Three months- that's how long since I've been on this blog. I hadn't realized how much soaping had taken over until I perused the last few entries- all soap! That has now been moved to another site- so if you were tired of seeing it, you won't be! (That's assuming anyone out there is still looking at this!)
I have managed to get some fiber work done this spring and summer. I dd some ice dyeing. . .
I was very happy with the results I got, and learned that I prefer using the pure dye colors to the mixed. I like the clear colors I got, and no surprises. The first picture is the only one with a mixed color, charcoal gray from Dharma. All the rest were pure colors.
I decided I needed a runner for the dining room table. so a couple of weekends ago I started making improv blocks- with (gasp!) my commercial fabric stash. I bought some fabric with text on it a few years ago, and decided I wanted to use it. Here's what I have so far on my design wall. I marked off the dimensions of the finished piece on my wall.
Only a few more small block to go, then I will play with the arrangement. I do love black, red, and white together!
I've also taken two amazing camping trips this year with my brother- the first to Colorado, where we met my younger son and his wife, and the second to the Lamoille Canyon outside Elko. Elko doesn't have a whole lot to recommend it, in my mind- but the canyon and the Ruby Mountain wilderness are gems. It was so beautiful, we are planning to backpack the Ruby Crest trail next summer. What a way to celebrate turning 65- backpack forty miles in the wilderness!
I've had five days to play in the studio- doing both fiber and soap- oh, and a new addiction that goes hand in glove with the soaping. But first to fiber.
I got Reclamation (or whatever it ends up being named, I'm not sure yet) faced. I still have a sleeve and label to add, but those are no-brainer tasks I can do during the week after work. I am happy with it- but it is still talking, and telling me it needs more! I keep seeing metal on it, so I think I will have to walk the aisles at Home Depot to see if any inspiration strikes. Do they make copper washers? I doubt it, but what I keep seeing are copper circles.
I loved doing the hand embroidery. I have a smaller piece of this fabric left that has more gray in it- I'm thinking of doing something similar, but doing the quilting in gray instead of the gold, and seeing what it does. I think I have some gray fabric I auditioned for a border, also. Something to play with this winter.
I also worked on my Tangled Textiles piece- but if you want to see that, you'll need to head over to the TT blog.
I got the last of my Christmas soaping done this weekend. The Christmas colored soaps turned out well, just need a little cleaning up after they've cured a month or so. I am getting better at this swirling business!!
The Christmas soaps are scented with a blend of Champagne and pomegranate fragrance oils, and the bottom one with Champagne and ginger fragrance oils. They smell heavenly!
The lavender swirl soap is scented with lavender, coriander and eucalyptus essential oils. I'd used the coriander blended with other essential oils before, and not been happy with the result. With the lavender, it is fantastic.
And, I felted some of my older soaps that were still perfectly usable but had lost most of their scent. I finally got the hang of using the really nice Merino wool to felt after a couple of failures. The trick is to lay down lots of very thin layers of fiber- I think I did about six. With a coarser wool, I was only doing three layers, and it worked. With the Merino wool, not so much. The top one is done with a variegated roving I got in Grand Junction this summer- it made some lovely soaps, all very different!
And, this weekend I used my tall and skinny mold I made last weekend for the first time. I made another rendition of my Rose Clay and Charcoal soap, this time with a dandelion zebra swirl. I will be trying this again!
The soap at the top of the picture is upside-down- but I like the way the swirl looks from that perspective. It reminds me of a mountain with the moon rising behind it. I think I'm going to play with that technique again, and see what I can do with that image. And, I am very happy with my tall and skinny mold!
I worked on my labels and packaging- I do have some orders for soap for Christmas! If you can't tell, I really am enjoying this.
Saturday Marly and I tried something new- we made lotion. I only needed to get a couple of ingredients, since I already had the oils from soaping. It was so easy- it took longer to measure and heat the ingredients than it did to make. And the lotion is fantastic! We scented it with lavender and coriander, like the soap. I will be doing more of this, and never buying commercial lotion again!
But tomorrow it's back to work, at least for a couple of days. Then I'll be back in the studio, quilting my TT piece. Hopefully I can get that done next weekend!
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!
Almost a month since I blogged- and for once, it's not because I've had nothing going on. Au contraire, I feel like I've been running the past several weekends.
Memorial weekend we went to Moab for the Art Festival. I was so enjoying it all, I did not take a single picture. I managed to get more earrings from a vendor I love, got a naturally dyed silk scarf from another vendor, and spent some time speaking with a natural soap and lotions vendor. The only downside was the not very cooperative weather- not as bad as the car show weekend, but still cooler than I wanted, interspersed with rain. I do love Moab!
Last weekend we went exploring up Payson Canyon. I'd hoped for some hiking, but that turned out to be more of a short walk than anything. We drove up to Maple Lake, thinking it would be a mile and a half hike to the lake. Turned out to be a short walk to the lake, then maybe a mile around it. It was beautiful, however.
The greens and blues just seemed incredibly intense that day! While starting to walk around the little lake, I thought I saw a heron, then decided I was mistaken. Then Shiloh scared something, and I realized I had seen a heron! I got this shot of it up at the top of a tree, safe from my crazy dog.
,
Since the hike was so short, Sean fished for awhile- then we decided to drive the entire Nebo Loop. So we kept going up the canyon, stopping at places that looked interesting.
Turned out, the loop wasn't open yet- we got over the top a little ways, then hit a gate. I can't believe there would still be snow there- but maybe they haven't finished all the maintenance. On the way back down the way we came up, we stopped at the viewpoint for Utah Lake. It really was a spectacular view of Utah valley.
This weekend, I've done some quilting, and I've done some soapy stuff. Michelle's pink quilt is coming along- if I can just do a couple of hours every weekend, it shouldn't take that long to finish.
The thread I'm using isn't really orange, it's a dusty pink that blends well with everything. I'm planning to throw this quilt in the washer and dryer when I am done, hoping to get that crinkled effect. Once that's done, I figure my somewhat wonky quilting won't show much at all.
I also spent several hours wrapping soap. This idea will work for the show I'm vending at in July, but it is not a long term solution. I still need to figure out some inexpensive embellishment for this side of the soap. My ingredients label is on the bottom, and my other label will go on the other side.
And, I finished the last of my felted soaps. I hope these sell well!
So that is what I have been up to. Work is crazy making right now- this is the stuff that feeds my soul and keeps me sane.
about describes what I have been up to this long weekend. Oh, and don't forget household chores and watching the Olympics!
Last weekend I got the ditch quilting done on Michelle's pink quilt- Saturday I started doing the free motion. I thought I would do spirals, but after some practice changed my mind. I ended up with a kind of leaf design. I can see every mistake I make, but hopefully none will jump out and scream when it is all done.
I purposely bought a 100% cotton batt for this, because I'm planning to wash it and throw it in the dryer when it's all done. Hopefully it will crinkle, which will make my mistakes even less obvious. I think I am going to have to dye some more sateen for the binding, I don't have enough left of anything for that. I've got one block about done- since it only has six large blocks, I'm thinking the quilting should go fairly quickly.
Saturday and Sunday I also made three batches of soap. I wanted to try the circular PVC mold, so I did Lemongrass Green Tea soap in that- a recipe I developed myself. I learned that adding lye turns light colored green tea dark, so my soap is this caramel color. And I'm guessing the soap got pretty hot, because the top looks like this:
I will need help getting the end cap off, and I sure hope this slides out without a lot of problems. I'll probably stick it in the freezer for a bit.
The others came out easily from my lovely wood log molds. I made Cocoa Coffee soap, another recipe I developed myself. The coffee is supposed to remove the scent of garlic and onion from the hands, so this one is intended for the kitchen. It also has coffee grounds in it for scrubability.
Because you use coffee to dissolve the lye, the batter is very dark brown. I took some out and lightened it with titanium dioxide, hoping I could do some cool swirls. The top looks good, but the interior is not what I was hoping for. I also learned that you really have to swirl with soap batter that has only gone to light trace- meaning, is more liquid.
Last, I did Peach Mango Butter soap, adapted from a recipe in The Ultimate Guide to Soap Making by Amanda McCarthy.
I had a little bit of the red palm oil left from my first batch, so I mixed it with the regular palm oil, which turned it a lovely yellow color. Then I took out part of the batch and used a hot pick colorant I got as a sample from Majestic Mountain Sage- that made the pretty coral color. I was going for the color of peaches, which was one of the scents I used.
We just started using the soaps from my first batches. I've been using the Lemon Eucalyptus in the shower, and really like it. Marly has tried the Lavender Almond soap, and really likes how it makes her skin feel. So, so far it's been a successful experiment! I'll wait another couple of weeks before I try the ones I did at the beginning of the month. I learned a trick to tell if they've cured enough- weigh a bar, and when it quits losing weight, it's done. So I've been keeping track on those.
That's what I've been up to. I have a busy time at work until after the end of March, and I'm also traveling two of those weeks. One week is for work, another week will be my swan song for Florida. Sean is going back to walk for his degree, and I'm going to celebrate with them. That will be a fun time, including plenty of time to enjoy some warmth!
