EXQUISITE BEAD WORKSHOP

 I left home at about 7am heading north to La Conner for the Exquisite Bead Book Workshop with Gail Harker.  

I arrived a little early even though I stopped several times including at Starbucks for breakfast and coffee.

The workshop was in the Civic Garden Center, which is right across the street from the Quilt Museum.

The Pacific NW Quilt and Fiber Arts Museum

The LaConner Civic Garden Club

The first day we dyed the fabrics we prepared and brought, wool and silk organza.  Each reacted differently to the dyes.  The wool took a lot of dye while the organza needed very little, but it didn't spread very well for either.  So, we massaged it to get the dyes to move in interesting ways.

Dyes prepared.

Gail explaining to us how we'll do it.

And we dyed some perle cotton thread that we'll use on binding our books.

Here are some of the others fabrics - we set them out on plastic to leave them overnight.

And my fabrics.

COLOR REMOVER

I recently bought some fabric online.  I was a bit disappointed when it arrived - it was darker than I had wanted.  It was suggested by a friend that I try using Rit Color Remover to tone it down.  That sounded like a great idea.  Here's what happened.

The directions and reviews were adamant about doing this process outside because of the fumes.  So I took my hot plate and big dyeing pot outside and got some hot water started.  The water needed to be above 200*.  It was suggested to bring it to boiling.  I waited and waited and waited.  I finally got out my food thermometer - it was 160*.  It never got any hotter than that.  After waiting for over an hour, I gave up and boiled the water in the house and then took it outside to the hot plate and stirred in the solution.  That was going to be as good as it was going to get.

The instant I put the blue fabric into the solution it turned a dark yellow brown.  Oh my - not what I was expecting!  I left it in the solution for the required 20 minutes, hoping it might revert to the light blue I was wanting.  Ha!  That didn't happen.

After I took that fabric out, I dipped, very quickly, a plum colored fabric in, hoping it would turn a shade or two lighter.  Boom, it turned yellow too! A beige yellow.  But, the yellow fabric I dipped next did turn a lighter yellow.

Experiment Fail:

That yellow and white fabric will not worked for what I wanted it for, so it will end up in the pile set aside to use as backings.

BACK TO THE BIG FLOWER

 I'm feeling better about putting the little squares around the big flower.  So, it was back to work.  I realized I had to have a plan for the grid of squares, which means I had to draw those lines on the pattern, so they would appear to line up anyway.

After doing that, I went ahead and started sewing some of the squares together.  

I also put wax dots on the 'yellowish' fabrics I dyed yesterday and then over-dyed with a light green in an attempt to replicate the fabric around the spikey parts of the big flower.

Instead of dyeing in a baggie, I just laid the fabric out on my plastic covered table and poured the dyes over them.  This will give an interesting look with 'bubbles'.  

DYEING FABRICS FOR GREENS

 I want some greens for the background of the big flower, Amity Baroque.  So, I'm dyeing some greens.  

I tore up some Primatex PFD into fat quarters, prepared some dyes - mostly yellows and blues - Golden Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Cobalt and Turquoise to be specific.

I dyed some yesterday that didn't look like what I wanted, so I'm trying again.  I'm going to try first putting down the red (and yellow as an after thought) and then using wax as a resist, make little dots in the red and over-dyeing the green.

The problems started when I tried dropping tiny little drops of the red/purple dye onto the fabric that was damp with soda ash and it spread way farther than I had thought.  Oh well.

I kind of like the way it looks.

DYEING GREENS

 Since it's snowing and the roads are impassable, I stayed home and dyed different greens for my Amity Baroque project.  These will hopefully be used in the background.

I have an image in my head that I want it to look like which includes some small dottings of a bright pink/red spinning out from the flower.  I'm trying to achieve that with my dyeings.  

I sprinkled some fuschia dye powder onto a few of the fat quarters before I put them into the green dye bath.  It didn't turn out like I wanted.  I'll have to try something else tomorrow.

DYEING BACK FABRIC

I couldn't make up my mind about what color to dye all that fabric (9 yards) for the back for the Constellation quilt, so I dyed the three 3-yard pieces three different pieces.

FIRST HALF

I thought I might dye some fabrics for the back of the Chain Reaction quilt.  I haven't done that in a while!  So I re-read parts of my favorite book, Fabric Dyer's Dictionary by Linda Johansen.  I can't say enough about this book, it has made dyeing fabric so easy for me.  Love it!

So, I got a yard each of fabric into three different dye baths right after breakfast.  Then I got to thinking about ice dyeing.  I decided to go ahead and do another yard that way.  It's always amazing how it turns out.

I prepared a yard with soda ash and salt and put it into tray.

Then over the tray goes an old window screen, then the ice goes on top of the screen.

Then I added some of the leftover liquid dyes from the other dye bags (lots of golden yellow) and some other dry dyes, mainly fuschia, orange and peach.  I dribbled a little bit of the liquid cobalt on there, too.

Several hours later, as ice melts, it looks to me like I didn't have enough dye powders on here, so I added some more.

More dyes added and I poured more liquid cobalt into one end, hoping it would mix with yellows to create greens.   I don't think that is what's going to happen, so later I tilted the tray to keep cobalt away from fabric.

Now, we'll have to wait until morning to see how it all turns out.

And, while all that is percolating, I sewed the second quadrant of the Fancy Forest and sewed the two upper quadrants together.  I'm half way there.

YELLOW WEEDS FROM PARK

I was bad.  I picked these yellow flowers from a local park.  I know it's not a good idea to pick flowers that are there for everyone's enjoyment, but, it is late fall and they won't be lasting too much longer, and, I only picked a few flowers from each plant (to minimize their absence).

And, I was bad, because I used these plants and I have no idea what they are!  I should make some attempt to figure out their name.  I've seen them around different areas, like a weed.  The plants grow to about 30" high, and are about 24" across a clump.  I didn't notice until I started to pick them that they have a very sticky 'sap' on them.  It's on the flower petals and the receptacle.  I picked the whole flower, and then when I got home, I separated the yellow petals from the green receptacles.

I made up three dye baths.  One for the green and yellowish receptacles, one for the yellow petals and another using onion skin from a yellow onion.  I left the fabrics in the dye baths for about three days.

Here are the results:

Left, the weed's receptacles, middle is the yellow petals, and right is the yellow onion skins.

I really like the unexpected variations of color from the receptacles.

BLACKBERRY RESULTS

Kind of boring results!  

I left the blackberries rolled up in the fabric for several days - until the fruit flies were starting to get thick and the whole concoction was beginning to ferment!

I think I made a mistake by washing the fabrics with synthropol in the machine and drying in the dryer.  They ended up just a boring purplish grey.  Hmmm. The one pictured above is the darkest of the group.

Off I went to get more blackberries.

I took the two fat quarters that were the lightest in color and slathered them with the fresh blackberries (I didn't freeze them this time and I wonder if that made the difference in the color I witnessed) and mashed them in.  This time the color was definitely redder.  I rolled the whole mess up and let them sit for a whole week!

When I unrolled I rinsed them really well in the sink, catching the seeds in a sieve.  

I let them dry and then gingerly ironed them - I was worried the heat might change the color, but it didn't.

I'm really pleased with the results this time - 

I rinsed off the captured slurry of blackberries and tried to separate the seeds from the pulp.  I wanted just the seeds, but it was too much work to get it all off, so I rinsed as best I could then spread the seeds over a fat quarter that had been prepared for 'flower pounding' with alum and soda ash.  I sandwiched the seed-covered fabric in plastic and ran it through my etching press.

The press tends to take all the liquid and push it to one end.   It was fun, I could hear the little seeds exploding.  I thought there would be some kind of liquid in the seeds that would burst open and squirt it's essence onto the fabric and I'd get...well, who knows what I'd get!

The purple juice that was developing this time was definitely different than the juice from the berries.  It's more purple.  I rolled it up and left it for several days.

 Look at that color!

But, what I got was probably the opposite of what I was expecting.  The seeds acted as a 'resist', meaning there was color around the seeds and little white spots where the seeds were embedded into the fabric.  I hope you can see that in the photo.  It's a very interesting texture.

Sorry, my camera doesn't like closeups!  But I think you can see what I mean.

DYEING IN THE BACKYARD

I really want to make that 'Weed' painting into a art quilt.  My major hold-up is the fabric.  I just don't have the right colors, and I know from experience, if you're looking for something specific at fabric stores you'll never find it.  That left only one alternative - I must dye the fabrics myself.

I remember reading an article in a magazine about dyeing...and I had flagged it.  All I had to do was search through my magazine pile.  Jeez.  Actually, it didn't take long, I had an idea where it was, and after a little thumbing through other magazines, I found it fairly quickly.

The magazine is Art Quilting Studio Magazine, and there was an article entitled "Flat Dyeing" by Robin Ferrier.  It shows how to dye on a flat surface so you can get more even, consistent coloring.  I know how to dye in a container, tub or bag.  It would entail alot of constant swishing around to get the color to be even.  I've actually never had color come out even, so I wasn't even going to try that.  Robin's method looked pretty easy.  The weather has been great so I was excited to try it!

I stopped at Home Depot and picked up a roll of painter's plastic.  It's thinner than she recommends, and I probably won't be able to re-use it.  But it comes in a huge roll, so I'm all set.

I realized once I got started that I'm missing some essentials.  I'll have to scrounge at garage sales for things like stirring spoons, buckets and large Tupperware type storage containers.  I don't want to use anything that I need from the kitchen, because it can't go back to the kitchen after this.

Here's where I really regretted having hot water in the studio.  I had to bring a tub of hot water out from the house, so I decided to bring all my dyes and stuff down to the back yard.  Everything more or less met in the middle, out on the picnic table in the back yard.  

I had had the fabric soaking in soda ash since early morning.  I mixed the dyes by guess and by golly.  It will be a surprise if I get what I was after!

Here's what it looked like after I got done, I left the fabric there all night.  I was amazed at how hot to the touch it all was.

Needless to say, it dripped on the grass.  The grass is now red, green(er) and brown(er) in places - of course!  Grass is a cellulose fiber too, isn't it?

The next morning, after everyone was finally up, I rolled everything up and took it down to the washing machine.  I separated plastic and fabric, rinsed and rinsed and rinsed out the fabric, then tossed in the washer with Synthropol.   

They didn't come out exactly like I envisioned.  I was having a hard time trying to figure out how to mix the right blue.  But, this is okay.  I can work with this for my Weed project.  Oh, and I should mention, this 100% cotton fabric is a soft, loosely woven fabric that I recycled out of some old curtains that were at our new house that I didn't want to use.  It will be a very soft look.

Here's how they came out:  

That pile of threads came out of the dryer with the fabrics. I'm thinking about saving it because of another  article I just read in someone's blog who mentioned that she keeps odd threads and uses them in her projects occasionally as surface embellishment.  Anyway, her little basket of threads looked pretty cool!  I know, I'm screwy, but I can't help myself.