Hand-Dyeds Round 2 Post 1

I'm going to do several posts for this one so you can see all the before and after's on the overdying. It would overload with photos if I tried to do it all at once.​

​First, the rust-dyed fabric. I had problems finding stuff that would actually rust, but got a few washers to do the trick when I soaked the whole thing in vinegar.

​I decided to use a blue-green dye bath, going with the idea of complementary colors. And since the original had a clear fold line going through it, I counterbalanced that by just scrunching the second time. It didn't work out quite the way I'd hoped--I wanted a little more muddy effect. I may dye this one a third time to see if I can get something a little more subtle.

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Rust-dyed "Before"​

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Rust-dyed "After"

​Next, I tackled a single-colored "before." This one was dyed straight up with blue. It's a fairly dark blue and takes well to fabric. Although I liked the blue well enough, I wanted to see if I could make it just a little more interesting so I overdyed it with green. Since the original blue had just been scrunched into the dye bath, I decided to use rubber bands to create rings. I was hoping for a nice dark blue ring peeking out from the green overdye. Can't see the rings, but I still like the finished product quite a bit.

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Blue "Before"​ (Apologies for the yellow cast, bad lighting)

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Blue-green "After"​

Another single color "before" was a very nice green one. I debated whether I wanted to overdye this one for awhile because it was such a nice green. But hey, I own the dyes. I can always make another! So off to experiment I went. I decided to overdye this one with straight yellow. The first version was just scrunched, so on the second I used rubber bands to make concentric rings hoping to make a more distinct design. ​

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Green "Before"​

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Yellow-green "After"​

Love that one. The green isn't as faded as it looks in that picture--it's actually a bit ore of a subtle effect between the green and yellow. But I love the yellow rays. Totally unexpected, very cool.​

​Now we turn to one I wasn't keen on at the start and I'm not sure overdying helped it much. It has a little bit more of a coolness factor now, but not quite enough for me. This is one of the tone-on-tones, if you recall those from round 1. The first round was a pleat-fold and dyed in green, so I did a perpendicular pleat-fold in yellow to see if I could get a grid effect.

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Green "before" (tone on tone shown)​

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Green and yellow grid "after"​

One more set for this post. Here was a long strip of fabric on which I did a triangle (flag) fold the first time and dyed it ​turquoise. It's the perfect shape to try stacking. Stacking is when you "stack" dye colors on top of one another. You crunch the bottom of the fabric into a container with one color, then you stuff a bunch more of the fabric in and add a second color, and stuff more fabric in and add a third, going on for as many colors as you can fit in your container. It works because each section of fabric largely soaks up the dye in that section. There's merging between sections as well, which is where some very funky stuff can happen.

I stacked mine starting with green dye on the bottom, stuffed as much down as I could, then stuffed the rest in and added yellow dye. I don't think I had enough fabric to really soak up the dyes in each section because it all came out a fairly uniform yellow-green. Pretty, but not the effect I was going for.

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Turquoise "before"​

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Stacked "After"​

Stay tuned...​

Mad Quilt Scientist Strikes Again

This weekend ended up being much busier than I thought it would be. We had family in from out of town which then meant a big family event Saturday night and another one on Sunday. I had a ton of errands to run as well, so my available time for doing anything quilty got shrunk considerably. However, since I'd already decided I wanted to get some dying done this weekend I had a bunch of supplies already in place and had made notes for myself about what I wanted to do, so I was able to hit the ground running.

I focused on overdying my previous hand-dying experiments, but also tried out a few other things. I'm not posting pics here because at the moment, everything is rinsed out and just waiting to go into the washing machine once there's a break in our real laundry (you know, the I-don't-have-anything-else-to-wear-until-that-load-gets-done kind). So hopefully I'll have pics ready to go tomorrow evening. I'll have to post it over several blog posts, I think, so I can do the whole before-and-after thing with a little explanation about process.

I've also got a few new dye baths going--another couple of experiments with resists, and a few bins filled with ice cubes. So more rinsing tomorrow night.

Let me just say, wheee. Still having a ball.

Clearing the Decks, Starting Anew...

I had a sort of "clearing of the decks" this weekend. I had both my mystery quilt tops and backings ready to go to the longarmer for awhile, but I was waiting to get the backing put together for another quilt so I could run all three down at once. I realized Saturday morning after I got home from the grocery store that if I worked quick-like-a-bunny I had a shot at getting that backing complete, and the rest of the paper pulled off the pp'd blocks on the quilt, in time to run it 45 mins south to the LQS before they closed. I just barely made it!

So I treated myself to some new fabric as a reward, of course.

​Yum.

It's better for me than buying chocolate. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.​

I posted last week about my progress on the house on the hill project (yet to have it's own name). I'm doing the hand-stitching on that now, which is giving me the chance to do some embroidery. ​

​Here's a fairly bad picture of my first attempt at french knots, which, as opposed to the picture, weren't too bad.

The thread I was using was a bit too thick for this particular project, and is very rough to the touch, which means tons of friction trying to pull it through fusible and batting. My fingers ached after the first three, and I believe I did 39 altogether. For the next stitches, I switched to a different thread (an actual perle cotton) and it's been going much more smoothly ever since. More pictures later.​

Once my quilts were at the longarmer, that freed me up to work on other projects. Something I've been wanting to do for awhile, inspired by yet another Craftsy class, Magical Jelly Roll Quilts with Kimberly Einmo, is a scrap quilt using the Jacob's Ladder block. It's a traditional block that I've always liked because you can lay it out in a hundred different ways. Okay, I've never actually counted. A lot of different ways, in any case. Kimberly's directions are all based on a 2 1/2" strip so she's done the math by looking in my stash. Very convenient and kind of her, I thought.

I'm doing the larger half square triangles all out of a single red paired with a single white; that will (I hope) create the path for the eye through the quilt. The white looks solid here, but it's tone-on-tone.

I'm trying to once again push myself to make the rest of it as scrappy as possible. I need 390 @ 2 1/2" squares. ​I have a collection of 2 1/2" squares I've been cutting off project scraps for awhile, so I started there.  However, I have a few fabrics that have dozens of squares, and others with only one or two. In order to avoid having blocks dominated by a particular fabric, I separated out my squares by fabric and then started by pulling a consistent number from each pile so the scraps would at least be fairly evenly distributed. Once I got to the point where I had a lot of the same fabrics left, I put those aside and dug into my strip collection.

Now I'm going to start cutting more squares from my strips to get even more distribution of fabrics. Strips? I got me plenty o'.

I intentionally chose some strips from my collection that I particularly dislike, under the theory that no fabric is ugly if you cut it small enough.​

I'm pushing my comfort envelope here. I don't do random well. Must. Control. Must. Control. Someone pat me on the back and tell me it's all going to be okay.​

(Not familiar with the Jacob's Ladder block? Check it out here on About.com.​)

Goals for this week:​

• Keep stitching House on the Hill (not sure when I'll decide it's done)​
• Get squares cut from strips for Jacob's Ladder
• Fuse more fabrics in preparation for next fused art quilt. Maybe my design, maybe the second one in Laura Wasilowski's class--haven't decided.​
• Make two pillowcases from sets of scrap fabric I've had sitting on the edge of my cutting table for awhile now and they're just starting to bug me.​

Work in Progress Wednesday--House on a Hill

I've decided to try to join in the fun with Work in Progress Wednesday at freshlypieced.

As I talked about in my most recent podcast episode, I'm taking Laura Wasilowki's "Hand-Stitched Collage Quilts" class in Craftsy. Although I often go haring off into the wild and do my own design, I decided to go easy on myself this time and pretty much stick with hers, although I've made some tweaks here and there as suited my mood.

All of the fabrics less one are my own hand-dyed fabrics. The lime green fabric (grass) is commercial. ​

Verily, in the ages of yore, there was a hill.

​And on that hill, a house was built.

As time passed, as the earth turned and daylight and moonlight did pass, trees and grass flourished.

And as the rains did come followed by the brightness of sun, flowers verily bloomed.

And the world was securely fused to batting.​

And there was much rejoicing.

(Stay tuned. I just hit the embellishing stage.​)

Be sure to check out all the other Work in Progress Wednesday posts at freshlypieced!​

Sick Days...and Dyeing

I was going to title this post "Sick and Dyeing," but thought that might send a bit too much panic. Adding some elipses may at least give people pause before they assume the worst.

Although, a few days ago, it was arguable just how lively I really was. Doing ever-so-much-slightly-better now, thank you for asking. Still not quite up to a podcast. Hopefully sometime later this week.

Yes, almost two weeks ago I came down with the same cold/flu thing that's been making the circuit. For some significant percentage of the afflicted, it has gone into pneumonia. When I finally gave in and called my doctor to ask if she could prescribe me anything that would help the cough go away long enough for me to get a decent night's sleep, she required me to actually come in to see her. I wasn't aware of the pneumonia thing. Fortunately, not pneumonia in my case; she prescribed an inhaler which helped remarkably during the day and antibiotics. Nights are still rough. I'm allergic to codeine so the usual 'Tussin with Codeine thing didn't go well (the headaches it gives me are worse than the slight relief from the coughing). I'm back to Nyquil Cough and I'm glad to say, last night was the first uninterrupted night's sleep I've gotten since this nonsense began 12 days ago. I was supposed to be driving for 6+ hours today for work but gave in and called my supervisor last night. When I couldn't even make it through the conversation without coughing fits, she very kindly moved our staff meetings so now I don't have to go down for another couple of weeks. I feel like two or three more days of quiet should kick this thing for good.

Meanwhile, what to do on sick days? I hate being completely non-productive, but I had to take things v-e-r-y slow with lots of long breaks. I did manage to get some things accomplished, though.

Our Guild does Blocks of the Month most years, in which one of our guild members (Kate) chooses a block from a book and we all make it in whatever size/colors we want. No swapping--just making it for ourselves. (This year we're doing it with paper-pieced blocks that

I've posted about before

.) I'd started doing the BOM in 2008 and never finished, so I pulled out that bin this weekend. I was pleased to see I was only three blocks short. 

After I got this block done, I realized I'd used almost exactly that same combination of fabrics in a previous block I'd made five years ago. Oops. Oh well--shows that the combination has staying power, I guess.

I kept this one simple to balance out a few of the other busier blocks.

This was the last block, so I put all previous 11 out on the table to see what fabrics I needed to use to pull them all together. I had a rather troublesome almost-entirely-green block, and another troublesome strangely-pinkish block that I wanted to make seem more like they fit in with the rest of the collection. So I used one fabric from each of those blocks, and the third is a fabric I used often (note it in the block above).

With this one "tie it all together" block, I made the two troublesome blocks no longer troublesome. Now everything feels like it fits.

Dang, sometimes I actually know what I'm doing.

So here are the 12 blocks together for the first time ever. You can see the originally-troublesome green block near the front of the picture; the strangely pink one is sitting right above it, although it doesn't come across as much pink in this picture.

That's the problem with taupes. When you're buying them individually, they all read "taupe." When you put them next to each other, you realize you've got a pretty wide range of colors.

Those blocks are now hanging on my design wall while I decide what I'm doing next. I'm pretty sure I've decided sashing, and I'm pretty sure I know which fabric I'm using for it. I have a border fabric already that I know will work. It won't take me that long to get the top pieced--just have to get myself to the energy level where I trust myself to do math.

I also got a couple more steps done in the Kimberly Einmo "Chain of Stars" mystery quilt on Craftsy, but I'm not allowed to post pictures of that publicly yet. She doesn't want us ruining the surprise for anyone else. I hope she lifts that stricture soon, though--I hope to have it done in another few weeks and don't want to wait too long to post it as a finish.

Thirdly, I got my Poppies quilt back from the longarmer and finished putting the binding on this morning. (Another great sick-day activity since it requires hours in front of the TV hand-sewing.) It's in the wash at the moment. I'll post pics later.

Then, because on Sunday I woke up to several inches of new snow, I got the bug to do some snow dyeing. Dyeing is a fantastic sick day project. About 20 minutes of activity and then several hours of waiting; a few more minutes of activity and then waiting...It was great. I felt like crud but I could still be creative. For the win.

I have dyes and such because I'd bought the kit available for the

Jane Dunnewold Fabric Dyeing class on Craftsy

months ago and hadn't gotten the time to use it yet. I tweeted

Sandi Colwell of Quilt Cabana Corner

, who had recently been posting about her snow dyeing experiments, and asked if she could send me quick-like-a-bunny how she had gone about it. She immediately replied with an email of instructions. I love social networking.

I had a little bit left of some PFD Kona White I'd bought at Joanns months ago for something else, so I tore it into pieces that are something less than fat quarter sized. I scrunched two of them, then accordion-folded one and bunched and rubber-banded a second one. (That's Sandi's email open on my iPad so I could follow step-by-step what she suggested.)

I reached out my patio door to scoop snow into the container with the fabric. Just out of sight to the left of my hand is Sam's snout. He was extremely curious as to what I was doing and I had to keep shoving him out of the way. Doofus.

Here are all my containers ready to go.

Must have the face mask before opening the powdered dyes. Probably should've been wearing one of these on the plane back from Phoenix--maybe I wouldn't have gotten the plague. Go figure.

As soon as I poured the dye solution onto the snow, it melted. Oops.

In my usual "How fast can I fix this?" mode I just scooped a bunch more snow into the container, figuring it really had more to do with the water and cold temperatures or something.

I wasn't exactly thinking straight. I think all I did was dilute the dye.

I've since read information about people sprinkling the dye powder directly onto the snow rather than making it a solution first. That would likely work much better.

Still, not bad results!

This first one was mostly yellow with some turquoise thrown in (scrunched).

This was mostly turquoise with some yellow thrown in (scrunched).

This is the one that I bunched up with rubber bands; it was in turquoise, and then I had a little yellow dye solution left over so I dumped it on one end of the banded fabric.

This is the accordion fold one that was in what I thought was a fairly even mixture of turquoise and yellow, but it was clearly more yellow.

Hence ends my first experiment with snow-dyeing. I might try it again at some point, but today I've returned to the Dunnewold class in Craftsy and am working on doing standard dyeing using her methods. I'm in the waiting period at the moment--it's all in the dye bath and I won't know how it turns out for another couple of hours, so that'll be tomorrow's post...