DYED BOWLS

 I dyed this cotton cord the other day, with leftover dyes.  I sewed the cording into a few bowls today.

The big one is not what I was hoping for - I wanted straighter sides.  Oh, well.

MORE FABRIC DYED

 I remembered the process I used for the hand-dyed fabric I used up around the first two leaves.  So I went ahead and started making more.  This time I'll make more then I'll need, of course.  And the next leaves will match the first two.

First I added fuschia and yellow drops and let it dry.

Then I put drops of wax strategically around.

Then I placed in a bag of green dye overnight and...

it turned out great!

JOE RETREAT DAY THREE

Here's what our workroom  looked like after a few days of hard work:

Joe gave us some instructions:

It was a beautiful day, but we couldn't do more than look - it was sew, sew and more sewing.  All day.

I'm making a little progress - I needed to start sewing things together, even though I don't have enough parts made.  Thus, another problem arose - how to sew them together without straight lines.  It took some figuring and head scratching.  Sometimes my head would be swimming and I'd just have to stop and relax and breathe.

At one point I took the top left section down to work on it, and I realized the whole thing looked better without it.  So, I turned it upside down and put it on the bottom.  I remade the top section.  I'm a lot happier about the whole composition now.

Here's how it looked at the end of the day:

JOE RETREAT DAY TWO

The day started with a talk by Joe outling our project for the day.  I made a blind contour drawing of Joe.  That was fun.

Along with a great amount of fabric, the supply list said to bring a picture of a piece of art that we love.  I picked this painting by Kim VanderHoek, "4th Avenue Span."  I do love it.

Joe wanted us to write down 2 or 3 words to describe what we love about it.

I said, 'muted colors' and 'lost edges'.  I had to explain what I meant by lost edges to Joe.

Then, we were given our assignment, which was to make a 48" by 48" composition focusing on the word or words from our work of art.  I wanted to figure out how to make 'lost edges' from fabric.

I started by sewing three pieces of fabric together, then cutting them into strips and sewing them back together and staggering them to get uneven lines.

I made a bunch of them and just put them up on the wall.  Everyone else was already sewing things together and I was still making parts.

Here's the palette I choose: 

Included are a few beautiful hand-dyeds by Judy Robertson, some I dyed and/or printed and one of the fat quarters I bought on Sunday.  Oh, and a Kona solid.

Here's all I had done by the end of the day:

It was a little stressful - I had to take a break or two to stretch my legs and enjoy our beautiful view of the canal.

QUILT BACKING

After lots of measuring and figuring and head-scratching, I made the back for my Chain Reaction quilt.

I barely had enough fabric to make it and had to piece some of the last 6" squares.

DYED HAPPY

I'm really pleased with the results of my dyed fabrics from yesterday.  

I was trying to match some of the colors from the quilt top.  I think I got really close.

This is the ice dyed yard.  Always a surprise.

This is the three colors: teal, light pea green, and a bluish green next to the quilt top and the ice dyed fabric.

A closer look at the ice dyeing.

ICE DYEING ON A SNOW DAY

Wednesday, this week, we got 5-6 inches of snow here at our house.  The Seattle-Tacoma area was slammed with 5 to 12" of the cold white stuff.  It brings this town to a standstill.  Since it was treacherous to go out and I didn't need to, I made good use of the time, spending it up in my studio, sewing.

Then on Thursday, we got freezing rain on top of it.  

Since I'm working on my Connecticut Winter Quilt, and I'm getting close to finishing the top, I naturally started thinking about the back.  I knew I didn't want to use the leftover fabrics - then the back would be too much like the front.  And, I really don't want to buy fabric for it, because all of these fabrics were purchased while on our trip to Connecticut last winter.  That leaves just one option - dye my own!  I love this idea.

As my mind wandered while piecing the many blocks into rows, I thought remembered ice dyeing.

I had done a little of that a while ago - and the fabrics where beautiful.

I started some fabric heating in some soda ash mixture.

Then I let it drip dry for a short while.

I got out a large tray and over that I put an old window screen, where I arrange the folded prepared fabric.  I was thinking about using it as binding, so I folded it into strips, thinking that when cut on the diagonal for binding it would look very nice.

And then I headed out to get some of the 'local' ice.

  Brrrrr.  With bucket in hand, I smashed through the thick ice crust and broke some up and brought it in.

I had to break it up into even smaller pieces - it was soooo cold  - and arrange it over the fabric.

Then sprinkle the dye over the ice...

And wait, and watch as it melts.....

....and drips dye onto the fabric beneath....

...and does weird and magical stuff....

...it is so beautiful to watch as it slowly melts....

Then, the next morning, the ice is all melted into the tray below and the fabric has absorbed the dyes.

The dye-design on the fabric is like none you'd get in a conventional way...

Here's some close-ups...

Beautiful and strange and so much fun.

HALF A BACK

I got a little less than half of the quilt back done.  I pinned that part to the bottom of the work wall.  It's the part from the leftover-block-row down.  

I put the rest of the plain squares up and just moved them around a little to get the basic layout of the colors.  I need to tweak it still, I see.

I reorganized all the leftover pieces so I can find them easier.

Then, I went to work on a different project.

I'll be back.

BLACKBERRY FABRIC DYEING

I picked some blackberries and put them into the freezer for a few days.  I took them out this morning, to let them thaw a little, then put them into a colander and started crushing the liquid out of them.  That got old fast, so I just took the mess and spread it over a fat quarter of pre-mordanted cotton fabric.  I put another fat-quarter on top and rolled the mess up in a piece of plastic sheeting.

I'll leave it like this for a few days.

I took some of the liquid and put it into an aluminum pot and heated it to 130 degrees F and then dropped another fat-quarter into the pot and removed it from the heat.  I'll leave it in there overnight also.

Boy, does this smell delicious!  No kidding...way better than rotting petunias!

RUST EXPERIMENT

Being bored, I started cutting out rectangles from the group of fabrics I recently sun-dyed.  (A great group of fabrics, I really like the colors - and more than that - I love the fabric.  I need to find a source for it.)

I arranged the rectangles on a piece of fabric I had made in the recent workshop at Pratt.  It was one I made, with sad results, using a paper litho-plate technique.  It works well as a background.

I've taken numerous design classes and workshops.  I want there to be a 'formula', you know?  But, I'm realizing, there just isn't.  I can't say what makes a design work, for the most part.  But I can 'feel' when it does.  I just moved the squares around and around, until they 'felt' right.  I would take them off, and put them back and realized there are endless possibilities that work just as well as the next.  Hmmmm.

After I was tired of this game, I stopped at the latest arrangement.  Then I stitched around them to secure them to the background.

Then I dampened it and arranged some metal discs on it.  I wanted rusty circles!  It took two days until I was tired of watching it rust.  I had to re-wet under the discs the next day.  I removed the aggressive rusters and moved some of them to the lazy ones positions.

Here it is now.  I think I want to quilt around the rust circles.

WEED - IN FABRIC

Remember the little painting I did of a weed I brought home from the park?  Well, it's what got me started dyeing fabrics in the first place.  Then I got distracted by the Ashtray.  I got to a place where I had to stop on the Ashtray top (I need to go buy gray threads), so I went back to Weed in fabric.  I finished it in one long afternoon.  Well, it's not finished - it's a top.  It still needs to be quilted and finished someway.  I haven't decided - it may be a pillow.  It's about 12" by 18", cotton hand dyed fabrics.