I didn’t really feel I needed the class, but I knew that if I signed up, I would actually get the quilt made. That turned out to be true.

This quilt required lots of different pieces of fabric. I used 4 colors and I dyed 4 shades of each color and 6 values (light to dark)  of each color so that made 24 pieces of fabric for each of my 4 colors for a grand total of 96 pieces. Thankfully I only needed a small amount of each fabric. I ended up using fat 16th’s (9×10 inches). That said, the quilt probably only uses only 40 of those pieces of fabric.

This project also got me to dry dyeing yarn. I’ve always wanted to try it, but have never gotten around to it. It was a lot of fun and it turned out much better than I could have hoped for in a first try.

Now that it is temporarily hung in the bedroom I think it needs to be a triptych. I don’t like the light just at one end. I think I will make a second one and cut it in half and hang one above and one below with the light on the opposite end. That way I visually get light at both ends. Hopefully it won’t take me another 3 months to make that happen and see if it matches the vision in my head.

I decided to follow the zig zag patter of the braid across the quilt. I started with the middle row and quilted from one side of the quilt to the other. I then worked my way to the top and bottom of the quilt by quilting every 4th row. By only quilting every forth row I got the layers sabilized more quickly and it enabled me to give up sooner, if I ran into a lot of problems. I can’t say that I was super speedy, but it really wasn’t difficult. I was able to use my walking foot, since it was straight lines, so it wasn’t stressful at all. I ended up quilting every other row. At the top and bottom border I just continued the same quilting pattern.

I’m happy to say it is complete and it looks great in the guest bedroom.

It would be better if it was a little warmer. Since the studio is separate from the house, I hate to spend money to heat an empty room with fabric sitting in it. I decided to use the heating pad and just let the fabric soak longer.

The result is slightly less color depth than I like, but I am pleased with the result and am happy that i didn’t have to spend extra electricity to get something I liked.

Increasing your water heater temperature can be very dangerous. Please make sure that every person in your household is aware that you have increased your hot water temperature and does not use the water. Always return the water to a safe temperature as soon as you are finished. Always use appropriate gloves and tools.

When I rinse my hand-dyed fabric, I need to soak the fabric in hot water. The minimum temperature is 140˚, but I prefer something closer to 170˚. This helps to remove the excess dye faster and more completely. Recently I installed an “on-demand” (sometimes called an “instant hot”) water heater in my studio: a Tagaki T-K1S. I bought this specific model because it’s rated for a max output temperature of 182˚F. That’s HOT! It worked great.

But after I replaced my studio’s old, clogged iron pipes with new copper pipes, the water pressure was better but my hot water got cooler. What happened?

On-demand water heaters work very differently than traditional “tank storage” water heaters. If you are considering getting one of these, you need to understand how they work else you won’t be able to get the hottest water possible to rinse hand-dyed fabric properly.

After some experimentation, I figured out how to get super-hot water again. Here’s how to do it:

First, read your water heater’s manual. Every model and manufacturer is different, but once you get the general idea you’ll know how to approach your particular circumstance. The instructions below are specific to my Tagaki T-K1S. Your mileage may vary.

Background:
On-demand hot water heaters take water from your cold water supply and heat it directly in an intense boiler. Because they don’t try to store and heat water in a large storage tank, on-demand water heaters are supposedly more energy efficient than “tank” water heaters. Here’s two important distinctions: Because they have to heat the water in “real time”, they are designed to raise the inlet water temperature for a given flow rate.

Translation:
- If you water supply is too cold, it won’t be able to heat water to your desired output temperature.
- If water flows through the heater too quickly, it won’t be able to heat it to your desired output temperature. Water flow is determined by either the amount of “demand” from your faucet or the amount of “supply” coming from your water company/well.

Once you understand these two limitations, you can start to control how hot your water can get. It’s very different than a “tank” water heater where you just crank up the temperature and wait for the tank to get up to temperature.

First experiment:
- Takagi set to “140˚F”
- Inlet water supply: 60˚F.
- Water supply into water heater fully open

Result: Water temperature at the faucet: 138˚F

Second experiment:
- Takagi set to “182˚F” (by adjusting DIP switches inside the heater…be very careful!)
- Inlet water supply: 60˚F.
- Water supply into water heater fully open

Result: Water temperature at the faucet: 142˚F

It should have been 182˚F, but it wasn’t. I can’t change the inlet water temperature, so I need to limit the water flow. I tried reducing the water flow at the faucet, but it didn’t work: as I turned down the faucet, the water heater would turn off before the water got hot enough.

Things to check:
- Newer faucets have an “anti-scald” valves. These are designed to limit the output temperature to ~120-140˚F to avoid burns. If your faucet has one of these, find another faucet to use. I checked, and my faucet is rated for output a max of 176˚F, so that wasn’t the problem.
- Water supply may be too cold. My water supply was 60˚F. According to my water heater’s manual, it should be able to raise the temperature by  120˚F for a 2.6 gallons per minute flow.

Second experiment:
- Takagi set to “182˚F.”
- Inlet water supply: 60˚F.
- Water supply into water heater almost completely closed

Result: Success! Water temperature at the faucet: 172˚F.

By closing down the water supply for the water heater, it could take more time to heat the water to a higher temperature. The more I closed down the water supply to the water heater, the hotter it made the water. But the slower it came out. I didn’t need more than 170˚F for my project, so I didn’t bother testing beyond that. When I closed it down too much, the water heater shut off.

Conclusion: If you have a tankless water heater and can’t get your water hot enough after turning up its thermostat, try turning down the inlet water supply! And be safe. Return the water heater to a safe level as soon as you are finished.

I have a complex of not wanting to be Aunt Clara giving the pink bunny pajamas (A Christmas Story).  I love to make things and I love to give them away, but I know that my tastes don’t always match others, so I am a cautious home made gift giver.

I spent Sunday and Monday dyeing and rinsing flannel for the quilt. I knew I wanted tans and earthy greens. I don’t do a lot of tans so I tried creating a couple of gradations. They ended up a little closer in color than I would have liked, but do to the short time frame, I was pretty pleased with them and called them good.

Monday night Bill helped me to cut the fabric into strips and then use the AccuQuilt die cut machine to cut the squares.

Since it was Bill’s sister, it was his pleasure to pick the pattern for the quilt. He wanted to create blobs of color that kind of blended into the next blob. I don’t know if we were completely successful, but we had fun and it did break me out of my symmetrical and regimented patterning. We finished laying out the squares around 11pm on Monday.

Tuesday morning I labeled the squares so that I could keep them where they were planned and set them up for chain piecing. I spent the day piecing the quilt and was finished in time for bed.

Wednesday I spent the day washing and drying the quilt to get that nice snuggley texture and remove the extra lint before the sending it out. I also created my label pocket and label.

It was shipped on Thursday. Yeah! I love how fun these quilts are to make and the ease that the AccuQuilt adds in making them. With any luck it will coordinate with the home decor.

The photo is a little fuzzy. It was a quick overhead shot while standing on a bar stool, but it had to get in the mail.

Mom decided that she wanted a very structured pattern for her braids so she is going to start her braids with the same color each time. I have decided to follow the book and have a more undulating pattern, but I did have to tweak what colors each of my braids were going to start with.

We spent the week sewing together our large braids. Since my colors were so close together I had to keep my fabrics labeled at all times. One of our classmates gave the suggestion to number some flower head pins and use those for labels. That was brilliant. It worked so well. I used one pin to mark each stack of fabric and a second pin in the braid I was sewing to tell me what the last color I used on a particular braid was. That allowed me to do a little bit of chain piecing. I still only worked on two braids at a time, but I think it was faster than not chain piecing.

Once I got a couple of my braids completed I decided that my small inner borders would be a very pale yellow. So, I also spent this week trying to achieve that yellow. It took me 3 tries, but I finally got the yellow I was looking for. Sorry, I didn’t take any pictures of the yellow, so you will have to wait to see it in the finished quilt top.

I forgot to mention in my dyeing posts that my yellow accent fabric and my green outer border fabric is a white-on-white dot pattern. I like to overdye white-on-white fabrics because you get interesting results. The front is usually very high contrast and the back is very subtle.

Here is a sample of the green fabric on the front and back.

Once I decided on which greens I wanted to use I layed out the yellow accent fabric and the green border fabric. Once with the bold side up and once with the subtle side up. I decided that since my gradations were so subtle, my accents should be more subtle also. What would you have picked?

Here is today’s fabric out on the line.

The quilt calls for half yards each of 12 colors in gradation. I decided since it was such a large quilt already, I would expand it a little and make it a queen size quilt for my guest bedroom. That room is currently being decorated in bright yellow and green, so I decided to go with a 12 step green gradation with accents of yellow.

For Day one of dyeing I dyed 12 shades of green, a gray to use as a narrow border and the yellow for the accent square.

Here is all of the fabric hanging on the line to dry.

I generally like to work with smaller pieces of fabric. I find that I get the type of modeling that I like best working in 1 yard or smaller pieces, so I wasn’t sure how this would work out. I was pretty careful about my process. I wanted to make sure that I got full coverage of the brown dye on all the fabric.

I put the fabric in a bucket on the counter and I set a punch bowl in my sink. I slowly started to pull one end of the fabric out of the bucket and into the punch bowl. As I did, I poured some of the dye into the punch bowl. I scrunched the fabric around in the dye until it was completely covered. I continued to feed fabric out of the bucket and into the punch bowl working the fabric in the dye. When the dye got low, I just added more dye to the punch bowl. I continued this process until all the fabric and dye was in the punch bowl.

Once the fabric was completely saturated with dye I placed it in a bucket to batch. I poured the dye from the punch bowl over the fabric in the bucket. I let this batch for 24 hours before I began rinsing.

Since this was a high thread count fabric, it doesn’t fray much. After washing and ironing the fabric, I just put it on the table. Raw edges and all. They have a nice soft edge to them, that looks fine to me. I think I will keep this tablecloth around for the next year or so to see if the large dinner gatherings continue.

With a fun new tablecloth I really wanted to finish some placemats that I started back in 2005 that I never finished. They were all pieced with scraps, but they didn’t have backs or quilting done. While I was dying the tablecloth I also put some fabric in black dye to use for the backing of the placemats. I have made placemats in the past that had no batting in the middle. I really liked the flat appearance of the placemat, but they didn’t offer a lot of protection for the table. I decided to try something different. I lined the placemats with flannel. It is not as thick as batting, but it provides a little more protection to the table below. I prewashed and shrunk all of the flannel so that the placemats would continue to lie flat after washing and I did some minimal quilting to hold everything together. I am really pleased with how they worked out.