Sunday 21 March 2010

Pretty Pretty - IQD Well Spent

Well, I made it nearly to the end of March before I broke my resolution not to start any new projects this year, but I couldn't resist cutting up the fabrics I dyed last week, and before I knew it there was a neat stack of 5" squares crying out to be made into this cot sized quilt top (with plenty left over for another one!). Isn't it lovely? Well, it will be once it has some borders on and is quilted! One of my cousins is having a baby later this year and I've found a nice continuous line sheep pattern that I'm intending to quilt over it, I think it'll stand out nicely against a simple background. Not sure if it'll be suitable if she has a boy though!

(*IQD - International Quilting Day, which was yesterday, for those not familiar with it :o))



Monday 15 March 2010

I Dyed on Saturday

... and lived to tell the tale :o). Oh dear, such weak jokes, they come around every time anyone mentions fabric dyeing, but they're impossible to resist LOL! We had a great day with Jacqui Calladine, we started by simply painting dye on wet fabric, then we graduated to dying small pieces of fabric in jam jars, gradually adding dye and fabric as we went along. I say small, it's surprising how much fabric you can jam into a jar (another very weak pun, sorry!), I managed to get 1/2m into one. My favourite piece from this exercise is the mottled linen.



After lunch we put various tied and stitched pieces into a dye bath, so they had a more uniform colour, but with lighter spots where the various resists were applied. My favourite technique was the jam jar dying, I really like the effects that gave, using different colours and letting them blend around the crumpled fabric. We left the dyed fabric in the jars for about an hour before pouring out excess dye and adding a soda solution to fix it, but if you were doing this at home you'd probably leave it overnight. When I got home I put all the fabrics in the washing machine, they came out quite a bit lighter, but hopefully that means they won't run at a future date.

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