Quilty Resolutions

At the beginning of the year, I posted a number of resolutions related to my fiber art on Sandy's Quilting for the Rest of Us blog. I wanted to finish 3 UFO's (Michelle's quilt, my round robin quilt from Not Bound by Tradition, and the black/white/bright wonky blocks quilt), evaluate my stash of hand dyes and do some planned dyeing to fill the gaps, and finish two more in my Walk in the Woods series.  This week is the check in to see how we are all doing.

I posted the finish of Michelle's quilt last week- yay!  As for the other UFO's, I haven't even looked at them.

I've posted about dyeing this summer here, here, and here.  I can't say I evaluated my stash, but I am dyeing with my more minimalist approach to quilting in mind more often than not.  So I'd call that a mostly done.

I have not done another Walk in the Woods quilt.  I want the next one to be winter- and I have not been able to get shibori fabric that even comes close to the vision I have in my head.  So this one is still a WIP- because once I get some fabric I like, I think it will come together fairly quickly.

And of course- what quilter could limit herself to the projects on a resolution list?  I have been working almost daily on the Reclamation piece, and loving what it happening.  It has been nice to spend an hour or so hand stitching on work nights.  This morning, I spent a couple of hours adding to the machine quilting.  I don't think this one will end up in a UFO pile!

Color is my Therapy

I have been playing in the dyes again, and even tried something new.  I should have plenty of fabric to create with this winter, and I'm hoping for a few more dye days before the snow flies.

Inspired by Lisa, who sent us each a piece of hand dyed fabric to use in the latest Tangled Textiles challenge, I spent a day doing flat gradation dyeing.  Some turned out better than others, but I'll use every one.

I don't know how that blue got on what was supposed to be a gray gradation.  I'm guessing that one of my plastic sheets between the fabric was too short, and the blue went where it could!  

I also threw some soda soaked fabric in the drip bins, and got some beauties.

Love the markings on these, especially the one on the right!

I'm am still ruminating on how I will use these- and I know a couple of other projects will get started before any of these.

Today I tried something totally new for me- indigo dyeing!  I'd bought a kit from Dharma a few months ago, and finally mixed it up today.  I had a tee folded to make a chevron, and a silk scarf that was already dyed lime green.  I just twisted that up and bound it with rubber bands.

I dipped the tee twice, allowing it to oxidize for twenty minutes between dips.  It comes out of the vat looking like this. . 

and a few minutes later looks like this. . . 

Twenty minutes later, it looked like this. . . 

At this point, I undid the rubber bands, and laid it out on my rack to let the the shirt fully oxidize.  Here it is, you can still see a bit of green.

Now it just needs to be rinsed and washed, and we'll see how dark the blue is.  Can't wait!  I'll also be getting some other stuff to dye, even if it is half yard pieces of fabric.  I want to dye while the vat is active!

Hippie Heaven!

That is what it felt like up at Timmy's studio last weekend, when four of us got together and did some tie dyeing.  We were tutored and mentored by Lynn Dell, who is an awesome artist with the tie dyes.  I will let the pictures speak for themselves, can you tell our inner hippies had a blast??

 Our blues after washing them out.

 After rinsing on the lawn.  Most of these in the front are mine.

 Awesome chevron tapestry that Lynn Dell did!!  (With a thrift store sheet!)

 All our work spread out on the lawn after rinsing it out with the hose.

 Lisa pouring the dyes on one of her pieces.

 Lisa and Diane, Lisa is pouring on some dyes.

 My peace sign!  Every one of us managed to get a peace sign dyed!

 Lisa's peace sign, I think.

 Spiral shirts by Lynn Dell.

 Our 'reds' after washout.  The three shirts on the left are mine, Lynn Dell's peace sign shirt, my scarf, the rest are Lynn Dell's.

 Lisa's tapestry.  Love the colors!

 Diane's tapestry.

 A collaborative effort by me and Lisa.  I folded it, she did the dyes.  I love the movement it has.

 Lynn Dell's peace sign.  Amazing!

Lynn Dell's chevron tapestry.  It was huge!

We had a blast, and I learned some folds that I will be trying again.  Every weekend should be this much fun!

I have been playing in the dyes again- the first time in awhile, and enjoying getting back in to it.  I was part of an Ugly Fabric challenge in a Yahoo group I'm part of- this was the piece I got to transform.

 

It was dark except for the one side, and blue.  I knew I wanted to discharge first, and all that blue meant I'd have to use bleach.  So I folded it, clamped it with two plexiglass rectangles, and threw it in a bucket of bleach.

 

I kind of liked it at this point, the yellow made me happy.  But the brown parts were too muddy for me, so I overdyed it in a bit of red.

This sat on my design wall for a good month while I pondered what to do next.  I knew the red was too orange for me, so I finally decided to overdye again in a very pale shade of navy blue.

The blue overdye really did knock back the orange, just like I wanted.  From a distance it looks like a very toned purple, but up close there are all kinds of colors showing.

After another few days on the design wall, I decided it needed one more layer to tie it all together.  So I used a rubbing plate and three colors of metallic Shiva paint stiks on it.  It is now DONE!

It still has marks that hark back to its past as a dark blue fabric- but it has also been totally transformed.  I'm rather pleased with it!

I also spent a day this past weekend doing more dyeing- but I don't have pictures of the fabric yet, so those will have to wait.

I also got a lovely surprise this weekend.  Del Thomas from California came through on her way home from Indiana, and we met for lunch.  It was great to catch up with her- we had a nice lunch at Olive Garden, and shared a piece of rich chocolate cake at the end.  She is a fascinating woman who has done a lot for the quilt community all over the country.  I've loved getting to meet and get to know her!!

My First Epic Soap Seize!

I have been managing to get some soaping in the past two weekends, although the pace is slowing.  I'm also managing to get some quilting in, hoping to get Michelle's quilt done before the summer is over.  These three pieces of hand dye are staring at me from the design wall- I keep trying to figure out what they are telling me!

The one on the left is for the Ugly Fabric challenge on a yahoo group I'm part of- I think it needs one more overdye, with a really pale blue to knock back the orange tone to the red.  The middle one is a lovely hand dye done by Lisa of my Tangled Textiles group.  I need to figure out what I'm going to do with it for our August challenge.  At first, I thought I'd leave it whole, but now I'm thinking I'm going to cut it up.  I have a couple of ideas that I'll play with on paper first.  The one on the right is one of my favorite pieces from Carol Soderlund's workshop last fall.  I don't want to cut it up, but now I'm thinking I'll border it with Osnaburg, quilt, and add some embroidery.  We'll see- the middle one comes first!

I did several soap experiments.  I made more lavender swirl soap, and was happy with how it turned out.  

See those bubble things?  I learned that those are glycerin rivers, and they are caused by overheating in soap that has titanium dioxide in it.  The soap is perfectly usable, and the texture doesn't bother me- I think it can look kind of cool.

Then I tried salt bars, with a pink pencil line using rose clay.  I also topped them with a dusting of rose clay and pink Himalayan salt.  They look great, no?

Except they crumbled- badly.  Apparently that is a common occurrence with salt bars.  So, I ordered a new mold, one that allows you to make twelve individual bars, so no cutting.  Once that got here, I rebatched the bars with a little coconut milk and water.  They look crumbly as all get out, but when I took them out of the molds this morning, they held.  I do love silicone molds!

So I won't be trying to sell these, but they are perfectly usable.
 
Last weekend I wanted to try making an ombre soap using a natural colorant.  I decided to try baby carrots.  I waaay overthought the ombre bit- I should have just thought of dyeing a value gradation!- but I am very happy with how these turned out!

I just hope the color holds- from everything I've read, that seems to be more of an issue with natural colorants than ultramarines and oxides.

So that experience had me thinking- how can I use charcoal to make a black to white soap?  I thought I had it figured out, so made my batch this morning.  I think I even had the gradation bit figured out to make it easier, but the soap did not cooperate- I got what is known as 'soap on a stick', which meant the soap solidified in the bowls.  At first I thought it was the charcoal, but then I realized the soap I'd left white seized also.  So that meant it had to be the essential oils.  I'd used three- cedarwood, oregano, and peppermint.  Oregano was the only one I'd never used in soap before.


I made an identical batch of the soap, but left out the oregano, and instead just used cedarwood and peppermint.  The second batch behaved perfectly!  I didn't do the ombre, but it does have three colors in it.  I got a lovely swirl on the top, the best I've done so far.

 

I am purposely not insulating this soap, to see if that eliminates the glycerin rivers.  There is also a surprise inside, which won't be revealed until I cut the soap!

I have also been packaging and labeling the soap I will have for sale at the quilting festival in mid-July.  Doesn't Michelle's quilt make a good backdrop for this soap?

The paper wrap and button is not a long term packaging solution, but it looked appropriate for a vendor at a quilt festival.  All I need to add is my label on the back of the soap- you can see the ingredient label on the bottom of the soaps.

I love all the felted soaps I've done!  I have more to do, I'll need to find more roving before too long.

All in all, a busy couple of weeks.  Four more days of work, then my brother arrives from Reno for a short visit- then I'm off on the train to Colorado to see Shannon for a few days.  I'm looking forward to the break!!

More Dyeing

We had a lousy weekend weather-wise, so I spent more time in the studio.  I've decided I need to add to my stash- mostly value gradations.  I've had an idea for a quilt bouncing around in my head for awhile, related to the colors in the desert and mesas around Moab.  So I'm dyeing very toned, desert-y colors.  Yesterday I did a muted purple and what I hoped would be a sage green.  This is what I got--

It's hard to see in the photo, but these have texture- I did them low water immersion, with what I thought was plenty of scrunching and squeezing.  I was hoping for some, but not a lot of texture.  I think next time I will use more water- almost as much as with regular immersion.  I have no desire to sit and stir eight buckets of fabric, but all that water should help minimize the texture.

The two on the right are fabrics I dyed last year, and didn't like- so I folded them, clamped them, and threw them in bleach.  I am much happier with them now.  I did another one that I really disliked-

It was drip dyed with navy blue, fuschia, and probably some yellows.  I folded it into a square, clamped pieces of plexiglass, and bleached it.  You can see the original fabric in some of the dark marks. I like it much better, haven't decided if I'll do anything else to it or not.

And, I overdyed the ugly fabric I showed last week.  

Not sure about this one, I may overdye it with a bit of blue.  I was hoping for more of a burgundy color, not the almost but not quite orange that I got.  I'll look at it for a week and decide then.

And, as a Mother's Day present to me- I signed up for a Craftsy class, Shoot It! A Primer on Product Photography.  It looks like it will have lots of good information on shooting fabric and soaps to make them visually appealing.  I'll let you know how that goes!

Ugly Fabric Challenge

A couple of months ago, I decided to participate in another ugly fabric challenge.  The moderator of a group I belong to sends all the participants a piece of fabric she has dyed and considers 'ugly.'  Our job is to try to create a swan out of an ugly duckling!

I got this half yard piece of fabric.  

I quite like the bits of golden brown on the one side.  I wondered about the blue- since this is so dark, I knew I had to discharge first.  With blues, that generally means you are limited to bleach.

So, I folded it into a square, and clamped a piece of plexiglass on both sides.

With all those clamps, I didn't have a bucket big enough- so I had to remove some, which means the plexiglass didn't resist as well as I'd have liked.  Here it is soaking in Bleach Stop,

and this is what it looked like after being washed.

I tried to fold it so the lightest areas were inside the package, but it's pretty light on the two sides.  I'm happy that I lost most of the blue, and that I have the very dark rectangles left.  Now I will look at it for a few days, trying to decide what the next step is.  I'm thinking an overdye in a warm red.

As for soaping, I now have over a hundred bars curing in the closet.  I decided I had to slow down making them, I need to see how they sell!  So far, those who have been gifted with soap have liked it, and I am enjoying using it too.  One of these days I'm going to have to do a blog post on the similarities between soapers and quilters!

I can feel the muse slowly making her way back into my psyche after what feels like a long absence. With Lance's wedding done, Shannon moved to Colorado and starting nursing school, and Sean graduated and pursuing his plans, I'm hoping for a little more emotional energy and space to devote to both my artistic outlets.  And if the soap doesn't sell, I guess we'll just have a very clean family and circle of friends!

Back to Work

I took vacation time from Christmas until January 6- I've spent the last couple of days trying to get back into the work mode.  I certainly had plenty to keep me busy!

I didn't get to spend anywhere near the time in the studio I'd hoped for.  I did get a little bit of dyeing done.  I tried some more snow dyeing- after my last success overdyeing dogs, I got more dogs with my subsequent tries.  I just don't know if it is worth the hassle!

I did some scarves.  

I was really happy with the one on the right.  The one on the left, I ended up overdyeing with some blue.  It's not as gray as it looks in this photo, it really is a pretty shade of blue.

I did a knit infinity scarf that turned out to be boring orange red.  I went at with Shiva paint stiks and a rubbing plate, and it is much better!

Another infinity scarf was printed first with white paint, then dyed black- I thought.  I did everything right, and ended up with this insipid green.

Apparently the black dye I used was too old- it's the only explanation I can come up with.  So I overdyed it with a black dye I knew I'd gotten within the past year.  I also upped the amount of salt in the dye bath, and dumped in dye concentrate above and beyond a 10% DOS.

It's not quite black, but it is a nice neutral dark charcoal gray.  And my printing held up over two dye baths and washing, so I will be doing that again.

I spent most of January 2 helping to install a show at the Woodbury Art Museum in Orem.  My art quilt group will have a show there from January 14 to March 4, and it looks like it will be really nice.  It not only features quilts, but hand dyed fabric and other fiber.  Here's a sneak peek at one part-

All of us made fabric leaves, then we hung them on this tree.  It looks very cool!

I also got my Tangled Textiles piece finished- but that reveal will happen this weekend.  One thing I did learn with this one- my free motion quilting skills are rusty.  I need to get some practice in before I quilt Michelle's pink quilt.

That's what I've been up to- hopefully I'll have more to report in the coming weeks.  Stay warm!