Experimental Wall Hanging Now Purple!

Compared to the last photo before it went into the dye bath.

How did the predictions turn out?

That the printed cottons (pink with Chinese characters and the purple and pink dots around the border) will take up less of the dye than the other fabrics.

Not really, the pink and purple dots are the darkest elements in the piece now and you really have to look to see the dots.

That the upholstery fabrics will retain more of the dye than the piece used in my other workshop project, which glowed when it came out of the dye and then mostly rinsed off.

Yes, that worked better because I hand washed the upholstery samples I was planning to use with Synthrapol.

Quilted with purple polyester serger thread, which will retain its current colour and contrast with the dyed finished wall hanging.

That happened and now that everything else is a similar colour I like my free motion quilting better than when I took it off the machine.

Surprises:

• It was weird to see the turquoise polyester stay brilliantly its own colour throughout the dyeing process.  It positively glowed as I was agitating the dye bath trying to ensure that everything dyed evenly with no freckles or streaks or unintended weirdnesses.
• Not sure about the butterfly shape above the central panel.  I will say no more.  It will tell me what to do over time.

Points to Ponder:

To dye something evenly you need to stir the dyebath fairly constantly during the first half hour, and then at intervals after that.  I had planned to do this Saturday morning but by the time the piece was ready to go in, I was planning to meet friends for coffee, so I postponed it until the late afternoon.  Even then, I spent several hours out at dinner, but it had been stirred around enough in the early stages that it was okay.

Equipment:

One of the most important safety principles in dyeing is that nothing can be used for food once you’ve used it for dyeing.  I have a jug, measuring cups and spoons, old yogourt containers, a bread knife and a form that have all been dedicated to dyeing and surface design.  For this piece I needed something to stir the pot with and hesitated to sacrifice a wooden spoon.  My main objection was not the expense of replacing it as much as the nuisance of needing to do so.  Me eye fell on a nice smooth piece of driftwood occasionally used as antlers by Young Sprout to be a “boy deer.”  Perfectomundo!  Problem solved!  And there’s plenty more where that came from …

Next steps:

Trim the edges

Make bias binding

Bind

Embellish?

Stay tuned!

Blogger’s Quilt Festival

It occurs to me that I still haven’t posted the quilt I made in the Ana Buzzalino workshop that set me off on my current explorations.

And since it’s the Spring Blogger’s Quilt Festival, this is the perfect opportunity to share.  So do hop off  over there and vote for your favourites.  This is in the art quilt category and is 12 inches wide and 39-1/2 long.

And on the topic of voting … I put a poll which is just two posts back from this one, requesting artistic feedback, so please feel free to vote on that and help with a current project too.

Ana is a very encouraging teacher who brought many of her pieces to the workshop where we could study her techniques as we went along.  There were several examples of the Birds on a Wire that we made in the workshop, also others using the technique of piecing mixed fabrics straight onto foundation, batting and backing and then overdyeing the whole piece.

Mine includes white on white prints, black and white cotton, broderie anglaise, upholstery fabric, heavy cotton that feels like wool, assorted trims, and seersucker.  Some of these were fabrics I never thought I’d really be able to use.

beading, assorted b/w prints, eyelet trim at top

 

I mixed peach and tangerine fibre reactive dye powders from Dharma to achieve my colour.  It’s fascinating to see how each fabric dyes differently, yet everything goes well together.

This detail shows dupioni silk, a strip of hook tape which I bought for the workshop because it’s polyester cotton blend so I knew it would take some dye.

It also demonstrates Ana’s saying that there’s always a fix for everything.  A hook fell right at the edge and I had to snip it out to be able to sew the binding down.  This left an ugly hole because of the way the hooks are sewn into the tape.  I found a couple of beads and covered the hole with a trim.  There’s a row of seed beads towards the bottom of the piece (below the sitting birds) but sewing through all those layers was quite tough so I left it at one row.

Which fabric says “River” to you?

Help!  Feedback needed as I work on my challenge piece.

Please look at these two photos and considering the BLUE FABRIC only (not the backgrround and not the shape the fabric is cut into) share your opinion

No prizes, just the satisfaction of helping out!

 

Challenge Teaser

Here’s a test piece which  I made to experiment with curved piecing to be able to do sharper curves.

This reminds me of an aerial photo of a landscape and can turn into a nice small piece.  It’s all in aid of the Wild, Wild West challenge for our Guild retreat in June although it’s different enough from the design I’m working on for that to not be revealing any big secrets.  All will be revealed in mid-June.

Learned a lot from this and will probably have to do another one to see if I can get a curve going more in a U shape.  This time the blue fabric I used for the second curve wasn’t big enough to be able to do that.  But no worries there’s more of both these fabrics so I can make a third block that continues the river meandering along.

Lessons learned:

1. don’t go so near the edge of the block with the curved piecing
2. mark the seam allowance on the back of the “river” and align the blocks with pins
3. square off the finished blocks

Note to self:

Make sure the next block is wider than the existing pieces so I don’t have to trim any more off the side of the existing block!

It’s amazing that the blue fabric was on sale at a very low price because it has much potential!

Log Cabin Blocks

Our Quilt Guild retreat is coming up in early June.

Part of the fun is a draw for blocks, either log cabin or bear`s paw in keeping with the Wild, Wild West theme.

These are supposed to be in earth colours with red centres and of course have the light and dark sides.

Hoping mine are sufficiently earth coloured enough to meet with approval.   If time permits (ha-ha!) I may make more.   There`s some slate blue fabric which to me is earthy but others might disagree.

The other unknown when making blocks for a group project is that others may interpret light differently than me.  I stuck with the palest fabrics and rejected others which could be light if all the blocks were being made either by one person or by a close-knit group who could agree they were light.

 

More Ice Dyeing

I’m making an art quilt for a challenge so until the challenge is over a month from now not much will be revealed.  However I am documenting the process and after the big reveal will post.

The piece is ice dyed among other techniques and here is a piece of fabric that will NOT be part of the challenge piece although that was my original plan.

They say insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.  Hmmm.  Well I didn’t do EXACTLY the same thing, because in this ice dyeing session I presoaked the fabric in soda ash solution, then squeezed it out and kept the leftover solution for future use.  The main piece of work was laid in the bottom of the pail and the muslin shown in this photo was on top.  Then everything was covered with ice cubes and procion dye powder was sprinkled over the top.

What WAS the same, you ask?  Again, I had thoughts of dyeing muslin to use for binding, but I find I’ve created something too cool to cut.  I will find a use for it but it will for sure not be binding!

 

Any and all suggestions for what to do with this are more than welcome.  It’s about fat quarter size and this is a scan of some of it.

 

 

Ana Buzzalino Workshop

Our quilt guild was recently blessed by a presentation followed by a two-day workshop from Ana Buzzalino of Calgary.

We pieced directly onto a quilt sandwich (backing, batting and muslin foundation) using cotton, poly cotton, and other fabrics that take fiber-reactive dye.  I.e. no wool and no pure polyester.

Ana is an absolutely inspirational teacher and although my machine was not behaving terribly well I felt brave enough to attempt free motion quilting and curved piecing.

In fact, as often happens in life, the challenge with the machine led to a serendipitous find.  I left the workshop to drive straight to Sawyers where Denise identified and fixed no less than three issues, so no wonder I was frustrated!  Anyhoo, they had a table full of polyester serger thread in all colours.  The polyester doesn’t reach with the Procion dye so you can choose the best colour for each project.  Before the workshop I had been somewhat challenged to find even white polyester thread.

Having finished a piece in the course of the workshop I left buzzing with ideas of other things to try.  Ana’s supply list was to bring suitable mixed fabrics in light and neutral colours, all of which pick up the dye a little differently.

For the second project which we began as our quilted projects were steeping in the dye bath, Ana gave us some pure polyester turquoise fabric (think bridesmaid dress!) and some lilac poly cotton.  I’m still working on that, because I added in a bunch of black and white prints and it’s grown and grown.

I decided to make a small experimental piece and ice dye it so instead of it being one colour all over you would get a marbled/mottled effect.  So I used some of the turquoise and lilac, plus other black and white fabric, and an upholstery sample which I prewashed with Synthrapol to remove the Scotchguard treatment.  Ana is big on using fabric with writing on it, which is another thing I enjoy working with, so I used two fabrics with Chinese script on it.  The dark purple one in the photo started out neutral; the lighter one with the larger characters started out hot pink.  I think this must have made the fabric less able to pick up other dyes.

So  the front is the last photo, quilted with fuchsia polyester which stayed the same colour.

And the back was a cool bicycle print!

At the workshop Ana reminded up to throw some plain muslin into our dye bath so we’d have the exact right shade of binding.  I placed a piece under the quilted piece, covered everything with ice, and sprinkled the powdered procion dye over the top of everything (navy, fuchsia and grape).

However much as I love what happened with the intended binding piece it’s too light to work as binding. (see photo, which is navy and white basically).

Fortunately I have a dark purple fabric with YET MORE Chinese script!  Which will be the binding.  Lesson learned, next time I’ll put the binding over the top of the quilted piece so it’ll hopefully be nice and dark yet the piece will still look good.

Baby quilt FINALLY FINISHED!

Here’s a close up showing the quilting on this one, which is technically the best quilting I feel I’ve done, just meandering lines in a grid, using Valdani Withered Blue on top and their Brick (I think it is) in the bobbin.

And to the right, the whole quilt.

What was fun with this was that I didn’t buy any fabric, just found stuff in my existing stash that played together nicely.

Following Joan Ford’s advice in Cut the Scraps! was a big help as all the squares were cut to five inches.  The paisley and the pale blue feathers were yardage which I cut, the others were from scraps I’d already cut down.  It was fast and fun to pore through the clamshell I keep them in and pull out the dark blue, red, peacock feathers and the deep red paisley and then just sit and sew.

The Missouri Star Quilt Company YouTube tutorial on disappearing nine-patch 

was a terrific quick  primer that saved me from making any design mistakes.  You put the focus fabrics in the four corners of the nine-patch, the middle fabric will be sliced into four little squares, and the fabrics in the middle of each outside appear like sashing, which is why I stuck to the blue feathers so there would be some consistency to the design.

When the quilt was started, no one knew whether the baby would be a boy or a girl.  Here in British Columbia you can only find out by paying extra for a special test.  Anyway the not knowing meant I needed to choose colours that were not gender specific, which I think I achieved.  In the end it was a boy, but this would also be suitable for a girl too.

New Quilt Unveiled

Nothing was posted about this earlier because I wanted to surprise the recipient.  If she totally hates it, she can always pretend that the back is the top:

All my life I’ve struggled with completely finishing things, so bingo might be a better hobby than quilting, I sometimes feel.

Anyhoo, this has been bound, labeled, and provided with its coordinating tote bag.  And after going back and forth on it for a few times, I put handles on the tote bag.

This photo shows the bag.  Almost every piece of fabric has a story, either where it came from or how it was made.

See the blue and red swirly fabric towards the bottom of the bag?  That was a serendipitous piece created when I was using a hatband that had turned out too tight as a wiping rag when I was dyeing fabric.  For years this was a piece that was waaaay to beautiful to cut.  see here for a close up photo. The pink and green paisley to the right of it comes from either Susan Purney Mark or Daphne Greig.  Many small squares of it have been floating around Victoria, and I’ve collected pieces from both of them.

The fun thing about making this is that it grows itself and is a fast stash buster.  I’ve tried designs that purport to bust stash but require a lot of time and patience to work with smaller pieces that can’t be strip pieced.  After the twin bed topper was done I had no less scraps than before I started.  If my scraps continue to grow it’s because I keep an eye open for small pieces that other people have given up on!

When making this fabric I set a few parameters:

The same fabrics can be touching because I want to fool the eye and not be too obvious about where one piece starts and the other leaves off.  See how I did it with marbled fabric:

No, no set in seams here, thank you very much!

I’m working with strips and with pieces that are smaller than a fat quarter.  If you click on this photo Andrea Hamilton’s mid-arm quilting shows to much better advantage on the light fabric.  We chose Valdani Gem Symphony.

Nothing representational really, although I do have one butterfly on my cushion.

The fabrics are mostly solids, tone on tone, neutrals, batiks and surface design pieces. However in the spirit of nothing representational, I’m not using batiks with really in your face pictures on them, like flip-flops.

I’m not allowed to get too precious and agonize over whether adjacent fabrics look good together.  Some do, some don’t.

Some of the fabric is too beautiful to cut and some was what I couldn’t sell at the Guild garage sale!  And some came from fellow surface design folks who were cleaning out their studios and desperate to see the back of their own stash.

Since the fabric is used to make larger items there is not a set block size.  I sew pieces to each other and build long strips about 7 to 10 inches wide and as long as the width of a twin bed quilt.  Then when I’m going to make something I play around with these strips and figure out the final design.

And although some oriental carpet makers and Amish quilters put deliberate errors into their pieces because perfection belongs to God alone, I doubt I’ll ever come close to needing to do that!  There’s a non deliberate error in the tote (one handle is twisted, aaaarrrgggghhhh!

and another (really galling) one in the quilt itself. 

Disappearing 9-Patch, work in progress!

This is a process shot of a disappearing nine patch quilt while it was on my design wall.  Other bits and pieces are peeking out from the sides, this was just right on top of everything.

It’s now assembled and in the process of being quilted.

The Missouri Quilter YouTube video I watched was great as it clearly explained what to expect and how to decide what fabric goes where.  That was how I picked the light blue feathery print for the four pieces in the middle of each outside, so they would become sashing.  I put my focus fabrics in the four corners and the centre fabric was consistently either dark blue or the rust fossil fern print.

There’s many ways to put disappearing nine patch together but for this first attempt I decided to follow the advice given and ensure that I wasn’t trying to match a whole lot of inside seams.  Just matching the seams on the blocks was quite enough of a challenge, thank you.  The design wall was a blessing as the blocks stayed up for over a week while I rearranged them to not have any matched focus fabrics touching each other.  Doing that probably took longer than it took to do the actual sewing of the top.  You can tell this was still in design because there a several places where focus fabs were touching.

Point of Pride:  Everything came from my stash, no shopping was involved!