And there was night, and there was dawn, and so begins...
Day 2 (Thursday)
Mad Quilt Scientist in her element!
On the second full day of Quilt Week, Lori and I were both in Frieda Anderson's dye class for the whole day. (Lori has some pictures on her camera--when I get them, I'll post them here.)
Since I'm familiar with Frieda's dye method (I own her book), I wasn't really expecting to learn anything new. I was looking forward to spending the day playing in dye, and I was looking forward to doing it with one of my BFF/BQFs. We were to be paired up in the class, so Lori and I got to work together. Lori has done a little dyeing but not as much as me, so when Frieda suggested that one person of each pair would be the "clean person" and the other the "dirty person" in the morning, and then switch roles in the afternoon, I offered to Lori that she could be Dirty Girl all day. That actually worked quite well for us because we were able to get into quite the effective rhythm once we both got the hang of our roles. And yes, I was thinking ahead. Now I get to call her Dirty Girl next time we're in a guild meeting. FTW.
The only slight hitch was that there was a mistake in the supply list. The list had said to bring one bucket and one dishpan to share per pair; Frieda had actually wanted us to each bring one, so we'd have two per pair. That created a little bit of an issue with keeping our work stations clean because we ended up having a very small container to use as our rinse pan, and a small bowl for smooshing the fabric around in the dye before putting it in its final transport container.
The other small hitch was that Frieda had adjusted her plans for the class and rather than doing two gradations, with a total of 24 fabrics, she decided we'd do four gradations, 48 fabrics total. I had enough fabric with me to do that if I split them into smaller pieces, but Frieda had shipped extra fabric for the class so I bought some off her to be able to do 48 fat quarters rather than having to do some fat-eighths. The only reason it became a hitch was that I'd brought 24 containers with seals for transporting the fabrics home. Fortunately, I'd also thrown a couple of boxes of Zip-locs in the car in case we didn't have enough space for me to use the containers. Lori and I both had all our fabrics in the baggies at the end, which meant two large garbage bags filled with wet fabric in baggies. It could've been a recipe for disaster but it mostly worked out okay.
We labeled all the fabrics 1-12 for each gradation, but as I've talked about in previous hand-dyeing posts in this blog, black sharpie tends to disappear when you're dyeing dark colors. When I washed my fabrics at home, I lost several of the markings. Therefore, in this "Reveal" photo, I made my best guess at where some of the fabrics belong in the gradation. Ultimately it doesn't matter since I'll be breaking up the fabrics to use them anyway. I may do the gradations again sometime at home when I can control the results better, and label them more permanently for my records.
Meanwhile, aren't they pretty?
The first one on the left is"cool" yellow, red, and blue; the second set is that same set of colors diluted for pastels. The third set is a "warm" yellow, red, and blue; the fourth set is those warm colors mixed with black.
No, I didn't really learn anything new in the class, other than confirming for myself that I hate using baggies in dyeing. Give me a nice, hard-sided sealable container any day. But I really enjoyed Frieda Anderson. She's very laid back and funny, a great teacher (there were lots of dyeing newbies in the room and she did very well with them), and had lots of extra supplies for those of us, ahem, who may have had to grab a garbage bag out of the hotel on the way to class to use as a table covering only to find out it wasn't waterproof and was letting dye through onto the table underneath. In any case, I'd look forward to taking a class with her again.
And I just had to do her the favor of buying serious yardage of PFD fabric off her at the end of class, just so she wouldn't have to ship as much home. I'm such a kind person, really. Goodness of my heart n' all that.
By the way...all those raveled threads you have to yank off the edge of the fabric after it's been through the laundry?
Yummy!
Even if you just stash it in a jar and call it "decor," you're going to enjoy it. But oh, the things I can do with a wad of pretty thread!
So now, perhaps, you can understand why I hit a particular vendor at Lancaster before I even got to Lancaster...
(Some of these are simply replacing colors I'm nearly out of, some are new. Plus I bought samplers of acid dyes to use on wool, and a marbeling kit. Play Day!)
None of us had anything on the schedule for Thursday night so we hung out at the pool and actually got a decently-early bedtime. Friday was the first time I was actually going to see the show, so I was jazzed. Stay posted for another update...