Snow Dyes!

It is December 30 and I have less than a week to get all of my samples done for the new classes I am teaching this spring. I do not think anyone in my community knows I have a blog, so I feel safe in posting my pictures.

I belong to an online dye group who I think invented snow dyes. In fact one of our members who inspired us all to try it, recently published an article in Quilting Arts Magazine on snow dyes. We are sure proud of her!

I find that my snow dyed pieces look like Monet gardens--somewhat mid to soft tones. It doesnt matter if I use super strong dyes, I seem to get a really nice muted look on pieces. It contrasts nicely with my soda soaked deep parfait pieces I love to make.

I think all of us do the snow dyes somewhat differently. Some dye the snow, then add it on top of fabric. Others put the snow on top and then dye it. I even have a friend who lives in a part of the world where there is little to no snow and she uses shavings from a snow cone machine (Wil). Here is how I do snow dyes.



Gather dyes and get a syringe. I use about 110ml per fat quarter.



Put fabric (that has first soaked in SA for 20 minutes) in a small container, lay a layer of snow on top--about 4 inches, then lay on the dyes with the syringe In these examples I used older dye—some was at least a year old.



This is one of the pieces. It is wet in this photo. I am not happy with the look and I think the age of the dye played a role in the lack of sharp detail. I find that snow dyes, as opposed to other methods of dyeing, gets fabric to have a soft edge but with crazy sharp edges if one uses lots of colours. I think I will redo these pieces tomorrow.

I have a batch dyeing in a different manner (drained over a sink), with new dye and we’ll see if that makes a difference.

4 more classes to get going!

Christmas 2009

This year, as always, my husband and I went away to visit family. But I still needed to do some decorating, so I put the santa’s on the mantle and the little tree on the sideboard. Today when I flew home, I was very happy to see some Christmas still around.

 

I hope you all had a wonderful, stress free Christmas. And I hope to see you all in the new year.

2nd Annual Christmas Quilt Party

I don’t like parties. I don’t like the polite chatter, the awkward silences and especially the drinking. Last year I looked at my mountains of patterns and fabric knowing I needed to do something about it. So I hosted a quilt party for all the ladies at work.

I had the women pick a pattern and I made up the background pieces, they appliquéd the pieces, and then I quilted the pieces. A lot of work but a lot of fun.

 

 

Most of the ladies picked Pine Needle patterns. In some cases I hand-dyed the background if it was appropriate—like in the loon piece above.

 

 

Last year only 3 women were quilters, and no-one else had done appliqué. This year there was only 2 that had not done appliqué before. Last year we pieced the borders, this year I just did some painted borders. So much faster and I think it looks good for the bears.

 

 

Even the little ones, like this, took me more hours than I want to mention to quilt. But I love doing them. And they are always appreciated.

 

 

The lady who did this piece made a mistake and fused fusible web on the top of the piece. She called me almost in tears. No problem, I just added lots of layers of fusible to make it look like the piece was underwater.

 

Hard to see, but the fish really look 3-D.

 

 

I worked on this one, even though I didn’t need any more wall hangings. I decided to make it as a gift, then ran out of time to complete it… 

But I did complete these ones!

 

Has it been so long???

I cant believe the last post I did was October—sigh—time goes by so quickly.

I have been in Christmas mode for awhile and so that is what I have been doing.

I love Christmas fabric, I love pulling it out and just looking at it.

Then I had to get some ideas—I love surfing the net looking for patterns and ideas. I had forgotten I purchased a Kalea-ruler (or whatever its called) so I made a TON of table toppers.

OK—I need to get better pictures and show some completed ones. I have made 5 so far.

 

I didn’t complete it like this, so I need to check into this further.

This is the next wall hanging I started. Pattern by Pine Needles I think.

With borders:

I had to dye the large blue border with red so I got a nice purple. This was done because the blue in the main picture has a purple tinge…

I LOVE this one I made last year, and I will make a few Christmas ones with this pattern. Stay tuned!   :-)