My mom taught me to knit when I was 8 years old. I still love it, but these days I stick to small projects that I can work on when I'm "between quilts". I like simple stitches and shaping, so when I saw this amazing scarf on the Brooklyn Tweed blog, I couldn't resist! Totally beautiful, and completely do-able while watching CSI reruns. I did some quick online shopping for yarn, and can't wait to get started. Hmmm, if I start a scarf in July, what are the chances that I'll have it done before we get snow?
Friends of ours have a new baby, and the quilt from the Fun Fish class at Quilt University is perfect. Here are a few of the fish, getting basted to go on a wholecloth background. I couldn't bring myself to fuse them down with Steam a Seam. This quilt will (I hope) go in the wash a few times, as opposed to being hung on a wall. So, I'm turning under the raw edges and will machine applique the little fishies down, for greater durability of the finished quilt. It's really fun to use some of my batik stash. It will surprise my friends to see orange in this quilt, the colour I do not like! My husband reminded me about the cute little koi in the garden pond we visited a few weeks ago, and I just had to include some goldfish in this quilt. I didn't forget my beloved pink and purple, though!
Quilt University is a fascinating site for online quilting classes. I've taken several and have never been disappointed. Another interesting fiber art site is Joggles. They also have some online classes, including an upcoming class with fiber artist Sharon Boggon. The class is called Sumptuous Surfaces, and I should admit that I have signed up for it. It was a birthday present to myself. It's a design class, and if you visit Sharon's blog, you'll be thrilled and overwhelmed by her gorgeous stitching. The fish beckon...
Twice a year, my Wednesday night quilting group (Quilters' Workshop) travels to Cornwall, Ontario, for a weekend retreat. I just got back from the latest trip. These quilting retreats just get better every time! This time, there were 25 people in attendance. There are 21 members of Quilters' Workshop, so we always invite a few quilting friends from outside the group to join us.
My major project was a fabric covered box I made for my friend Judi's birthday...which was in November! Well, I finally finished it and it went home with her.
The dragonfly fabric is silk brocade. I used a black solid cotton on the lid to reduce bulk. The silk fabric is pretty thick and it was difficult to fold and sew down so that it wasn't lumpy. I stitched some beads around the silk fabric on the lid, just for a little extra sparkle. Judi seems to like it!
Winston, the Norwich Terror, had his neuter surgery this morning. The doctor just called to say he's doing well, so now I can pull out the sewing stuff and work on covering that hot chocolate tin.
First, I whipstitched a piece of quilt batting around the outside of the tin. This helps to create a flat surface...the tin has a metal lip at the top and bottom that sticks out a bit. Then I cut a piece of stiff interfacing a little larger than necessary to cover the outside of the tin. This interfacing is a bit like Timtex, but it has a heat-activated fusible layer on both sides. That's why I've lined my ironing pad with a Teflon pressing sheet. I chose a few pieces of fabric from my stash of hand dyes, and snipped them into little pieces, layering the pieces on the interfacing. At this point, I'm not worried about full coverage, I just want a pleasing colour arrangement.
After all the little fabric bits are arranged, I fold the Teflon pressing sheet around the interfacing and fabric, so that both sides are enclosed in the pressing sheet. Then I iron the surface until the fabric bits are stuck down.
I'll be adding more fabric and embellishment later, but now I'm going to do some freemotion stitching over the fabric bits. Here, I've used a bright green rayon thread and stitched little circles and ovals over part of the design. I'll use several different greens, some yellow and lavender so that there is good thread coverage over the piece before I go on to the next step. Stay tuned!
The two round boxes on the right were inspired by a challenge to "repurpose" CDs that would otherwise be thrown away. I used to get a lot of CDs in the mail from AOL and Sympatico, offering 3 months worth of "free" internet access. I can't remember where I read about the idea of reusing them, but I noticed one of my neighbours had strung them up in her garden to scare the crows away from her corn. Another neighbour covered an upstairs window with them, apparently with adhesive (hopefully removable!)
I decided to make fabric covered boxes with them. Each box used 2 CDs, one for the bottom and one for the lid. I covered pieces of cardboard for the sides. These were completely handsewn and took some time to complete.
I've always thought that the hot chocolate tin would make a nice looking container, so my next project is to repurpose this by covering it with fabric. I am a confirmed chocoholic, and I add a couple of teaspoons of hot choc mix to my coffee every morning. This gives me an ongoing supply of tins, and I'm hoping to find ways to speed the process of making the fabric covering by using some machine sewing, and maybe glue...more later.
Here are the fat quarters that I dyed with Remazol dyes. I'm really happy with the colour saturation and how easy they were to rinse out...well, mostly. The intense blue (upper right in the photo) bled excess dye through 3 hot water washes in synthrapol. However, I probably used 3 times the dye I really needed. The mixing red (second from the right on the bottom row) looks more scarlet in the photo than in real life. It's actually a cherry red.
For the curious, my dyes are from ProChem. Clockwise from the upper left of the photo, these are the colours I used: sun yellow (LR108), rust brown (LR5213), black (LR604), intense blue (LR406), leaf green (LR700N), mixing red (LR305), strong orange (LR202), olive (LR708N). For most of the colours, I used 1 tsp of dye for each fat quarter. For the intense blue, mixing red and black I used 1/2 tablespoon for each. Since those dyes are double the strength of the others, I should have used 1/2 teaspoon probably. Except for the black, which always needs to be mixed stronger if you want a rich black.
I mixed my soda ash solution at 1 tablespoon per cup of water. Each fat quarter went into the baggie already damp. I mixed the dye with 1/4 cup of water and added it to the fabric. I left it alone for 20 minutes, and then added 1/4 cup of soda ash solution to each baggie. Then I filled a large bucket with hot water and floated the baggies in that, to provide enough warmth for the dye to react. I dye in the basement, which averages daytime temperatures around 17 degrees Celsius at this time of year, so adding heat is not optional!
If you're using MX dyes and hate mixing those powders, give Remazols a try. They're not available in a wide range of colours, but they are intermixable, and I think it will be great fun to experiment.
This comes from Quilters' Newsletter Magazine (March 2007), in the "Fabric Spectacular" section. Guess the proofreader took a day off.
I've been dyeing cotton fabric with fiber reactive MX dyes for about 3 years now. I love the unique mottled effect of low water immersion. But the mixing of powders (and having to wear a respirator to do it) has always been annoying, and difficult to clean up. Those red dye powders float everywhere! I was having to wipe down the entire laundry room after every dye session.
So, armed with some info from Paula Burch's amazing site, I decided to try Remazol dyes. I bought 8 colours from ProChem and dyed a fat quarter of Kona PFD with each one. Although ProChem's instructions are different, I just dyed them the same way I've used the MX dyes, except that I put the dye pots (well, baggies really) in a hot water bath after adding the soda ash solution. I meant to take them out and rinse after an hour, but my puppy had other ideas, so the fabric didn't get rinsed for about 3 hours.
Despite what ProChem says about getting paler results with soda ash than with pot ash, I used soda ash and the fabric is plenty vibrant for me!
I know I used *way* more dye than I needed to (at least 1 teaspoon per fat quarter), so I'm going to experiment a little before I post any recipes. But I will share my colour mixes once I'm confident that you won't be wasting dye by following my lead. Gotta go rinse some more...oh, that's another neat thing about the Remazols. The excess dye washes out much more easily, so my hot water bill should go down a little. Did you ever skip your hot shower one morning so you could afford to put more fabric in the dye pot?
I'll post a photo as soon the fabrics are dry and pressed.
on While Winston's Away, Dawn Will Play