Start of New Quilt

Over the summer I started dyeing fabric for a new quilt. After dyeing I had taken some fabrics and discharged and overdyed them. These I wrote about in earlier posts when I was working on them.

The end of last month and the first week of this month I reviewed all of these fabrics and decided some still needed some more texture on them. I got out the paints and paintsticks, stencils, stamps, and rubbing plates and got to work.

I used irredescent paintsticks and rubbing plates over some of the fabrics.

Next I used paint, both metallic and matte with stencils. Last was stamps and paint.

After they all dried, they were heat set.

With the dyed, overdyed, discharged, rubbed, stencilled, and stamped fabrics gave me a diverse group to make this quilt.

Now I can get down to the sewing.

Will keep you informed.

Baby Quilt Done

Last time I blogged I was working on my to-be grand niece's baby quilt. Her parents picked a ladybug theme for her bedroom. I designed a quilt with flowers and ladybugs on the flowers and also in two corners.

I added two borders and outline quilted around the applique. This will hang on the wall.

I also made a cuddle quilt for her, using the same basic color scheme, I pieced rail fence blocks and the machine quilting was an overall loop-d-loop.

Liana Paige was born Sunday, February 6th. She's healthy and beautiful. We're blessed to have her as an addition to our family.

Finishing Up

The snow-dyeing fabrics are finally rinsed and pressed, (that's what took me so long). I loved how the green and red turned out and will be quickly used in a quilt I'm starting.

The blue and yellow came out good but would have liked more mixing of green.

The 3 layer parfaits are great. The first two layers came out with mixture of colors and the third layer was the combo of red and blue, not a wow!! fabric but will be useful.

Its much easier doing the parfait layers with low-water immersion and I think thats how I'll continue to do them.

I have also been busy quilting. I finished a few quilts that have been sitting around waiting to be quilted.

This started out with monoprinting on a gelatin mold 2 summers ago. Added some turquoise hand-dyes and 1/2 square triangles.

Next is a sunprint of assorted leaves. I added bias stems to separate the leaves, then traced the leaves for applique. I offset the applique leaves on the sunprinted fabric to create dimension.


Tomorrow I have to get started quilting a baby quilt for my grand niece. She's due to be born any day now. Will show pictures when finished.

1st Snowfall of 2011

Over the past year I have neglected my blog, once in a while posting on quilts made, fabric dyeing and painting. But I wasn't posting as frequently as I wanted or should have. I always had some excuse, then time would get away from me.

This years resolution is to post more frequently and on a more regular basis. That being said, as I watch the snow falling my mind is reviewing different color combinations for snow dyeing.

The first couple pictures are of fabric I did after our last snow fall at the end of December.

Above, I used grape dye.

This one I used ultra violet and golden yellow.

Today, I'm going to use green (coblat blue and golden yellow) and chinese red combo. I'm trying a different way by laying the fabric flat on a mesh drying rack instead of on a slant using lids from my containers.

This is sky blue and golden yellow on a cover slanted in a container.


This one is totally different than what I've tried before with snow. Its 3 layers of fabric with dyed snow in between each fabric. I started with golden yellow on layer 1, chinese red on layer 2, and sky blue on layer 3. Hopefully these will melt down through the layers and get multi colored fabrics.

These will sit till most of the snow melts, about 12-18 hours then rinse.

Results soon.

Fabric Review

I reviewed my hand-dyed fabrics that I recently have done, and wasn't too happy with the red/orange fabrics I dyed. They weren't the colors I wanted. They were more orange than red/orange. So, to fix them, I decided to shibori them with a more concentrated red/orange.

These came out better. I was happier with the colors.

While doing the shibori, I also tried more low-water immersion dyeing with the concentrated red/orange dye. These came out better also.

With my dyes out, I did a few more tray dyeing fabrics. I used lemon yellow, golden yellow, chinese red, sky blue, and brown, pleated the fabric, and squirted dyes in different sections. The 2nd fabric I used scarlet, golden yellow, cerulean blue and brown.

I also tried one by just scrunching the fabric in a dish pan. I used lemon yellow, golden yellow, chinese red and turquoise.

This came out in spots that were rather muddy looking but overall I liked the results.

It was a successful day.

Labor Day Dyeing Spree

Summer is coming to an end and time for dyeing (even in my garage) will soon come to a halt.
So with this in mind I set myself up for a dyeing frenzy.

I started Friday with my friend Martha. Got some of the dyes and fabric ready and went to her wet studio for the first day. Go to her web site for her work. http://www.marthahallart.com/. I kept it pretty simple by dyeing a range of greens with black dyes.
I also dyed a few stray pieces that I have previously done but ran out of and now need.

Saturday was a family picnic, so I started rinsing Fridays fabrics in the morning.

Sunday, I started by stenciling previously dyed fabrics with thickened dye. Some of these were previously discharged with soft scrub. I covered the fabrics with plastic and let them cure for 24 hours. I was moving right along.

Next I wanted to try "Tray Dyeing" by Leslie Morgan & Claire Benn. I soda soaked fabric for 30 minutes then fan folded the fabric into a large bin. Mixing up my colors I squirted gold in the center making sure it saturated the fabric, squirted blue on the edges of the gold and massaged the dye into some of the gold. Last I added red to the edges and again massaged the dye into the blue, I tilted the tray so some of the red dye went down under the folds.

I let this cure for 24 hours before rinsing. I did a second fabric using orange, green and ultra violet dyes.

I went on to do 3 layer parfaits. The first set I used yellow/orange, on the first layer, red/violet on the second layer, and blue/green on the third.

The second set was yellow/green first layer, blue/violet second layer, and red/orange third layer.

I mixed up more dye for Monday and called it quits for the day.

Monday, I started with some gradation dyeing of chinese red and black, moved on to red/oranges with black.

Any left over dyes I used for more 3 layer parfaits.

After all the fabrics had set for their alotted times I finished off the day rinsing, rinsing, and more rinsing.

Some of the results:

Red gradations

Tray dyeing

3 layer parfaits

It was a busy weekend but enjoyable and productive.

See you soon.

Overdyeing

Last week I used some of my previously dyed light fabrics and tried overdyeing them bit darker with shibori and triangle folding techniques.

I wrapped fat quarter fabrics around 3" diameter PCV pipe. I wrapped the twine around the fabrics and scrunched the fabric up the pole. I then added a darker dye over the fabric and cured in plastic sheeting for 4 hours. Removed the twine and rinsed.

Light green overdyed with a darker green.

Light red overdyed with a red/green mix.

Yellow/orange overdyed with red/violet.

Clear light blue/green overdyed with a darker blue/green.

I also folded fabrics using different techniques into triangles then dipped the edges into darker dyes, placed into plastic baggies and let cure for 4 hours.

The first 2 fabrics had previously been soda soaked and dried.

Light red with medium red overdyed on edges.

Light green with medium green overdyed on edges.

As you can see, the darker dyes took over and just left splotches of the lighter color. Being dry fabric, the dyes wicked up more than should have.

These next ones were folded into various triangles, soda soaked for about 30 minutes, then the edges were dipped into darker dyes.
Light blue/green overdyed with medium blue/green.

Muted light yellow/green overdyed with a muted medium yellow/green.

Light blue/violet overdyed with a medium dark blue/violet.

Light yellow/green overdyed with a medium yellow/green.

These came out much better, the dyes didn't wick up as much and gave a better pattern to the fabrics.

I love the shibori look and will probably do more of it. I had tried the folded triangles years ago putting different colors on each edge and didn't like the results. Going more simplistic and overdyeing lighter fabrics with darker dyes in the same color family makes the fabric more interesting without being overwhelming.

This past Labor Day weekend was a dyeing frenzy. I'm still processing the fabrics and will post as soon as am done.

See you soon.