Final Hand-dyeds post for a bit...

May 6, 2013

...because I need to focus on getting some other quilty projects done!

First, the "parfaits."

Experimental Technique #1: "Value Parfait"

In this method, you use a tall, narrow container. Fabric #1 goes in the bottom with the dye of choice for a few minutes. Then you pour on some soda ash water; wait another few minutes, add fabric #2. You don't add anymore dye but, after a few minutes, you do add some more soda ash. Then you add fabric #3--still no more dye, just the soda ash. Let it sit for some number of hours (I let mine go 24 since I had life to live), remove, rinse, and you get dark, medium, and light.

"Value Parfait" using Mixing Red. Or maybe it was Strongest Red. Sorry--I forget now.

It worked like a charm--loved this method! Far simpler than measuring out different concentrations like I did last time, although the previous method is great if you want a bunch of fabric all of the same value.

Experimental Technique #2: "Color Parfait"

This is basically the same concept as above, but for each fabric you add a different color. Fabric #1 and one color goes in the bottom--wait a few minutes, add soda ash. After a few more minutes, Fabric #2 gets added, then second color poured in--wait a few minutes, add soda ash. A few more minutes, Fabric #3, dye number #3, soda ash, hang out for at least four hours (again, I did 24).

Color Parfait #1: Fabric #1 (on bottom): Turquoise. Fabric #2 (middle): Fushia. Fabric #3 (on top): Sunny Yellow

Color Parfait #2: 1 is Red, 2 is Golden Yellow, 3 is Sunny Yellow.

Color Parfait #2: 1 is Intense Blue, 2 is Golden Yellow, 3 is Sunny Yellow.

And then I did more of what I've come to call, my "tapestries." These are longer lengths that I dye flat in a bin. Well, "flat" being a relative term. I scrunch them up and so forth, but there's more surface area available to work with. For the most part, I see myself leaving these as full, long pieces--not cutting into smaller bits. But we'll see-- a couple of these might lend themselves well to being cut, but mostly I love the size of them.

All of the newer tapestries. (See my last hand-dyed post for my first two.)

Okay, sure--you wanna see those a little closer? I do!

Turquoise, Red, Golden Yellow, dyed sideways instead of top-to-bottom.

Tapestry #2, aka "snake skin"--shared the same dye bin as the previous one, but folded and wrapped with rubber bands.

Tapestry #4, aka "Forest Scene." (LOVE this one. Could just walk right into it!) Intense blue, Golden yellow, Sunny Yellow.

More Hand-Dyes--Playing with Toys from Paducah

May 3, 2013

I'm now testing out methods in different books to see what method, or combo package thereof, gives me the results I'm looking for at any given time. What I'm finding is that, of course, each has its pros and cons. As in most things quilty, being adept at a variety of techniques allows you to pick and choose what works best in a particular situation.

But on to the pictures, because I know that's what you're really waiting for. (Captions explain what you're looking at.)

Descending to my basement...I prep some dye concentrates. These have kept me company all week.

New toy from Pro-Chem booth at Paducah: Color Magnet. Stencil or paint it onto fabric, and let dry for 24 hours, then dye.

And the results. Color Magnet draws more dye to the areas where it's painted. (I know--sloppy job with matching up stencil on the top but I was just trying to get 'er done.) Oh...the possibilities!

Bought two new colors: Intense Blue and Fuschia. I tested proportions of dye concentrate to water to get different values. Here's the Intense Blue dyebath (with the color magnet dye bath sitting to the right).

And here are the Intense Blue values. The two in the middle are a little more different from each other when you see the whole piece, but not much. Notes were taken.

And here's the same set of dilution proportions done in my other new color, Fuschia. (Same thing here with the two in the middle, although these are a little more distinct from each other if you look at the whole piece of each.) The black markings … — And here's the same set of dilution proportions done in my other new color, Fuschia. (Same thing here with the two in the middle, although these are a little more distinct from each other if you look at the whole piece of each.) The black markings in the corner is my code for tracking which was which.

Looks like very runny lasagna, doesn't it? This is using a method to get a gradated fabric from the book I'm working through first.

Dunno what this one looks like. It may look like a mess here, but oh, just you wait.

Gradation #1: Sunny Yellow, Golden Yellow, Mixing Red, Fuschia. Seriously yummy!

And oh, so-freaking-cool! Gradation #2: Sunny Yellow (I think--forgot to write down which yellow on this one), Fuschia, Turquoise. Neither of these gradations are getting cut up into anything. I'm letting my imagination wander for a bit. But every … — And oh, so-freaking-cool! Gradation #2: Sunny Yellow (I think--forgot to write down which yellow on this one), Fuschia, Turquoise. Neither of these gradations are getting cut up into anything. I'm letting my imagination wander for a bit. But every time I look at them, I grin and do just a little bit of a hop in place. Must. Do. More.

Stay tuned. As you know, I have a boatload more stuff to play with!

Hand-dyeds Round 2 post 3

April 17, 2013

It's late and I have a long drive tomorrow for a work trip. Nope, haven't packed yet. Yep, dirty dishes still in the sink that need to be washed before we leave in the morning. So I'm only posting a couple of pics now. I'll try to post more from the road but am not sure I'll be able to pull that one off, so this might have to tide you over until the weekend.

I'm laying out the photos differently this time too, as I'm testing a variety of things again on this website. Won't we all be glad when the dust finally settles?

Here was the original "target" that I'd made using a glue stick as resist.

Blue-green Target (glue stick resist) "Before"

I decided to overdye it with yellow to see if I could, again, get a nice yellow-green color. I was very much in the mood for some yellow-green. I think it's because I've really got a hankering for spring and we haven't seen much of it here yet.

Again, not a very exciting result but more interesting than the original. I'm not keen on the target idea so I'll have to do some further surface embellishment with this one.

Next we come to the one I'll politely call "yellow-green," but I personally think of as "baby poop green." Sorry if I offend.

Come on. I know all of you have, at some point in your quilting career, looked at a quilt project you were working on and thought, "You know what this quilt really needs? What would really make it sing? It needs some Baby Poop Green. Yeah. That's the ticket."

Well, okay, so this is more attractive than what I found in my kid's diapers. But still n' all. It needed help. Overdying to the rescue.

I decided to go straight green on this one to see if I couldn't over come the bodily function aesthetic influence. Interestingly, the green overdye somehow brought out more of the blue from the original. I'm scratching my color theory head over that one.

So this next one is pretty nice. I had this very nice, unassuming little Golden Yellow piece (that's the name of the Procion MX dye I used straight-up on it) that I'd pleated the first time around.

I wanted to shoot for a great orange-yellow piece instead, so I overdyed it with red and this time I used rubber bands to make rings.

I'm kind of digging this one. Turned out a bit more pink than orange-yellow, but still a very interesting effect.

Last one for tonight, and then we get into my serious-issue-befores in the next post.

Here was another experiment with using a glue stick for resist. Remember this one?

I really wanted something with even deeper color, so I overdyed it in blue. It was scrunched the first time and I wanted to still have the flowers visible, so I scrunched again. It's even brighter blue in this picture compared to the "before" because the "before" was taken in my basement and the "after" in the shade on my patio. Still, it's very blue now, and the flowers don't stand out as well because the resist isn't there anymore so the lighter drawing also dyed. But that's okay. If I ever use it I can always use the light drawn lines as markings for couching or quilting or paintsticks or some other surface embellishment.

So, did I mention I just got a shipment of Dyn-a-Flo paints and Inktense pencils today? Let the games begin.

Hand-Dyeds Round 2 Post 1

April 15, 2013

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Stay tuned...

Mad Quilt Scientist Strikes Again

April 14, 2013

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.

Playing with creating our own fabrics

April 1, 2013

My quilt design study group met last week and I was responsible for leading this week's session (we rotate responsibility, which is the best way to do a group!). We were on the last lesson in Lorraine Torrence's Fearless Design for Every Quilter.

The lesson had to do with creating your own fabrics using a variety of techniques. I talked about this in my most recent podcast episode (Episode 120 In Which We Get Fused) so I won't go into detail here, but will give some pics of the evening.

Following the line of the dye design (we thought it looked like a map)

Using running stitches to create line on fabric

First post on new blog...and hand-dyeds

March 26, 2013

So here it is, my first official post on the new website. Like?

This will be a short one--mostly pics. I am terribly delayed in getting these photos posted for you. Sorry about that--it's been busy!

Here are the results of my second session of hand-dying experimentation. I had two different types of PFD cotton and one PFD silk (very lightweight, like gossamer!) that I'd gotten from Dharma Trading Company.

I then also had some silk that I'd bought at a local sewing guild's annual rummage sale: a bolt of 30 yards for, wait for it, $15. WOOHOO! It's not as wide--I think it's something like 18" wide or thereabouts. But still, a steal. That silk was more of an ivory color to start than a true white. I only used about a fat quarter size piece of it to dye first, to see how it would work. It took the dye beautifully but I'll have to play with what colors work better on that ivory background.

Finally, I had lots of bits and pieces of some cotton lace and a crocheted doily that I'd bought at that same rummage sale. I had also bought some seersucker--no one there could tell me if it was 100% cotton or not. Apparently not--I only dyed a small corner of a piece and it didn't really take the dye at all. (Other dyes work on poly blends--the dyes I'm using only work on organic fibers.)

I also tried a variety of resists and dying techniques. You'll see examples of two pieces I used some Elmer's water soluble glue stick as a resist--worked better than I thought it would. (Couldn't find actual glue, only glue stick. Go figure.) Two other pieces were folded and secured between a pair of outlet switch plates in one case, and a pair of ethernet cable outlet plates in the other. Some pieces I folded and laid on a tray, then squirted the dye over them--you should be able to figure out which ones those are. That didn't work as well--I'll be overdying those eventually, though, and may end up with some cool results.

I'm using some of these fabrics already for a Craftsy class I'm taking, but more about that in a future blog post!

Hand-Dyeds and A Finish

February 19, 2013

Remember these?

These were the fabrics created in my snow-dyeing experiments a couple of days ago.

Yesterday I had the day off and since dyeing is a fairly restful activity for a sick day (still coughing!), I decided to review Jane Dunnewold's

"The Art of Cloth Dyeing" class in Craftsy

that I'd purchased and watched some months ago. I'd bought the kit of supplies from Craftsy, figuring that it was simpler and just about as cost-effective to buy the kit Jane had put together with the basic supplies needed than it would be for me to chase all over the Internet finding and ordering them.

I felt a bit like a mad scientist in my basement, with rubber gloves and mask on, hunched over a table mixing chemicals. It was a hoot.

I started out well organized. Look how neat and clean everything is.

And here are my fabrics, neatly wadded, scrunched, folded, banded, or bundled, waiting patiently....

Soon enough there were drips and puddles and bins of things in wonderful, hopeful color baths.

(By the way, those screw-on lids on Rubbermaid "Twist n' Loc" containers? They seal tight about half the time. Ask me how I know.)

And lookie what happened.

This one was straight turquoise.

This is roughly the same mix of turquoise and yellow that I did with the snow-dyeing above.

The colors are so much more brilliant!

I was shooting for teal on this one, using less yellow proportionately to the turquoise, but I ended up with this wonderful abstract art instead. Love it.

(Scrunched and rubber-banded little "buns" of fabric in a few places.)

This is a white tone-on-tone that I had in my stash and sacrificed to the Cause of Experimentation. In this picture, the side showing is the white tone-on-tone side. The white print acts as a resist for the most part--it's only dyed the lightest green but mostly stayed white. I wasn't too fond of this side.

(Accordion fold, rubber-banded in a couple of places.)

But the reverse? Here's the wrong side of the above fabric. Very, very nice.

It was a fairly dense print on the fabric to start. It would have been more interesting if there were less of the print to resist and more of the background to get dyed.

This was in a mix that was more turquoise than yellow. I was hoping for a teal, but instead I got this really funky mottled effect. Love!

(Scrunched up with rubberbands holding little mini-buns here and there.)

Yummy red. Straight-up red, not mixed with anything.

(Accordion fold with a couple of rubber bands.)

Another section of that white tone-on-tone. I was shooting for orange here. Almost got it. I have to play more with my color recipes.

Again, I wasn't as happy with this side as I was with...

...this side. Wowzer.

(This one was scrunched up tight and then I wrapped the ball with a couple of rubber bands to hold it as tightly closed as possible.)

More of the white tone-on-tone, this time dyed with straight-up yellow. (I think this one was "Sun Yellow.")

The mottling comes out better in this picture than in real life. It mostly just looks like yellow fabric.

And the wrong side of the fabric. Although in this case, I'd use this as the right side.

Hmm. Looks pretty intense here. It's not that bright--just a nice, springy, lemon yellow.

And my favorite result of the day? Here we go, drum roll please.....

BAM!

Now THAT'S what I'm talking about.

I mixed turquoise and red for purple, folded the fabric in a triangle and used a couple of rubber bands on two of the ends.

Love

This.

Unfortunately, I've run out of dyeable fabric--at least, what I'm willing to sacrifice from my stash for the time being, so I've got some PFD (prepared for dye) fabric on order now from

Dharma Trading Company

. You don't have to have PFD, by the way. I'm just testing various things to see what I like best. Some of the above fabric was Kona PFD fabric I'd picked up at Joann's awhile back. Some was white/off-white quilter's cotton I'd gotten in the scrap box from Fat Quarter Shop, and some was the aforementioned tone-on-tone. I washed the scraps and tone-in-tone with Synthrapol to prep it for dyeing. It all took the dye beautifully.

Oh, and that other thing...my second finish for 2013...

"Are You Getting Sleepy"

aka The Poppies Quilt

Detail of pantograph quilting by

Mt. Pleasant Quilting Company

Sick Days...and Dyeing

February 18, 2013

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...