Dyeing Day 2011 - pictures!

Well, dum-dum me forgot to take a camera to dyeing day. That's okay because the day was really full. The temp was in the high 80s/low 90s, but we had awnings to stand under. For lunch we seven piled into two cars and drove up the road a piece to a nice diner where they were kind to a half dozen middle-aged ladies (and a kid in her 20s) who had odd colors on their skin and clothes - thank heavens for vinyl seat covers! When we were mostly done and deep into the clean up, our hostess brought out home made strawberry gelato!! Wow!!

The day started off with me crawling around on the ground (these 50+ year-old knees do not like the ground!) painting dye onto the folded-over backing for the Cone Nebula quilt. Within a few minutes, I was seriously considering just scrunching the whole thing and pouring dyes on to it every which way; but I persisted and ended up with something I'm not terribly wild about.

I think it's a little bright and a little wild - very much primary colors - but when I showed it to Hubby Dearest and said that I was thinking about overdyeing it with aquamarine (figuring that would tone down the yellow a bit and brighten the blue and do who-knows-what to the red), he said he rather liked these colors and that I should keep this as is. Okay!

While I was working on this project, our hostess was giving basic dyeing lessons to the three newbies in our midst - all of whom were also working on their own projects. When I got done with the backing, I set up bowls on a table so that I could do five-step value runs of each of three colors (I go into these days with such specific goals, really, I do!). I pulled a bench over and set on it the tub with the 120 or so bandanas. One by one, each of the newbies got interested in the project.

Basically, we picked up a folded bandana, dipped corners or ends or sides or whatever into one, two, three, or more colors, snipped the binding threads open, unfolded the cloth to see what we had, and laid it on the grass to dry. In some cases where there were large white areas, we consulted with one another about adding color or not. We used paint brushes, plastic syringes, and our gloved hands to apply color. We had some plastic trays on the table that served as wringing areas - one that was for mostly purple, one for mostly green, and one for mostly orange - and when a tray would get enough liquid, someone would put an undyed bandana on the tray and turn it over, making sure that all of the dye had been absorbed. It was SO much fun, and we all enjoyed just playing. Here's what we got from all of our play:

Do you want to see some closeups? Of course you do!

I had each of the gals pick out her favorite piece to take home, and those aren't shown here. I haven't yet picked my favorite - okay, I have, but I'm not telling.

So, there you go, another dyeing day in the books.

Prelude to a Dyeing Day

I apologize for the long silence on this blog.

Since I last posted, I spent a weekend doing what I call "scut sewing" for the quilt guild. There were some items that will be given away at the guild's biennial weekend of workshops, and I offered to sew some of them. It was boring, tedious, and soul-sucking (yes, I know that I promised that I wouldn't do any more soul-sucking projects, but I felt sorry for the gal who is organizing the giveaways, etc.). I simply could not bring myself to take any pictures that weekend.

The following weekend (last weekend), I spent on retreat at Our Lady of the Pines Retreat Center in Fremont, Ohio. It is a wonderful facility, just south of Fremont, high up on a hill in the midst of a piney woods. The facility has walking paths, a brick labyrinth based on the one in the Chartres cathedral, comfortable rooms, and a pretty decent cafeteria. There were ten of us on an art retreat, and another ten or so in another part of the building on a quilting retreat. Of course, there was a lot of socializing between the two groups, and I came home with a bunch of free fabric (most of which will be donated to the guild's stash of fabric for SAFE House quilts). I had a lot of space in which to reflect and regenerate.

Anyway, this weekend, I did some organizing in preparation for a dyeing day with some friends next weekend. I decided to work off Mark Sherman's instructions in the July issue of American Quilter magazine. Be sure to check out Mark's incredible quilts while you're on his website. I had the privilege of seeing his butterfly quilt "live" at the National Quilting Association show in Columbus, Ohio, last summer, and I was truly amazed at his workmanship.

Here is the backing for the Cone Nebula quilt, scoured, soaked in soda ash solution, and ready for next weekend:

(The orange color is from the lid of the box in which it's resting this week.) Next, we have bandanas that I folded, loosely stitched, soaked, and dried. I figured it's easier to do the fancy folding in the evenings the week before than when I'm standing under an awning on a hot day fighting fatigue and heat exhaustion. The bandanas are thank-you gifts to folks who volunteer during the workshop weekend.

Finally, I soaked and dried some random bits of fabric just in case I get done with the rest of these early and still have energy. (cue maniacal laughter)

So, these are the "before" pictures, and I'll post "after" pictures early next week. I probably won't have anything else about the Cone Nebula quilt until some time in August. My other big July project is that we will be moving my sewing room from the smallest bedroom to the medium-sized bedroom. That room is currently a deep red (which is why the sewing room is not already there). I'll show pictures of that project as I go along.

Work in Progress Wednesday - #27

Good morning! This is part of a ring that can be found at Tami's blog. Please go check out all of the other great projects there. I didn't post last Wednesday because I was shoveling snow. Southeastern Michigan got far less snow than most of the rest of the country, so I will not complain about the amount we got other than to say that if I had blogged rather than shoveled, we would have stayed home from work or else gotten there very late.

If you read my post on Saturday, you know that I brought some snow into my house and played with dyes.

I think I had too much water versus dye in this project, and on Sunday I ended up squeezing out the two pale pieces, soaking them in soda ash water, and immersing them in the runoff dye. The two pieces with red on them just got more golden yellow. I did love the wonderful colors I got on the darker yellow piece in this picture. Here they are all washed and dried:

The darker yellow piece on the far left is the piece on the lower right in the upper picture. I also had some jar dyes going, looking for some dark fabrics.

Notice the deep purple moiré fabric in the lower left corner. ....

There must be some non-plant-based fiber in that fabric; see the wonderful gray-brown color I got at the end. The three pieces on the far right of the "done" picture are overdyes of the red and blue fabric I did last summer in the infamous flour-paste resist project.

The Cone Nebula quilt is coming right along in its own way. Here is the fourth section:

The arrow indicates a place where I think I should go in and put a deep purple piece. Sigh....
Here are the four sections together (only eight to go!):

Finally, I am still knitting along on the Every Way Wrap. I am so fascinated watching the cables develop.

For your reading pleasure, I would like to direct your attention to this blogpost by a friend of mine. She is a sociology professor at St. Scholastica College in Duluth, Minnesota (I don't even want to think about how much snow they've gotten!), and this post is about how people get on spam e-mail lists.

Have a great week, everyone!

Cone Nebula Quilt, Snow, and Dyeing

First, I want to start with some good news. A week ago on Friday, I got the official letter offering me a position in the new organization scheme at my workplace. My new supervisor's picture has actually appeared in this blog, but the only connection between that statement and the new position is that we trust and respect each other both personally and professionally. She's got her head screwed on straight, and we have worked well together on projects both in the workplace and in the quilt guild. I feel very hopeful about this.

Next, I did finish reading The Warmth of Other Suns this past week. In case it has not been clear from my earlier comments, I recommend this book to anyone interested in American history, in large-scale human stories, and in following people across their lifetimes. This is well written, well researched, and humanistic journalism at its best. It made me think, ponder, reflect, and, most importantly, see the world around me with fresh eyes.

Now, some art! Last Saturday a friend of mine and I joined another woman in the basement of the home of Happy Fuzzy Yarn. Riin led the three of us through the process of dyeing roving. We got to ask her all sorts of questions about anything at all fiber related. It was a very enjoyable four hours, and at the end, we got to take home some roving we had helped dye.

Isn't that pretty? It was utterly fascinating for my friend and me to see the differences in the process of dyeing animal fibers versus dyeing plant fibers. I'm sure we were annoying our teacher, but our comments about the differences helped each of us to imprint the new knowledge we were gaining.

Now, there did come a lull in the proceedings where each of us students couldn't stand to be surrounded by all of the yarny goodness in that basement (the storage place for the gorgeous materials she has in her Etsy and Artfire shops), and we started creating little piles of things that were going to go home with us. I fell for the sock blanks. Basically, these are a pair of socks' worth of yarn knitted on a knitting machine and then either painted by the seller or left blank to be painted by the buyer. I got one of each:

The way this works is that when you are ready to knit your socks, you remove the waste yarn and start unraveling the blank. You then get all sorts of colors that you know look good together showing up in the socks at random. Because she knits the blanks with two strands of yarn, you get identical yarns on the socks as you go along. Pretty nifty, huh?

You may have heard that some snow fell during the week (this picture is from 5:30a on Wednesday morning looking out my front door).

What you may not have thought as you looked at that snow was, "Cool! I get to try that snow dyeing technique I saw in Quilting Arts magazine last winter!" I did, but I didn't feel like digging out the magazine, so what follows is my version, made up of materials I had on hand this morning.

First, I got the two deepest tubs I had in the house (had to move the yarn and roving stash to a cardboard box for the day to free up the taller tub), then I covered them with some cat-claw-proof screening left over from last summer, then I attached the screen to the tubs with duct tape.

I didn't want to cut the screen, so I made do with what I had. Then, I put my fabrics to soaking in a soda ash and hot water bath (not shown) and mixed up my dyes. I wanted some more yellows and some super dark blues and purples for the Cone Nebula quilt. I decided the yellows would be snow-dyed, and the dark colors would not because I was willing to have less color intensity with the yellows. Then, while the fabrics were spin-drying in the washer, I filled up a bucket with snow (ended up having to lug in two buckets full - not bad!).

 Then, using a small dustpan, I dumped a bunch of snow on the screen.

Then, I added the fabric pieces and put snow on top (yes, I am still trying to salvage those pieces from my flour resist experiment from last summer!).

I completely covered the fabric with snow

and started applying the dyes. I had made up small containers full of three different yellow dyes.

Since I doubt any 9-year-old boys read this blog, we will all refrain from the obvious comment at this point.... I went off for a long walk (and got home about an hour after today's snow storm started). About two hours after the dyes were added, the tubs looked like this:

The snow is melting into the tubs, and the dyes have dispersed. I'll show the results in a couple of days. Meanwhile, the dark dyes are doing their thing in some old olive jars. I'll transfer those to an open tub when I finish writing this post. I want the fabric to dry out a bit and soak in more of the dyes.

When I finish fiddling around with the computer and with dyes, I'll head back upstairs to the Cone Nebula quilt. I got all of the fourth section laid out on Sunday afternoon (amazing how, even though I have what seems like a gazillion triangles cut, I never have enough of the right fabric!), and I got the bottom row sewn together. I'm hoping to get the rest of that section sewn together this weekend.

Take a look at the golden yellow fabric in the lower left corner of the second picture (and the lower right corner of the third picture). A few years ago, I took a quilting class through the guild, and at the end of the day as we were packing up, I noticed a hunk of fabric in the garbage can. Well, never one to pass up free fabric, I plucked it out and have used pieces of it in a couple of different projects. The last of that piece was perfect for that part of this project. I was thinking happy, grateful thoughts at whoever discarded that lovely piece of fabric.

Now, I do have to state that my "familiar" was hanging out in the sewing room with me, being sweet and cuddly (which is how she maintains control):

and offering her services as a quilting buddy a little later:

(See her artfully rearranging triangles for me?) This morning, though, when I was playing with chemicals (wearing my dust mask and long latex gloves, of course), she was smart enough to be in the next room, pretending to be an executive.

Okay! That's my catch-up post, and now I have to go attend to dyes and piecing and maybe even try to have dinner ready when Hubby gets home from church in about four hours.

Work in Progress & What I'm Reading Wednesday - #7!

This is WIPW/WIR#7 - thanks, Tami! (For more great blog posts on these topics, see the links at the bottom of Tami's post.)

Last week I mentioned that I had some cotton yarn on order for a sweater for my great nephew. Here it is all dyed up:

(It's for a baby, but these are seriously his parents' favorite colors.) Here it is "cooking" in the hot sun on top of the garbage can:

I've done enough dyeing to know that heat is my friend. Finally, here is the tangled mess I pulled out of the dryer last evening that I'm winding into a ball. There'll be a few knots in this yarn as I work through it. It was a good evening project after a frustrating day at work.

Now, for Peppermint Candy! Hubby Dearest looked at this and said he thinks the top is done. It's smaller than I want it (by a few inches in each direction), but it does feel done to me. I still think, though, I'm going to swap out those strips of odd fabric (the gray green fabrics that leap out of the quilt).

Next, I wanted to show you that I had helpers when I was setting up the yarn outside:

I also had a guard kitty in the sewing room:

This is the creature who woke me up at 2a this morning by sprawling on my shoulder (I was sleeping on my side) and purring loudly and then grandly accepting petting before leaning over and licking my face - this is why she still has a home despite her bad moods!

In terms of what I'm reading, a couple of weeks ago I mentioned here that I've got a real hole in my knowledge regarding the history of China - of Asia, really. At the big booksale that weekend, I looked for books on the topic and lucked into John King Fairbanks' The Great Chinese Revolution 1800-1985 (published in 1987). I say "lucked into" because it turns out that this man is one of the great American scholars about China. The book is readable, engaging, thought-provoking, and causing my little brain to whir. Here's a tidbit from page 10:

Something over a billion people live in Europe and North and South America.

These billion-odd Europeans and Americans live in about fifty sovereign and independent states,

while the billion-odd people of China live in only one single state.

Okay. In two sentences in the introduction, I was hooked.

I'll be selling raffle tickets for the quilt guild at the American Sewing Expo in Novi, Michigan, this coming Saturday afternoon. If you're at the expo, stop by the booth!

Dyeing Fun, Part 4 - and Giveaway!

Okay, so my first experience with flour paste resist was a complete bummer. All that anticipation, and I hate the fabrics that came out at the end. That's the price of experimentation.

I think the flour paste was too thick, and the dye/alginate mix was too thin. I didn't crack the crust enough, etc. etc. etc. Maybe I'll try this again, maybe I won't, but at least I gave it a good try.

On the other hand, several of the pieces for which I had high hopes on Saturday came out very well:

Look at that GREAT blue on the bottom! It's variegated and interesting, and it's going to be a great background for my next big quilt. I am SO pleased with it.

Next, check out these greens:

The one on the bottom is a cotton/bamboo mix, and I'm looking forward to turning it into a summer dress. Similarly, I'm looking forward to making a dress from the bottom pink (the one on the far left) in this picture as well:

The purples were basically an accident; I had some blue, some red, and some black left over at the end of the day, and I threw it together and dumped it over a bunch of random fabrics.

Finally, I think this shade of orange is annoying, and I have about four or five yards of it (the bottom piece); I have no idea what I'll ever do with it, but I'm sure I can come up with something fun - maybe as the background for a fall-themed quilt? The second fabric from the bottom is an orangy-red color - not as pink as it looks.

The title of this post includes the word "giveaway." Next Saturday, June 19, I will do a random drawing from all of the commenters on this post. The winner will get to select up to a half yard of any of the fabrics posted here other than the bottom pieces in the blue, green, and pink piles. I will contact you privately and put the fabric in the mail to you.

Dyeing Fun, Part 3

We had FABulous weather for dyeing. The weather was warm, the skies ranged from a little cloudy to overcast most of the day, and we had no rain.

Before we left the house, I soaked my fabrics in soda ash water and spun them in the washer:

After we gathered and got the third tent put up (my friend and her husband had put up the two awnings a couple of us had delivered earlier in the week), I took my board of flour-pasted fabric and started cracking the crust:

Then, I applied a thickened black dye over the assemblage:

I can hardly wait to see how this turns out!

Then, I laid out a painter's drop cloth and set out a four-yard length of fabric, letting it crinkle and scrunch a little in places, but mostly being flat. I mixed up three different shades of blue, each in a different jar. Then, I took each of the jars over to the fabric and, with a paint brush, flicked and dribbled dye all over the fabric, walking around and around it. A couple of the spatters ended up on my face, causing my friends to hand me some scrubbing lotion and send me into the house to clean up! Here's what the fabric looked like right after my ministrations:

I then went on to set out other large yardages with smaller pieces of plastic underneath, necessitating more scrunching, and some manipulation of fabric after I had applied the dye so as to get the dye evenly distributed. I also took some of the smaller pieces of fabric I had (fat quarter size and smaller) and tucked them into folds and under the larger piece. Here's a beauty shot for you:

Those pieces are large enough to possibly become dresses! One of my pals didn't want to dye today, so she had brought a sewing project; however, she had a couple of items she wanted to get dyed. I told her to pick out any color she liked. This is the color she picked:

Isn't that luscious? I SO wanted an orange Creamsicle after this! By the end of the day, we noticed that the blue dye in the large piece had done some migrating, and the tones didn't seem quite as starkly different. I hope you can see that in this long view.

The friend who wanted the orange fabric asked what she could do in return, and I told her to take my picture. The apron was a Christmas present from two of three greatest nieces in the world. Isn't it great?

At last, I got home, and spread out the fabrics in the condo's courtyard to dry in the sun. I have found this gets stronger, richer colors.

I'll do the washout either Sunday or Monday and post pictures after that.