New Colour Family Complete

I have had a great weekend dyeing a fabric sample set.  I had some help with some good friends, so it only took 2 days instead of a month.  I can't reveal the exact process I have used here, but it is a process that I learned last year.

I started out cutting up 343 6.5inch squares from PFD fabric.

Then coded and sent through the dye prices to get them all dyed to the correct colours.  Lots of stirring and stirring.

Stirring

Stirring...

More Stirring

Stirring ...

More and more Stirring

This process is amazing it is quite a lot of work - but in the end I get a great set of samples that I can reproduce. Using a process of over-dyeing I don't need to dye each square separately it just appears in the last set of dye buckets.

Look colours forming before our eyes. 

Then they just need to be sorted - will need to be ironed and prepared for the next step. 

All set and ordered ready to cut up and place into the book.  Will work on that over the next few days to get it all done.  

Next weekend, I will get some fabric dyed that I will get to use to make into a quilt.  I will post an updated then.   

Such a long break from Quilting/Dyeing

Well the past 6 to 8 months have been quite rough for me.  My in August my mother went into the hospital (again).  She had not been taking care of her self very well and had lost a lot of weight and had gotten to the point where she could not swallow very well.  She responded well in the hospital and improved, however they told her that she should not be living alone.  I have spent the past half year going back and forth to visit her and helping her settling in to a care facility.  

She is still in a shared room, however, she seems to be settling in well.  I don't like being so far a way, however, I do have a job that allows for me to go out an visit her fairly often.  I have been out every month for at least a week since she moved out of her condo.  My next trip will be for Easter.

I am now feeling that I can finally get back into doing some dyeing and maybe even some quilting.  I have rearranged my sewing room and long-arm room and next weekend, I hope to get my dye studio (grandiose word for corner of the basement) arranged so I can get some dyeing done.

My fist  plan is to do another of the colour families as I learned in Carol Soderlund's Workshop.  I will be the second one that I have done since I took her course last year.  I have 2 other colour families I would like to do, but of course there are 80 some combinations that can be done with the dyes I use.

I also hope to keep up with this blog some more, I will try and touch base here at least once a week.  If you are out there reading please let me know.  I have not advertized this blog much, but it would be nice to know if people have found me. 

Scott.

An attempt at a modern quilt

I thought I would make an attempt at a modern quilt - one that uses colours that are a bit bold and a pattern that references traditional quilts, but used in a modern way.   I came up with this block.

I then wanted to only use it twice in a 40 x 40 inch quilt.

I have selected 4 colous of fabric, that I will dye my self - while this pattern is solid colour, it will be dyed using a low water technique that will give the fabric some texture.   This I hope will be a very bold (and dark) baby quilt.  

This weekend, I will dye the fabric for this quilt and will post the results - the binding and backing will all be the dark purple.  I am thinking of calling it something related to an hourglass - maybe The running hourglass,  or even Mangled Geese.

Getting caught up on some UFOs

Well, I had my first public sale of fabric at my local guild.  It went really well, the ladies seem to really like my fabric.  Now that that is over and most guilds are on summer break, I am taking this time to catch-up on some UFOs.  Almost two years ago a good friend of mine got married and I wanted to make him and his husband a quilt.  I started it months before their wedding in hopes to get it done before... Well we all know how well that goes.... So today, I finally dug out all the blocks I had completed and tried to figure out what I was doing when I put them away.

The quilt is called Totally Square and is in Kim Schaffer's book Quilts from textured solids.   One thing that bothered me about this quilt was that the final quilt was in its self not square.  I counted up all the blocks I had completed and realized I did many more of each of the first 4 blocks needed, so I decided to stop there and make the top from what I had.  So, the quilt is not exactly as the pattern indicated, I also am adding an extra column to make the final project square.

Here are some of the strips of blocks completed.

One thing, I noticed that I thought I was using a scant 1/4 inch seam, however it seems I was doing a bit larger than 1/4 inch seams - thus, my blocks were not 8.5 inch square.  I decided to cut them all down to 8 inch squares.  To make sure they will go together well. But ended up with a pile of narrow strips of fabric on the sewing room floor.

Tomorrow I will finish putting the top together and will post it.  Then, I will need to get a back for it and get it on my long arm.

Been busy dyeing.

I am getting ready to take an exploration into selling my fabric in June at a local guild meeting.  I am excited and a bit nervous.  I have had some good feed back from people at the guild on how much they like my fabric.  Now, I hope they will like them enough to purchase some.  But, in any case - I have been having a great time dyeing the fabric.  When I get to the ironing stage, it is quite exciting to see how the fabric has turned out.  Look at this pink, it has some great texture/patterning:

I have been playing with how much liquid I leave in the fabric after I soak it in soda ash solution.  This pink was soaked then spun in the washer to get most of the liquid out.  I can see that the patterning is somewhat different that when I just squeeze out as much water as I can after soaking it in soda ash solution.  

This is a range from yellow to a redish orange (each fabric has a different formula for the colour)  I am going to bundle it as a group.  I think this would make a great Bargello Quilt.  Will have to do up some designs and sew it up this summer as an example of what you can do with my fabrics.

Here is a different view.

I have also done a gradient of orange:

Each of these fabrics has the same formula for colour, just a different concentration of dye to fabric for each step.  The yellow and orange play well with each other.  Again, this is very low water dyeing and the yellow has broken out of the orange.

Not as vibrant as the yellow to red above, but just as pretty.

Playing with colour

Since I got back from my colour dyeing course, I have been dyeing a lot of fabric.  My goal this month is to get 50 to 75 meters of fabric dyed for an event in June, that I will have a table at.

I am really happy with this yellow/green gradation.

I am bundling them up as a unit - 

I have some orange and red gradients soaking/rinsing.

Today, I set up to do some teal -

I have measured out for 6 different values of teal.  I soaked each meter in a soda ash solution then spun them in my washing machine to get most of the water out.  I then added the measured dye to a volume of water I wanted for each value, so that each meter go the same amount of fluid, the only difference was the amount of dye available for each meter of fabric.

I also did a 6 step gradient of indigo -

Again I added water to bring up the volume to my desired level for low water dyeing.  You can see that each beaker has the same level.

You can also see the fabric soaked with the teal in the background - These are currently in a warm place batching.  I will rinse them tomorrow after work.

Will post the pictures of them after they are rinsed and ironed.   I have plans to do a purple and a plum later in the week.  By next weekend I should have 152 fat quarters done.

Before the end of May, I should have 75 meters of fabric dyed.  This will mean I have to purchase more fabric, but watching a roll of white fabric turn into all these fabulous colours is exciting.

Scott.

Colour Mixing for Dyers!

Last week I was in Fall River, Mass taking a workshop at ProChemical and Dye,  Color Mixing for Dyers by Carol Soderlund.  From when I first started dyeing I have heard that this was a workshop I should take.

I left early on Saturday, April 21st to drive the 9 hours to get down to Fall River.  It took me a bit longer – I stopped at several quilt stores to have a look around. I then went to Boston Sunday to have a look around.  I found that of all the places I have driven, Boston had the worst drivers.  I spend the day looking around and doing a bit of sight seeing. Then drove to Fall River and checked into the hotel and tried to get a good night sleep for the first day of the workshop.

Monday morning got to ProChem early and grabbed a table up front to make sure I had a good seat.  The rest of the students arrived and we met Carol and got going.  The morning was a bit of introduction and a direction to the workshop.  Monday afternoon we got into dyeing.  Adding labels to layer cakes of PFD fabric.   Water, salt, and dye were measure, buckets were set up, soda ash solution prepared and away we went.

Yellow variations were done Monday afternoon,

Red was added (over dyed) Tuesday morning

Then Blue was done Tuesday Afternoon. (Look at those colours)

Look at all the colours that were produced.

The stacks of each colour family were cut up and distributed for our colour reference books.  I have two more envelopes to go before my book is complete.

Thanks Carol and it was wonderful working with the other students in the workshop.

I could not wait to get another colour family done,. So I have the yellow set dyed and will get the red added tonight.

If you have a chance to take this course I would highly recommend it. Not only because  Carol is a great instructor, she has put together a wonderful method for learning about colour and setting up a great reference.

I have a feeling I will have many colour families done in the next few years, using all the fabrics I use for my dyeing.