Fun

The Mobile, AL quilt show, called the Azalea City Quilt Show, is fast approaching and I've been busy dyeing fabric for our vendor booth and over-dyeing some pieces that were not selling. Here are some of the over-dyes...



Love these yummy colors.

Jane, my beginner quilt student, just finished her quilt top and is ready to spray baste it...



...and my husband and son have been making these fish in the garage out of military surplus items...

Creativity is a whole-house event lately.

Fabric Dyeing and More

It's been days since I last posted! This week I dyed about 50 yards of fabric for a booth I'm manning at Charmar's, Gaines School Rd. in east Athens, GA. It's only three miles from our house and it's an antique/retro/art market with lots of great items...including mine! Come by for a visit.

Here are some of the pieces I've dyed so far. The best ones are still waiting to be pressed following their quick trip in the dryer.

The piece above was dyed with Procion MX dye in grape and Havana brown; I discovered these colors at a Judy Simmons dye class. Aren't they beautiful together?

The next two pieces were dyed together in the same bath, but were folded differently (the color difference is because of my flash not the dye).

I tried over-dyeing a couple of pieces with some leftover dye to see what would happen. The original piece is the white with a blue flower print...

Not a bad over-dye, but the blue flowers still show. If that's not the look for you, take a look at the back of that overdyed piece...

The back is absolutely beautiful and the floral print does not show through. Here's a photo of the same piece with a flash for more detail...

Here's another over-dye job. I found this fabric on the 40% off rack and didn't like the colors at all, but the batik fabrics are so wonderful to dye with that I purchased it. The original fabric is on the right. I dyed it with a mixture of mostly red and some leftover grape dye. Let's see how it turned out...

Yummy! I'll definitely use this "new" fabric. I'll post more dye photos soon.

Over-dye Success

This week I'm preparing for a ten-day trip to Germany by laying out a circle quilt which I'll be able to hand-sew while traveling.

As usual, I thought I had all the fabrics I needed for this black, blue and brown quilt in my fabric stash, but there just wasn't enough variety of color or movement. To amend the situation I decided to overdye some fabrics that were the wrong color but had the qualities I needed.

First, I chose the fabrics...

I wanted to be able to monitor the color changes following dyeing, so I recycled a used Tyvec bag (this one was a post office Priority mail bag) by cutting it into small pieces. The Tyvec will not dye, can be written on, and will not fall apart in the washing machine following the dye process (learned this trick in a Colleen Wise workshop). I numbered each piece so that I could match the "before and after" fabrics. Also, the fabrics were placed in two piles: one for deep blue dye and one for black dye.

Here are some of the results...

Now I have plenty of fabric choices for this quilt and will start cutting today!

Fabric Dyeing Day, Re-use and Re-purpose for Fall

My recycling idea...this week I had a fabric dyeing day (before a day-and-a-half of flu). I decided to dye some of the natural fiber clothes I have to prepare them for fall and winter. Several of the tops turned out very well, and some will need to be over-dyed because they didn't take the dye well.

I like the way these two turned out...

They both had been white cotton which had faded to not-quite-white. The original color was off, but the fabric was in very good shape...perfect for dyeing for a new season.

One problem with dyeing white cotton garments is that sometimes the white top-stitching is not done well and it's stitched with a polyester thread which will not dye. In that case, stitching over it with a matching rayon or cotton design works fine. That's happened a couple of times for me before, but the blue top below actually had some nice top stitching and looks fine dyed. I like the mottled look, but if I want a solid look to my color I manipulate the piece more in the dye to give an even tone.

Here's another wardrobe boosting idea...some of my favorite black cotton tops for winter fade fairly quickly, but return to a deep, beautiful black with dyeing.