Dye Cups

My hand dyed fabrics work great for gradations of value, so I was excited to get started. We needed 4 values; light, med light, med dark and dark. We needed 10-12 pieces of fabric for each value. I wanted to have 4 colors, so that worked out to a minimum of 3 different hues of each color. I decided to do 4 just to have some extra to choose from. I also decided to do 6 values of each color. Just in case I didn’t like the lights and trying to get as dark as I could.  So off to work I went. The first step was to cut up 96 pieces of fabric. We didn’t need much fabric so I died Fat 16ths of fabric. For the non-quilters a fat 16th is a piece of fabric approximately 11×9 inches. Then it was on to the dyes. Mixing fun colors and putting everything in tiny cups. I know it looks like they are all black, but really they are each a different color.

Rinsing Fabric

Purple floors

Everything was going well until the rinsing began. I did my usual quick rinse in the sink and then ran buckets of hot water to let the fabric soak. While it was soaking I called mom to chat and began cleaning up a bit. At one point I noticed one of the buckets didn’t have enough water in it. I figured I was distracted and just didn’t fill it up, so I added about 2 gallons of water to the bucket. Time passes, the room is looking better, but ….. The purple fabric bucket doesn’t have any water in it. Now this time I know I had water in there. Sure enough, one of my favorite buckets cracked and let all the water out of the bucket and on to the floor. It leaves a lovely purple circle on the carpet and takes 3 days of fans and heaters to dry out…. Not so much fun.

Just in case there are some doubters, I took the following pictures on January 14.

Today I packed up everything that was laying about the house and carried it out to the studio. When all was said and done, this is what I was left with.

I started the cleanup today and made some real progress. I hope to have it finished by Thursday. I need to begin dyeing some fabric for a class I am taking at the end of the month. Unfortunately I can’t dye with the studio this messed up. I would end up with dye all over everything.

The really funny thing is that this happens almost every year. This year Bill asked me on Sunday evening if I would like his help straightening. As much as I would have loved the help. I don’t know if I could have even begun to tell him how he could help.

I have been busy the last couple of months on some surprise Christmas gifts. They seem to be taking me a lot longer to finish than I had thought that they would.

Unfortunately that means that I haven’t been working on other projects like Christmas cards and a baby shower gift.

I am hopeful for a very productive next couple of days…. We will see.

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.

I sketched out my design and starting cutting fabric. I decided to put the heart on with a fringed edge so that I didn’t have to worry about fraying flannel applique. I’m not sure that I loved how that came out, but it worked for this project.

Update: Grandma is out of the hospital and doing well. Our hug from California was a huge success. If you know someone who is going into the hospital I highly recommend something like this to let them know you are thinking of them, even when you can not be there.

Cut the new panels to length and then sew on the border fabric. Now you have new curtains with lots of seams. Not too lovely from the back, even if you do make nice finished seams.

I have decided to take the easy way out, and Bill wanted the room a little darker, so I will be lining the panels. This will allow me to hide the seams and block out more light, and give a little more insulating protection.

I found some curtains that coordinated with my current wall colors and I thought I had success. I needed 8 packages of curtains to cover all the windows. No problem.

I hit a couple of stores and pick up all that I need and bring them all home and hang them up. Guess what. They are different dye lots. Very different. Some had a red cast and some had a blue. Back to the store to pick up more packages to bring home and compare. 4 stores later, I have enough curtain panels that basically match.

Unfortunately I decided to wash the curtains before I hung them. One of the doors leads to the studio and I knew it would eventually need to be washed. I followed the washing instructions. Really. Who would have thought they would shrink 8 inches. Unfortunately, that now makes the curtains 6 inches shorter than the sliding glass doors. That is not going to work.

I decided that the solution is to buy a coordinating fabric to add a contrasting border. I made several trips to JoAnn’s to find some fabric, but it seems that I have picked a color that few manufacturers are coordinating with. After bringing several fabrics home and not having them work with everything else in the room I decide to take Bill with me.

Bill and I headed off to the BIG JoAnn’s with a 50% off coupon. An hour or so later we walk away with border fabric.  Yeah!

I had to do a little bit of un-sewing to get the lengths that I needed for each border strip, but that was much easier than cutting and sewing each small square separately.

For my next version of this quilt I may do a little bit of rag edge for the large squares to introduce some texture.