Dyeing

It is raining here in Colorado. An unusual sight. At least, it has been unusual since I have been here. We have had a few small showers, but they come and go in a few minutes. Today, it is raining, a nice steady rain.

So, it is quiet here in my apartment. With my door open, there are no golfers outside my little deck, no golf carts buzzing around. Even the geese are quiet this morning. Just the sound of the rain. Steady, soothing. Ahhh.

So, what have I been doing? Well...

First I dyed.
As in fabric dyeing. On Saturday I went to the home of a woman named Karen where she was hosting a class on fabric dyeing. It was really fun. It was a small group so she could interact with all of us and we could chat as a group.

We started by over dyeing six fabrics in a rainbow to really get the feel of what happens when you dye. We used fuchsia, lemon yellow and sky blue dyes from Dharma as our base colors.

I wish I had taken photos as we went along. Here is my palette all dyed, rinsed, washed and pressed.

I chose not to manipulate the fabric a lot while it sat in the plastic bags curing. That is why I got a lot of mottling, which I like. While I don't know much about dyeing, I knew I didn't want pieces with consistent color across the fabric. I think the mottling adds more interest.

Next we did some ice dyeing. I dyed three pieces with different color mixes of the powders.

I really love the green/blue one.

And then we did a gradation. I chose to do orange as I wanted to do a color not in my comfort range and I figured with fall coming up I would have a use for it! I did one light, one light with brown and a darker one with brown.

Nice!












To continue the dye story, on Monday I got together with one of the gals from the class, Marcia, and we continued to dye fabric!

We used the rainbow palette again and added some black to see the effect. The orange looks more red and the yellow is chartreuse. We did not see much change in the blue. I think we needed to add more black to that one.

And then tried a different way to ice dye.

I really like these pieces.

Because they did not sit in the dye, they are a little softer. Any prettier in person. I had trouble getting a good picture of these last ones.


What fun we had.

So I have lots of groovy fabrics to play with.








Sunday, my nice hubbie drove me around Denver to go to knit shops. It is bad to have more than one addiction. Twenty one knit shops are having a shop hop. It was one way to get me to go into the city!

I love what cities have to offer, I just wish they had more open space! And poor hubbie would love to live IN the city! What he has to put up with... But Denver is not a bad city; especially on a Sunday. Not too crowded, not too many tall buildings that block out the sun.

Back to the knit shops, we drove around the city and went to four shops. Each shop is so different! And everyone was very friendly and even though I told myself I did not need any more yarn, or books or magazines I couldn't help myself!

So pretty!

And we ended up at a farmer's market and got some pears (yummy!), gala apples, local honey, granola, and I can't remember what else. What a good day!

Yesterday I spent part the day with some fun quilting ladies and got the binding almost done on Daisy Mae. Huey is stitched and just waiting for his turn to be finished.

Today is my day in the office. I have some emails to do, a pattern (or two) to write, a giveaway to organize and maybe I will sit and sew some binding and watch "The Voice" on DVR.  Good rainy day activities.

Have a great day!

happy quilting,
Kate

p.s. I knew the geese would not stay quiet for long!