Hand-dyed fabric curing in cottage cheese containers

Here’s what I did this morning.  The green on the left is made from yellow dye with a little black mixed into it.  This was a tip from Melody Johnson from Fibermania.  If you’re not familiar with her work, go visit her blog.  I wanna be like her when I grow up!

More hand-dyed fabric

Playing around with low-water immersion dyeing was my objective this morning.  This is a dyeing process where the fabric is crammed into a small container, and the dye is poured over it.  The more the fabric is crumpled up, the more mottled it will will be.

Mostly I twisted the fabric, and then poured the dye solution over it.  I untwisted the fabric from time to time to see how it looked, and added more dye as needed, using an eyedropper.  Then I smushed the fabric around to blend the colors together.

When I was finished playing with it, I twisted it back up and put in into an empty cottage cheese container to cure.  To avoid having dark spots on the fabric from sitting in the excess dye, I poured any extra dye off, and used it to dye more fabric.

The fabric containers were slipped inside a plastic bag so they wouldn’t dry out while the fabric was curing.  Don’t know if it makes any difference or not, but it can’t hurt.  The basement is pretty chilly, so  the little containers of dyed fabric were kept warm and toasty on  a heating pad for most of today.  The warmth is supposed to help the dye react better with the fabric.

Batik-like design made with gel glue

This yellow fabric shows my attempt at batik using gel glue.  Now I need to paint it with some dye.  After it’s cured, then I wash the glue out, leaving the yellow designs.

The shapes are from a picture I took on the beach the other day.  It was warm enough for the snow to start melting, and the water made some neat designs in the sand.

This is such an amazing design.  It’s so graceful, and it just flows.  It makes me think of a tree with the leaves blowing in the breeze.

If you click on the picture of the sand, it’ll make it bigger so you can see the design better.

Design made by melting snow water in sand on the beach along Lake Superior

The best part about dyeing fabric is that no matter what happens, it’s a success!  It’s just so much fun to play around with the colors, and I’m learning something every time I do some dyeing.  I can see that there’s a bolt of white fabric in my future.  I’ve already used up about a third of what I bought at the fabric sale!

Fabric soaking in soda ash solution. A bucket of possibilities!

Played around with dyeing some fabric this afternoon.  Here’s a bunch of fabric soaking in the soda ash solution.  The white is the cotton I bought yesterday.  The tannish is some printed white cotton I had on hand.  I’m not much for using white, so it’s been sitting in my stash for several years.  Not any more!

Dyed fabric curing in zip-lock bags

The second photo shows a (hopefully) lime green and a bright blue.  They’re curing in zip bags, per the instructions at Fabric Dyeing 101 for dyeing solid-colored fabrics.

Fabric curing in cups. Cramming it into a cup causes a more mottled appearance.

The third picture is four pieces in cups.  The only one you can see is the yellow.  There is a blue-green, a berry red, and I think a dark purple (can’t remember!), along with the yellow.  The berry red is a piece of the printed fabric.  I’m curious to see how it turns out!

I plan to use the yellow piece to play around with making batik using gel glue.  Or I may try stitching a resist and overdyeing it.   I dyed it pale yellow so I could play around with it.  Just need to find some gel glue.  I expect they’ll have it at Target.

It’s a bit chilly in the basement, so I may let it cure for longer than the recommended 24 hours.  I’d bring it upstairs where it’s warmer, but my Molly Cat LOVES plastic bags.  If I’m silly enough to leave one where she can get at it, she drags it all over the house, after killing it thoroughly.  Better to leave my dye project in the basement where it’s safe from predatory kitties.

Dyeing fabric is so much fun that I may overdye some boring or outdated prints in my stash, and give them a new lease on life!

Quilt pinned to batting and backing

Been busy working on my AAQI quilt.  I decided against fusing it.  I wanted to keep the frayed edges and the softness.  Another reason was that I would have had to disassemble it to iron the Wonder Under onto it!  I learned that if you want to fuse something, it’s a good idea to have the fabric fused ahead of time!

So this quilt top is not sewn together.   It’s being held together with the quilting, which is working surprisingly well.  The edges of the strips are fraying a little, which is the effect I was looking for.  (I suppose I should add a note saying that this quilt should not be washed in the washing machine!  It would probably be OK to hand wash it carefully, roll it in a towel to absorb excess moisture, and let it air dry on a flat surface.)

Pieced backing

I probably spent too much time worrying about the backing, but I finally hit on this combo, using leftover fabric from the front.  Now I just need to come up with the binding!

My collection of "darning silk"

I have a big bag of embroidery floss that I ran across recently, but do you think I can find it now?  I need to tear apart my closet to locate it.  In the meantime, I ran across a bunch of darning silk thread that I’ve had for years.  I probably got it in a box of stuff from one of the many farm auctions in South Dakota I used to go to when I lived there.

Darning silk?  It’s probably from the days when women used to take the time to darn wool socks.  The thread is probably at least thirty years old, but it’s still strong and usable after all those years.  The colors are goofy in the photo; the blues are really gray.

I settled on a light tan to quilt the piece with.  The hand quilting is going well.  I haven’t done any hand quilting in years, and I forgot how relaxing it is.  I spent several hours quilting the piece yesterday, and should finish that today.

I recently ran across the concept of “slow cloth.”  This is a reaction to all the quilting shortcuts that are available today.  While I don’t have a problem with the shortcuts (they do make it possible to finish quilts in a short time), there is something to be said about taking your time with some pieces, to just enjoy the process.  This is something I want to explore further, in another blog post.  In the meantime, take a look at Considering at Judy’s Journal.  This is a thoughtful post on what quiltmaking is today, and what it could be.

So I haven’t been in a hurry to finish this piece.  This is a change for me.  I’m deliberately working at a slower pace, not rushing the process.  Because the piece is small, even though it’s taking longer than I expected, it’s OK, because it’s nearly done now anyway.  It’s interesting that I’m using the darning silk to quilt it.  It’s like the thread has come full circle, from an era when women took the time to darn socks, to taking the time to handquilt my challenge quilt.

On a different note:  I’ve joined two Yahoo groups.  The first one is the Liberated Quilters.  While they’re not affiliated with Gwen Marston, they follow her liberated quilting methods.  In the words of the group, “We just want to have fun and say boo! to the quilt police!”  I love it!

The second group is Studio Quilts–Goldilocks And Friends.  This group was started by Debbie Babin, “to offer learning opportunities and communicate on topics that relate to textile (fiber) arts and quilting.”  This group is a bit more serious-minded, which is good, also.  My goal this year is to find my voice, my own personal style, so this is a place where I can go to explore this aspect of my quilting.

I would also recommend visiting any of the blogs on my blogroll.  Seeing what other quilters are doing has two advantages.  Not only are my horizons being expanded, but I already have ideas for my next two AAQI Challenge Quilts!

Liberated Challenge Quilt for AAQI

Today my inspiration came from Playing Games With Squares by Jude Hill at Spirit Cloth.  She’s combining patchwork with weaving strips of fabric.  This seemed like something I could try with my Liberated Challenge Quilt.

My quilt is tentatively titled “Winter Journey.”  I wanted to portray the journey Alzheimer’s patients and their families face.  In the lower right corner, the strips are still woven together, although things are a bit off-kilter.

As you move across the quilt, up, and to the left, , the woven strips start losing their orderliness, until at the upper left corner, there’s no structure left, just disjointed pieces.

I’m going to use the smaller wolf image, and place it towards the lower right corner.  The wolf is moving into an inner landscape where once-familiar things have changed into something unrecognizable.

All the strips are pinned down right now.  There will probably be a little more tweaking, but this is close to the finished arrangement.  I think I’m going to fuse the strips right to the batting, and then hand quilt with large, primitive-looking stitches.  Then I’ll applique the wolf on the top.  By adding the wolf after the piece is quilted, I’m hoping to give the impression that the wolf doesn’t really belong in this place where it finds itself.

I’m still not sure about the fusing, since it will make the piece stiffer, but since the edges of the strips are raw, I think this will stabilize them.  I’m not sure that the quilting alone will hold everything together.  And it would be a disaster if it fell apart later on, after it’s sold!

Salvaging a quilting disaster

Remember my quilting disaster from last week?  I cut all the blocks in half this morning, and looked through my fabric to find something that would go with the scrappy triangles.  I had lots of possibilities, but not enough of any one thing.  I wanted to use the same fabric throughout, both to tie things together, and to calm down all that frenetic activity.

I found a large piece of a chestnut brown.  It looks redder than it really is in the photo.  But I think it will work well with the wild combination of scraps.  I tried a dark green, but it was a print, and this quilt REALLY didn’t need another print!

So I’ll cut some strips tomorrow, and start sewing my triangles down.  Then I can see how they fit together (if they do) and try some different arrangements.  The pinwheel looks pretty good.  I also did a barn raising design that I didn’t take a picture of.  I’m sure I’ll find lots of ways to put the blocks together.

The nice part about is that that I’ll have 60 blocks, instead of just 30.  Hopefully they’ll finish around six inches.  I may need to do some creative piecing to get them close to the same size!  I can either do two lap quilts to donate, or a twin quilt.

Molly, looking innocent, before The Great Avalanche

Molly just wouldn’t leave me alone this morning.  She walked around on  my ironing board, supervised closely while I was trying to cut and arrange strips, knocked things in the floor, and generally helped in any way she could.

I keep my fabric in one of those three-drawer plastic bins.  This is a bit unstable when one of the drawers is open, especially when a cat jumps into the open drawer when you’re not looking!  Over it went, along with the iron, which was off, thank goodness.  The noise startled me, and I let out a yell.  My hubby thought something had fallen on me, while I thought Molly was trapped under the mess.

But kitties are very fast, and she was crouched in the hallway, with BIG eyes, wondering what had happened.  I was annoyed at her, but I was also glad she was OK.   Of course, she came traipsing in while I was picking up, reminding me what a wonderful kitty she is, and maybe I could feed her a little something to help her recover from her traumatic experience?  Cats.  Ya gotta love ‘em!

Front of quilt. The spots are from snowflakes that melted on the camera lens.

Here they are!  Pictures of the finished baby quilt!  It was quite an adventure getting them.  I was all set to shovel a path to the clothesline when my wonderful husband, Andrew, said, “Why don’t you just put on your snowshoes to walk out there?”  Duh.  And he didn’t even laugh at me for not thinking of it myself.   His comment was, “I hate to see you shoveling all that snow for a path you’ll only use once.”  Now you know why I married him.  I wasn’t letting him get away!

Or course, it was dark and snowy and windy, so it’s not the best picture. I even managed to drop the quilt in the snow, too.  But if you click on the pictures, you can see somewhat bigger versions.  Click on the little icon on the picture, and it will get bigger yet.

Wish I could have shown more detail, but it was COLD out there!  It was also very windy, so I had to wait for the quilt to stop flapping in the refreshingly frigid breeze to take a picture!

I appreciate my warm gloves every time I have to do something bare-handed outdoors.  They were $60 gloves that I got at the end of the season for $15.  I would never have paid $60 for a pair of gloves, but these are definitely worth it.  My hands do NOT get cold when I wear them!

With this quilt, I started out to do the Crayon Box design from Quiltville.  If you’ve never been there, go visit right now, and check it out.  I’ll wait for you to come back.  This is a totally awesome site that I highly recommend.

I had bought a panel of Laurel Burch cat pictures a while back.  Each little picture is a portrait of a cat family.  I thought of Sarah right away when I bought it.  Of course, I forgot I had it, but I found it when I started digging through my scraps.  I cut the panel up into individual pictures, and used the Crayon Box idea to sew the quilt.  It was a fun quilt to make.

I emailed Sarah pictures as I was working on it, and she showed them to my grandsons.  The oldest one, Tal, said, “Granny sure does like cats, doesn’t she?”  He’s right!  Three out of the four baby quilts I’ve made for Sarah have a cat theme!  I didn’t even realize it til he mentioned it.

Back of quilt.

The back could almost stand on its own as a quilt.  It was an experimental piece that took off on its own.  The strips were an experiment with the Wave Runner tutorial from V at Bumble Beans.  I was intrigued when I read the tutorial and wanted to try it.  I couldn’t imagine getting wavy seams like that to lie flat, but it worked!  I will definitely be doing more with this technique.

The purple cat (who’ll you’ll recognize from my blog header) was my first experiment in liberated piecing.  I just sketched the kitty on a piece of paper, and pieced it without a pattern, or anything.  Now that was fun!  I was really tickled at how well it came out, and it was easy, too.

Between shoveling the driveway, running to the library and grocery store, and fixing lunch and cleaning up, I haven’t had a chance to work on my AAQI quilt yet today.  I might later on, but Andrew may go fishing this afternoon, and if he does, I’m going to go with him so I can go snowshoeing.  I’ll keep you posted on my progress with that project!

Well, I promised you pictures of the finished baby quilt, but it will have to wait til I can get outside and shovel a path to the clothesline, probably tomorrow, since I’m feeling lazy today.  I tried laying the quilt on my bed and taking pictures, but between the lighting and my cat, and other logistic problems, I think I can do a better job just pinning it up to the clothesline outside and taking pictures outdoors.  Since there’s probably 18 inches of snow on the ground, I either have to break a trail or clear a path.

"New Territory" by Robert Bertram

So instead, I’ll show you what I’m doing with my Liberated Challenge Quilt for the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative.  Lots of ideas were perking in my head, but inspiration struck this morning, in my basement, of all places.

My hubby picked up this poster last year at the local DNR office.  When I went down to the basement this morning to put the baby quilt in the washer,  the poster caught my attention.  Here was my subject!

Tracing around wolf's outline on tracing paper

I taped some tracing paper to the wall and traced around the image of the wolf.

Auditioning fabrics for the AAQI Challenge quilt

The finished quilt will be around eight by eleven inches.  I wanted to make the wolf smaller, so  I used the old artist’s trick of putting a grid on the tracing, so I could make the image smaller.  This is a slick trick for those of us who can’t draw!

Here are the fabrics I’m thinking about using.  The wolf will be cut from the gray batik, and the snow from the lighter fabrics.  You can’t really see the fabric under the gray piece, but it gives the effect of snowflakes.  I’m thinking of using it for part of the sky.

I’m trying to decide if the wolf should be isolated on a whte background, like in the poster, or if he should be coming out from some pieced or appliqued trees.   At this point I’m leaning towards using the smaller wolf image by itself, appliqued to a background made by using the Wave Runner Tutorial from V at Bumble Beans.

I’m thinking of calling it “Winter Journey,” to symbolize the journey Alzheimer’s patients and their families must make.  I want to symbolize hope by having the wolf moving towards a patch of blue sky. I also have a piece of light-colored batik with pale multicolor spirals on it, too, that may work.   But we’ll see how it all plays out.  Sometimes a project takes over and tells you how it wants to be done!

Sarah’s quilt is nearing completion!  I just have one block left to quilt, and then three border sections.  Then I can bind it, and give it a much needed trip through the washer and drier before mailing it off to my baby.  Woo-hoo!  I’ll take pictures when it’s done so I can show it off.

So now the question is, what’s next?  I started a scrap quilt last year and made 30 blocks.  I’m somewhat challenged when it comes to making my blocks the same size.  No matter how carefully I cut and sew, they still seem to have a mind of their own!  The blocks were supposed to finish at six inches, but they range from five-and-a-half to five-and-seven-eighths.  Sigh.  This is why I love improvisational quilting so much!  No need to worry about this sort of thing!

The quilt from hell

I had tried sewing the blocks together into a top for a lap quilt, which was a bit of a challenge because of the size differences in the blocks.  I managed to get 25 of them sewn together, but I was disappointed in how it was coming out, so I abandoned it in my Closet Of No Return.

I was digging around in there the other day and unearthed it.  Since I hated the way the top looked, I spent a couple of hours in front of the TV taking it apart.  This isn’t a bad thing to do while watching NCIS reruns.  (Mark Harmon is a hottie, and Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) is one of my favorite TV characters, so I watch this show a LOT.)

OK, back to square one, or should I say block one?  I laid the blocks out in the floor and took a picture of them.  What should I do with them?  I could use them as the center of log-cabin type blocks and sew strips around the outside edges (like what I did with Sarah’s quilt).  This would make them bigger, and I could square them up, too.

Another option is to cut each block in half diagonally and add an inch-wide strip to the diagonal cut.  Then I could sew a half-square triangle to it, and make an entirely new block.  This would certainly tone them down a bit, especially if I used the same fabric for the new half-square triangles, while still keeping the diagonal movement.  After squaring them up, I could arrange them in a barn-raising pattern.

Or I could cut the blocks into quarter-square triangles, and make pinwheel blocks by sewing them to solid color half-square triangles.

Anybody have any other ideas?  Leave a comment, and let me know what you think!

Before quilting; pretty, but flat and one-dimensional

Don’t you just love how a flat, one-dimensional block of patchwork suddenly comes to life when you start quilting it? Something that was flat and lifeless is magically transformed, with a soft texture that just begs you to touch it.

Can you tell I’m jazzed? I’ve been working away diligently on Sarah’s quilt. There are nine blocks, and I have six done. It’s slow work, what with horsing around with the walking foot, but it sure does look nice when the block is done. At least I only have three blocks left to do, so that’s not so bad. Then I just have to quilt the outside borders, which should go really quickly.

After quilting; suddenly it seems to come to life!

I did two blocks this morning, and was going to do another this afternoon, but wound up running to the store with my dear hubby. His wireless mouse quit working, and we had to go exchange it so he could play games on his computer tonight.

Yesterday was stormy and blustery, with about three inches of snow and lots of wind. But today it was sunny, and much warmer than I thought it would be. It was a gorgeous winter afternoon, so I took advantage of it. I scooped the snow out of the driveway and walked up to the store to pick up a few groceries.

Andrew went fishing this morning at the Chocolay River. If he goes tomorrow, I may go with him. He said it looked like a great place to go snowshoeing. I can go exploring while he tries to hook into a brown trout, or a steelhead. He nearly caught one this morning, but it got away.  So we had pizza for supper instead, which was OK, too.

Molly in her favorite spot

Here’s a shot of my favorite kitty.  She really likes this spot.  It’s warm and cozy, right in front of the heating vent!  Where else would a cat hang out in the winter?  On sunny winter days, the sun shines through the kitchen window, right onto this spot for an hour or so!  No wonder she likes it so well.

Free motion quilting seemed like a great idea this morning.  I was all set to do some really cool stuff with Sarah’s quilt.  But when I sat down to practice, Things Did Not Go Well.  I couldn’t get any control over my stitch length at all, or over where the quilting lines were going.

The problem, as you can see from my picture,  is my set-up.  I really do need a sewing table that I can set my sewing machine down into so that it’s flush with the surface.  I considered trying to put things around my sewing machine to make a flat surface to quilt on, but I’ve jury-rigged things in the past, with less than satisfactory results!

I need to save my pennies so that I can get a sewing table.  Until I can do that, I decided it’s best to save myself the frustration of making a mess (and then having to waste hours picking out a million stitches of varying lengths).  So I wimped out, and put the walking foot back on.

You’d be amazed what you can do with a walking foot.  The obvious first step was to make parallel lines of stitching on the blue sashing.  This was pretty easy, and went reasonably fast.

I still wasn’t sure what to do with the individual blocks, though.  I was going to do the borders, then come back to the blocks later, but after lunch I thought I’d try my hand at quilting the center block.

I worked around the log cabin strips in a spiral, using the walking foot.  When I came to the cats in the center, I decided to outline quilt them.

The center block was the most complicated, so I wanted to do it first to get it out of the way.  I outlined the kitties, the kitten in the carriage, the wheels, and some of the streamers.

It was pretty painstaking work, but it just proves that anything is possible, especially if you’re willing to horse around with a walking foot!  But it took less than an hour, all told, so it was still a lot faster than hand quilting it.  Plus it will go through the washer and dryer with no problems, which is important for a baby quilt!

Close-up of outlining

I’m pretty jazzed. I may even have the quilting done by the end of the week!

I found this really neat tutorial for a water bottle carrier.  My hubby has several health problems and is on a lot of different medications.  We’ve found out the hard way that he gets dehydrated very easily, especially in hot weather.  So I usually try to carry a water bottle with me when we go anyplace, but it gets old, having to hang onto a water bottle.  So when I found this tutorial, I thought, how cool is this?

The tutorial calls for Insulbrite, which is an insulated batting that helps to keep your water cold.  I looked for it locally but could only find it packaged in a one-yard length for $7.50.  Ouch.  I checked out The Warm Company, which makes Insulbrite, but $100 worth of Insulbrite is a lot more than I can use right now.  Maybe eventually, if my business takes off, but not now!

So I continued looking online, and found Quilt-Kits Online selling Insulbrite for $2.45 a yard.  Much better!  They’re lovely people to deal with; I had some trouble with their shopping cart and emailed them.  It turned out to be  my problem as I had downloaded a browser update that morning, but he helped me get my order through so I could pay for it with Paypal.  The order was filled very quickly, so I highly recommend them if you’re looking for reasonably-priced Insulbrite (or anything else for that matter).

I followed the tutorial and learned that you definitely do have to cut your material a little bigger than you would think.  The batting makes it smaller.  My first water bottle carrier is a bit of a snug fit for a 20-oz water bottle, although it’s quite usable.  I tried it out when we went to an outdoor show, and it does keep your water bottle cold.

For some reason I didn’t take a picture of my first effort, and it’s now residing in Minnesota at my daughter’s house.  I made it from purple and green fabric strips and lined it with some bright green fabric I had.  It really did come out cute.  My daughter liked it so well that she immediately wanted me to make two more for my two older grandsons.

The boys picked out the material they wanted from their mom’s stash, and granny did the rest.  The brown material is a treasure map, and of course, all pirates have to have some skulls and crossbones around!  The one on the left is lined with red, and the other is lined with the skull material.

I thought about shortening up the straps, but my daughter and I decided she could just tie a knot in them to get them to the right length for each boy.  They’re growing so fast that we don’t want them to outgrow them.  This way, they’ll be adjustable as the boys get taller.

The picture on the right shows the red lining in the one bottle.

I changed the pattern a little.  I didn’t like having the bottom as a separate piece.  I thought it was too hard to sew it on.  So I added it to the bottom as a flap.  This took a little playing around with a paper pattern to figure out how to do it.  Then I made one up in muslin to see how it worked.

I also changed how it was constructed.  I layered the lining and outside, right sides together, along with the insulbrite.  Then I sewed along the sides and top, leaving the bottom open to turn it.  This is where you sew on the handles, too.

I ran a couple of lines of zigzag quilting across it, using my walking foot.  I also found that it was was helpful to zigzag across the bottom and the bottom flap so the material and batting don’t shift.  It also makes it much easier to sew the bottom flap on later, plus it gives it a finished edge.

I left the walking foot on and sewed the tube together up the side, using a scant 1/4″ seam.  This leaves a nice finished seam on the inside.  The last step is to sew the bottom flap onto the tube.  It was a lot easier to sew this seam as it was already attached about a third of the way around.

The boys will be thrilled, and their mama will be happy they can carry their own water bottles!  Now I need to make a pair for my hubby and me.  I think I’ll make Andrew’s out of camoflage material so he won’t mind carrying it.  Maybe I can find some USMC material!