Dyeing with Marcia

Fabric dyeing!

Orange gradient: light to dark adding black

Over the last few weeks, we have dyed a bunch
of fabric!

We have been busy!

Moss green

Cobalt blue- pretty!

This one was dyed in a large yogurt cup.



And of course, who comes to visit if there is fabric on the floor?

This next one was ice dyed... lovely.










Can't wait to play with all this great fabric we made!

happy quilting,
Kate

p.s. new website coming soon... with goodies... keep checking back!

Project Monday

Hi everyone? How are you this week?

I wanted to share the block I posted on the Project Quilting site this past week. I teased you with pictures of sections of the quilt, but I wanted to wait to share until I was all done.

The Project Quilting challenge this past week was "Square in a Square".


I immediately thought of a block from our pattern Far East Holiday.

Here is a whole quilt using that block.

Then I thought it would be fun to use some of the hand dyes my friend Marcia and I have made. I had to keep the overall quilt small, as each hand dye is less than a fat eighth.

I showed this group to you all the other day. 

I tried a few other color combinations but just really loved this one. 

A good triadic color group: golden yellow, aqua blue and fuchsia.

I tweaked the block a little, adding more colors than the original called for- the original uses just three colors. But I wanted to get a shaded effect and the effect of more squares.

Then I made four blocks.

Once I had the four blocks together, I had to decide how to quilt it. I really wanted to keep the squares front and center and I was afraid that to much quilting in each square would take away from the effect.

So, I went with stitch in the ditch, except for the center.

After much debate, I decided to use a heavy thread to give it some extra pizazz since I was quilting in the ditch. I went with an variegated Aurifil 12 wt thread.

And that concludes my first Project Quilting Quilt. My Square in a Square challenge quilt called: "How many Squares do you see?"

Have a great week!

happy quilting,

Kate

Manic Monday

How does that song go? Just another manic Monday.... wish it were Sunday...

When I was working, Monday mornings were among the worst days of the week as they are for many people. But in my business, Fridays could  be even worse. Most people think TGIF!

But not in homecare. That is when all the patients that have not been feeling well all week call, when the weekend schedule must get done, when the weekend schedule gets revised a million times as more patients get discharged from the hospital and or need help over the weekend, when...  you get the picture.

Now, I work from home. Monday mornings aren't as bad. But still, I can freak myself out with a huge list of to dos for the week and get stuck in "which way should I go George?" syndrome.  So I try to schedule my day so I can focus on one thing at a time and not get as distracted.

As distracted. Not not distracted at all. That is not possible!

So today, to keep the mania down, I have a list. First, I am going to work on my Project Quilting project. Have you heard about Project Quilting? It is named after my favorite television show.

Basically, every other Sunday, they post a challenge. A theme. An idea.
And then you have a week to make a quilt. Totally make a quilt. Start to finish. Concept to binding. Sound like fun? The good news is, any size will do.

They posted the first challenge yesterday so get moving! Pop over here and you can see the idea for the week.

So that is the first item on my agenda. I have my idea so I am going to pull some fabrics for it. I am going to try to use my new stash of hand dyed fabrics. Since I have been hand dyeing, I have developed a two bin stash. They are all small pieces- less than a fat eighth.

We even labeled all the fabric so if we really like a piece,
we know what dye mix we used!


Time to start playing with some of it!



This was my first group, but I am not sure if there is enough contrast with the two blues.

This is group two- a different yellow and a lighter light blue. hmmm.....

You will just have to wait to see what I am doing with this... no peeking yet!

Then I will cut out the rest of the fabric for the Row House quilt I am designing. These blocks were made yesterday. Cute, huh? 

I have a whole list of other stuff, but I won't bore you with the details. Just saying I am trying to focus on one thing at a time. 

As I learned in my business group: Scattered focus = Scattered results!

Keep focused!

Happy quilting,

Kate

Remiss

I have been remiss.

I have not posted.

I am sorry! I was working on a few projects and one was a gift- and I could not post a picture until the gift arrived at it's destination.

Here is the quilt I started at my class with Cynthia England. 

Cute, huh? I called it "Alyssaville; a ghost of a town". I made it for my daughter Alyssa and she has it hanging on her door. Some of the fabrics glow in the dark and I tried to use some glow in the dark thread.

Tried is the operative word. The thread and my machine were not friendly. They fought and just did not get along. I tried all sorts of tricks, playing with the tension, changing the needle, rethreading, talking sweetly....

Nothing helped. I was trying to blanket stitch around the shapes with it- I thought it would be fun. 

Not. 

I finally switched to invisible thread and no problems at all. The areas where I used regular thread, no problem at all. Glow in the dark thread and my machine- mortal enemies.

Oh well. Live an learn!

On to fabric dyeing. My friend Marcia and I have gotten together a few times now to dye fabric. Since she has the house, and therefore the room to do this, we meet at her place. That means she also gets to wash out all the fabric after it has set for a while. Sorry Marcia! Last week we got together not to do dyeing, but to divvy up all the fabric we had dyed so far. (By the way, she mentioned people questioned her reference on her calendar... "dyeing with Kate". Doesn't sound good, does it?)

So we cut fabric, stapled samples to pages and marked them (we are geeks!) so if we every want to dye that color again, we know what it is. Here are some of my cards.

And here is my stash.

Yes! 

Each little pack has 5-6 fabrics in it.

Yum.

More yum.

 Now I will admit, not all the fabrics looked great. There were a few that resembled, well, let's just say Marcia knew the right word because she has grandkids and has changed diapers lately!

But most were terrific. These browns are really nice in person.

Can't wait to play with this stuff!

happy quilting,

Kate