A Class on Dyeing

Our guild had a class in fabric dyeing in March.  It was offered as a "non-messy, non-toxic" method of dyeing.  Dyeing which could maybe be fairly easy to do on our own.  Our teacher, Jennie Henderson, showed us several different methods.  (Jennie is a superb "fiber artist," dyeing fabrics and clothing and weaving beautiful things on her looms.) The first day we learned about ice dyeing, or snow dyeing, if you live where there is snow.  We first soaked our fabric (actually we were dyeing fabric shopping  bags, which Jennie provided) in a mixture of water and washing soda.  Then we scrunched up and twisted the fabric before placing it on a rack inside of a plastic "wash pan."  We placed quite a few ice cubes on top of the fabric bags, then sprinkled just tiny amounts of Jennie's dye powder onto the ice.  It immediately started melting, causing the dye to liquify and come into contact with the fabric.  Depending on which colors we chose and where we placed the color, the bags became beautiful multicolor masterpieces!

MomStitches was visiting me, so we took the class together.  Here is her bag getting melted and colored upon!

And here is my bag in process.

We both put our fabric bags in the same container, knowing that they would probably touch each other and blend the colors even further.  They sure did!

It was a fun day with lots of coloring experiments.

Lots and Lots of Coasters to Sell

I recently sewed a lot of coasters for my guild to sell.  We had a booth at Art in the Redwoods a few weekends ago, held at the Gualala Arts Center.  I'm not really sure how many I made, but there were quite a few!

I had some San Francisco Giants fabric, so I made some coasters using that.  Notice the nice baseball diamonds that I quilted on them!

When I ran out of the baseball fabric, I simply used orange and black fabric.  These would work for either the Giants or for Halloween!

Even though I am not a fan of the Oakland A's, I thought maybe other people might be, so I made some coasters out of yellow and green fabric, the A's colors.

These coasters would also be nice for fans of John Deere equipment!

Now here are some everyday coasters out of some pretty fabric.  I tried some rather random, straight-stitching quilting designs on these.  They were too small for free-motion quilting.

And here are some Christmas coasters!  Most of these have a Christmas tree quilted onto them.

And some more Christmas coasters.

This last photo shows Halloween and autumn coasters.

I really had a lot of fun sewing these.  They went fast, and it was gratifying to see the stacks grow taller and taller.

"Welcome To Gualala"

My quilt guild's challenge for this year was entitled "Above and Beyond."  In my Tuesday sewing group we chose to interpret that as doing something above and beyond our previous quilting experience.  This project really was a challenge for us, a great big challenge!

In a magazine we saw some pictures of landscape quilts that were made by several different people each making one part of the scene.  We liked the idea, so we started with a photo of a scene we all knew very well, the road coming into the small town of Gualala, California.

I enlarged the photo some, and we cut it into six vertical strips.   From the enlargement I outlined the major lines of the scene with a dark marker.  Then I made a tracing to get my pattern pieces.  

I'm afraid I don't have any process photos (what was I thinking!?!), but I chose my fabrics, and used Wonder Under to appliqué the pieces on to my muslin background.  Together, we each marked the water and/or horizon lines on the muslin before we started sewing, and tried to keep as true to them as we could.

And here is the result.  (Mine is the second from the right.)  True to our human nature, we each interpreted our piece of the landscape and put our own imprint on it.  Some of us added fish, whales, etc.  Did I mention that this was a fun project!?!

Mine is the middle one here.

Amazingly, it came out somewhat close to looking like the real scene!  Most of our water and skylines matched up!

On this close-up of part of my strip, you can see where I added some tiny pieces of fabric to add some dimension, using the method I learned in the class at Asilomar where I made my "Gingko" quilt.  I added some tiny brown pieces at the edge of the water where it meets the brownish shore.  And I added some light blue pieces at the closer edge of the water.  In both cases I used a variety of browns, and a variety of light blues and placed them carefully on top of the quilt.  Then I carefully laid down some black tulle, and immediately basted it very closely with safety pins.  After I did tiny swirl free motion quilting over the tiny pieces, I very carefully trimmed away the edges of the tulle.  Then I continued to quilt some water lines.  

I used the needle felting attachment for my Bernina to add some texture.  I felted down some silk ribbon pieces to resemble plants and grasses, and some wool roving to add other texture in the shrubbery areas.  Also, some white rough-cut pieces of gauze to make clouds in the sky.

We called our quilt "Welcome to Gualala," because the scene is the road crossing the Gualala River, and then heading into town.  It gathered a lot of attention during the show because it was so unusual, and because it was a local scene.  A bonus for us is that someone bought our quilt at the Opening Night Reception!

My President's Quilt

Every person who serves as president of our quilt guild gets to have a quilt made for her. The president chooses whatever fabric and pattern she wants, and each person in the guild makes one square for the quilt. Usually the blocks are signed by their makers.

I served as president in 2009-2010, and I found this gorgeous fabric at my local fabric store. Isn't it pretty!?! It has a French Provincial quality to it. With such beautiful fabric, I decided to keep my block really simple. I provided everyone with two cut squares (I think they were five inches square), and I'm asking everyone to add their own coordinating fabrics to make a four-patch for me. So no one has to labor over this or worry too much about the sewing, and each can express her own personality/creativity in the choice of her companion fabric(s).

When I get all the blocks back I plan to cut them into "wonky" 6 1/2" squares, so I've asked people to put their names in the center, not the border, as it will be cut off.

I'll keep you updated as I receive the squares.

I can't wait to see what people have done with them!

m&m quilt

Here is my m&m quilt. I love how bright and colorful it is! Our quilt guild has a challenge every spring. The theme of this year's challenge is "I love chocolate!" I immediately thought of how I could depict m&m's, as that is just about my favorite chocolate (Dove darks rank right up there, too.)

So I took a while to think about how I would make this quilt. I started by photographing some

m&m's.

Then I enlarged the photo to see how that would look.

Here is where I started seeing all the 3-dimensionality (is that a word!?) of the candies. And I knew that I wanted this quilt to have some depth, to not just be two-dimensional.

But I had to figure out how.

I began by choosing some nice, bright, basic

colors of fabric. There were some prints-that-read-as-solids, as well as some solid fabrics.

One of the requirements of the challenge was that we had to use some of this particular chocolate-colored fabric in our design.

I traced around a plate onto freezer paper, and cut out many, many of those circles. I'd guess they were about 7" in diameter. After ironing the freezer paper to the back of my fabric, I cut them out, leaving a rough 1/4" to 1/2" border.

Next step was to use spray starch and a paintbrush to iron down the edges, so I had lots of nice, very round circles in various colors.

I needed some "m's" and a way to attach them to my candy circles. I searched all my fonts and, comparing them to a blown-up photo of an m&m, I chose a font that was the most similar to the actual "m."

I played around with the enlarger to get my "m" to the proper size. Then came a lot of sitting-in-front-of-the-tv work. I made a template for the "m," and traced around it (backwards, of course!) onto Wonder Under. I chose a gray fabric for the letters, because that's how it appeared to me on the actual candies.

So, I ironed the Wonder Under shapes onto my gray fabric. Then had to cut out all of those little m's, which are actually about 2 1/2" tall. And back to the ironing board to attach them to the colored circles.

I wish I had kept track of how many circles I used! Here they are all pinned up to a piece of fabric on my design wall! Some of them still have the freezer paper on, so they are curling and flapping around a bit.

After all the m's were fused on, I chose some (most) of my nice, round m&ms, and put a piece of old scrap batting underneath, behind it, to make it stand out a bit. This was a higher-loft, fluffy batting, so it gave the m&m's some dimensionality.

The above photo shows how the m&ms were all pinned down, kind of haphazardly, one of top of each other, overlapping. I then machine appliqued them down, using monofilament and a blind hem stitch that sewed outside the circles and just caught the circle itself every few stitches.

Wonky House Quilt Block

I call this my "Wonky (yes, that's a technical term) House" square. I made it for a President's Quilt. Each president of our Guild gets to choose a special/favorite block. Then as many members as choose to, make her one or more blocks to the specifications. Some people choose a specific pattern and request certain colors. Some people choose a specific fabric. Some people only give suggestions! This square is for my friend Barbara. She simply gave us a good-sized swatch of fabric and said to do whatever we wanted, as long as it finished 11 1/2 inches square. She offered rust-colored fabric and bright blue fabric. I chose the rust-colored, but had no idea what to do with it. Thought I might do a crazy square. But if she decided to use this quilt, and not just hang it, a crazy patch isn't usually very washable.

But I remembered this "wonky house" that I'd seen in Quiltmaker Magazine (#126, March/April 09). I used the rust fabric for the house. It's a fun square to make, because there is no pattern! You just cut strips and make it all up as you go. I think I'd like to make a whole quilt like this.

After I had the house/grass/sky section made, I wanted to use some more of the rust fabric. So I decided to add some fall foliage trees next to the house. I had this great wood-grained fabric, and just put together some of the smaller rust pieces with some green ones for the tree's leaves. I added a watering can button for the flowers, another button for the doorknob, and some embroidered smoke coming out of the wonky chimney. The last step was to embroider my name on the square.

Not sure if Quiltmaker has this pattern available online, but if you're interested, let me know.