front porch pots, I'm quite proud of what I did. I usually forget to water these pots, they are not in my usual path, so this year I decided to plant succulents, hopefully they will survive better on limited water.
Fun combinations of colors and textures, poor little branches are leaning towards the light.
Now here's where I played with the Shiva Paintsticks. All my "designs" are rubbing, either off the Cedar Canyon Rubbing plates, some texture sheets I used with polymer clay or rubber stamps. The pink one was a rubbing that I colored in.
I used different colors in different sections on this one, still rubbing.
Some texture sheets and rubber stamps. I really wanted to try using them with a stencil but I couldn't remember where I'd stashed mine. I recently bought a clearance flower stencil that I finally found this morning, I had put it in the box with the other Paintstick supplies I've been gathering.

Here's Kim's latest tattoo. Really neat artwork. That's all I'm going to say.

Fabric Fondling

I've been thinking for quite a while about doing a leaf quilt this fall, finally I have something to show. Everything is fused, the outline squares are just sitting on the background fabric right now as I contemplate if this is really what I want, but I'm pretty sure I won't be making any changes.

The background fabric and the fabric that the leaves are fused on to are both ones I dyed in my class last month. Hurrah! I actually used some of it. The piece below (I did all 1/2 yard pieces) is my favorite of the 12 pieces we did. I keep staring at it, I think I just want to cut it into large pieces and use it in a simple design, it's too gorgeous to cut into small pieces. If anyone has any good ideas, I'd love to hear them. I keep coming back to using a solid black, but that seems so predictable.

I swear, while I was at work today someone came and vaccumed the leaves off the trees that line a road I drive every day. It's weird to see one section of trees with no leaves while most of the other trees around town still have plenty, but it's probably just a variety of tree that loses it's leaves early.

Return to Blogging

In an attempt to return to blogging, I'm posting a picture from the Pot o' Gold Fabric Dyeing workshop I took with Carol Soderlund last month, these are some of the pieces (not mine) drying on the line. Didn't they come out gorgeous!!!

First Fabric Dye Run

Here it is, the first set of my hand dyed fabric, aren't the colors luscious. I have done dyeing previously, but never with these wonderful results. I attribute most of this to using good fabric, PFD Kona Cotton from Dharma.

My goal was to find out what the dyes looked like in their pure form, so I used electric blue, fuchsia red, golden yellow and kelly green - one piece at full strength, one piece at 1/2 strength. I created the purple mixing the blue and fuchsia, and the different greens by adding in the yellow. I'm going to try the green again mixing more dye powder in the solution, I think it should come out darker.

I was hoping to start another run today but life is getting in the way.