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.

my favourites

New Socks!

I've finished a second pair of socks, this time for me. I'm really pleased with them, they've very comfy and fit perfectly. They're made from Regia Bamboo yarn (colour Jamaica) which is 45% bamboo, 40% wool and 15% nylon. Like most things with bamboo in them, they're very soft. These pictures are a bit washed out, they're quite a bit brighter in real life!

Finished Socks

As well as a quilt, I've also finished the first pair of socks this week. OH is very chuffed with his new house socks :o). I'm now half way through the first sock of a pair I'm knitting for myself.

A Finish

I've managed to get another quilt finished, this is good because it means I can say I've finished one a month so far this year! It's the strippy quilt we did at club, I'm quite pleased with how it's come out and I've also practised a bit of free machine quilting in the borders. It's about 1.5m square, was made entirely from my stash (that must be a first!). It's all batik fabric, has Quilters Dream Puff wadding and is quilted with a King Tut thread. The eagle eyed amongst you may spot that the shape of the flowers was inspired by this blog's background :o). It'll probably just go into my stash as a sample quilt.

I Succumbed

Since everyone else is knitting socks, I decided I would have to have a go too :o). Fortunately, unlike quilting, you can get going pretty cheaply, I bought a couple of balls of wool and some needles and got a free pattern, so I was all set to go. I've knitted one sock, OH is very chuffed with it, but says that his other foot is cold LOL! I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly the first one was finished, and amazed at the kitchener garter stitch used to finish the toe. Quite magic! Sock No 2 is about 2" long, I've committed to finishing it by the weekend, so I'd better hope there's some good telly this week. I'll post a better picture once the pair is complete. The wool is actually shades of blue, not grey.

Another Oldie - Yellow Double Irish Chain

This is a quilt that I made for my best friend's wedding. It was made during January and February 1998 from fabric that came from an interior design store called Biggie Best. This was a South African franchise and was very similar to Laura Ashley in what they were producing at the time. My bathroom curtains are made from the leftovers of the floral fabric LOL! The design is Double Irish Chain and the quilting is a very simple in the ditch grid, something I did rather a lot of on early quilts. The wadding used is Hobbs Heirloom - probably the 80/20 cotton/poly blend. It's a big king size quilt.

Aqua Batik Quilt - Finished!!

I'm ahead of my 2010 target already, I achieved my first finish of the year yesterday. In all honesty, it would have been finished in 2009 if I hadn't run out of thread, but I'm counting it for this year :o). This quilt was made from a batik jelly roll by Fabric Freedom, bought from Doughty's at Malvern about 3 years ago, with the pale background batik coming from somewhere in the US. I used a pattern called "State of Grace" from the book "Strip Clubbing" by Cozy Quilt Designs, one of the original jelly roll books. Just brace yourself if you enter the book name in Google!



The backing fabric is another batik (bought from the people who are always at the bottom of the marque at Malvern, can't quite remember their name at the moment) and the wadding is Quilters Dream Green. This is a recycled polyester wadding made from old pop bottles, but feels and handles exactly the same as their regular polyester wadding. Pop bottles and wadding are made from the same chemical compound, so in theory you could melt your wadding and make pop bottles, but I probably won't bother with that :o). I've used two different threads for the quilting, a dark King Tut (De Nile 927 - 1 reel) and a light Robison Anton (Pastel Variegated - 1½ reels). The quilt was sandwiched using 505 spray, my favourite method for putting quilts together, but probably not ideal for a quilt that's going to take a year to finish :o).



It was started in April 2008 (another advantage of blogging, you can see exactly how long a project has taken!), the top was finished in October that year, and I have been gradually quilting it since the beginning of last year, with major breaks for thinking time. On the plus side, my free machine quilting has come on leaps and bounds, and I have to say I'm very pleased with how it's turned out, particularly the quilting on the borders.




The heart motif is one that Philippa Naylor gave us during a workshop at the Festival of Quilts in 2008 and the floral border motif is adapted from a pantograph, with some extra bits added so that it would go round the corners. The heart motif is centred on three design elements on the front of the quilt, the dark spiral, the pinwheel in the middle of the light spiral and the small tringles linking the dark and light spirals. It's a perfect fit, I couldn't have designed it better myself!




I used Golden Threads quilting paper, rather than marking the top itself, I'm a big fan of this stuff as well. I drew the border motifs out in full in pencil, but I used the sewing machine to make several of the heart motifs at once, sewing with an unthreaded needle.

This quilt is now on the bed in our bedroom. It doesn't really go with the decor, but it's had a big thumbs up from OH, so we're enjoying it for the time being, and it does brighten up a dull north facing room.

Click on any of the pictures to enlarge them. Click the back button on your browser to return to the blog entry.