Retreat Planning

Silly me! 

I have a quilt retreat in less then 2 weeks. I need to prepare. 

What to work on?

You can see I have fun at retreat. 

This photo of bunny ears is from the Leduc guild retreat in 2016. We are going to the same place again this year, Gull Lake Retreat Center. 

I started the fancy forest quilt at that retreat.  The quilt is done now. 

What to work on at this year's retreat?

So one new project I am thinking of taking, needs 3 or 3.5 meters of background fabric. I am thinking I might dye that. Not sure what colour? I have a dark Blue batik fabric but I think it might be too dark. Might try a dyed purple. I might need to do a test run first. So I will need to get started on that dying then. 

What else to pack? 

1. Canada 150 blocks, take my reds. I am only about half done the blocks. This is a joint project with my mom. 
2. Batik quilt with pink, blue and purple, I think most blocks are done but need to put to together and boarder needs to be pieced. Or do I make it bigger. that would need yardage packed. 
3. Some bags or a wallet - I would need to take a second machine that is better for bags.
4. KFC log cabin quilt, I have all blocks done so should be quick to sew top together. It is sorted and in a easy to pack box. 
5. Bonnie Hunter Mystery quilt from this past year. Need more work on blocks and side triangles then build the top. I would have to pack some yardage. 
6. A Rainbow scrap quilt, I have one close but needs rows and the boarder finished. So quick to get the top done. This quilt has 12" and then a smaller 6" sampler in the middle. 

So there is the plan to pack. 

I am linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts and Let's Bee Social and Needle and Thread Network and WIP Wednesday

Dyed Again

The dying workshop in Oct got me to dig out the dyes again. I had not done any the past year. So some of this was done after the class and the T shirt was done in class. 

The T shirt was snow dye. Yes we had snow in the middle of Oct. I was wanting some pastel colours and I am pleased with what I got. It took me a few weeks to get the photo because it was in the wash. 

This one is pole wrapped. It had been done twice but still had so much white. I dyed it again so a 3rd time. Love how it is now. 

Pole wrapped twice dyed

This one was folded in half and then dyed on a rope. I wish the dark part was on the outer edges and more broken up. Might have to try again.

Pole wrapped dyed twice.

I used little rocks and veggie elastics to make the rings. I am not sure I like this one. I might over dye it again.  

Pole wrapped twice dyed

Pole wrapped twice or 3 times dyed. 

Shibori Dyed Fabric

After the 3 day class on dyeing cotton fabric, I also took the class on Shibori dyeing fabric, so 4th day. I was using cotton again but some people in the class were using wool for rug hooking. We had to bring our own dyes and all kinds of crazy bits to help with the shibouri. 

We I have done some of this before and I just love pole wrapping. When the teacher was not watching me I would wrap another piece of fabric on a pole and dye it. This was a 1/2 m dyed twice and folded like a fat quarter and then rolled. 

Blue water fabric, dyed twice

Darker blue water, dyed twice. 

This one has been dyed a few times (3 I think) and it was wrapped on a large nylon rope. The folds are smaller then the folds on the pole wrapped fabrics. 

Pole wrapped with shades of green. This has been dyed twice. 

These were also done twice and in the same dye bath both times, Yet they are a little different. Must have been how they were wrapped and the one on the right has more of the middle got some extra dye on it. 

I had to sometimes finish these at home at have the time to get the second dye bath done. So not all done in class time. All of these are fat quarter sized fabric. I just do not get dye to the inside of the fabric roll if I go bigger. 

Tray Dyed Fabrics

Part of the dyeing class I took had us do a few pieces of fabric in a tray. I have done some of this before. First I did the green fabrics on top. I ripped my 60" fabric into 11" wide strips. Why 11" it was the size of my tray. I folded the fabric like a loose accordion fold.  I did these two pieces. The first time I did it there was more yellow and some white areas that I did not like. So I did it all over again, knowing I would get parts even deeper. Love them, But I am not sure how I will use them now. 

I also did this 1 m piece in a tray. I pre-soaked the fabric in the soda ash solution, so it was wet. I then laid it over the tray and pinched the middle and gave it a spin. I tried to get all the outer edges to spin in to the tray, I think I had to help some corners in to the tray. I then poured the dye over the fabric in a cross like pattern. Let it sit and got the spiral. 

3rd Day of Dyeing Workshop

I have more photos of some of the fabric I dyed in the workshop. We did more dyeing like it was paint. Many of the fabrics are small pieces like 10 by 12 or so. I did some dye on dry fabric like the Gemma fabric, then some wet fabric like the one above Gemma, you can see the dye ran into each other so much more. 

I love this little sky with lightening. I let it dry on plastic so there are also bubbles. 

Lighter sky and no bubbles.

This is more like a fat quarter size of fabric. A good swishy fabric.

Swishy on a fat 1/4

Swishy on a fat 1/4 and not too much moving it around. I love pink and green together. 

Dye Workshop Continues

I have some more Colour to show you. These photos are from the first 2 days but were dyed by some of the other students in the class. 

Hope you are enjoying the colour!

Sara Judith was our teacher and the workshop was organized by the Focus on Fibre Art Association.

2nd Day of Dying

I started the 2nd dye day with picking the Red Violet. We did the shades, to the left is black added to the main colour. To the right is the pastilles made by using less dye and the white showing more.   

We also did contrasting colours and going though the colour wheel and not around it. So this was my red violet and yellow. 

This is my fabric when it was lightly washed and still very wet. It is hard to tell what was what in the darker colours. 

October Dying Workshop

Fresh out of the machine! I love the flash of colour everywhere. 

I took a 3 day workshop and these photos are the fabrics we dyed in the first day. 

Pastels colours

Shishy Colour

October Almost GONE?

I have so much to tell you. The summer was so busy and so was my fall. I looked at my oldest fiber photos that I forgot to share. Much earlier this year my Surface design group did some wool dying at my house and lead by me. I chose to mostly work on getting some of these silk roving dyed so I could use them in my felting. The blackish roving was yellow but there was some rust in the jar and it went a cool black colour. I am sure I can never do that again. 

I did each colour in a jar on the stove. I used the fast acid dyes that need the steaming heat. 

Outside drying is some of our wool and silk wool fabrics. 

It is out of focus by, here is a scarf Yvonne did, I think it also had rayon in it too. 

Look at this great green and turquoise strip.  

I had kind of a bad summer with my horse. Jester the Dark paint in behind has hurt himself and it was not looking good. Well I can keep him but he might not be sound enough to ride. He is finally off the medications but still has some swelling. This fall I when shopping and bought Ace the new horse in front of the photo. He is so much smaller. We are still working out some ruff spots and learning about each other. So far he is very quiet and good on the trails we did last weekend. 

I will try to get caught up in the next few days. I need to copy more photos off my phone and camera. 

Dyed Again

I did some more fabric dying this past week. It take a few days before I can show all the fun colour. First is the fabric in the large zip lock bags. I have dyed 16 pieces of 1m Kona cotton. I leave them for about 24 hours to batch. 

The second day, I wash out my fabric. First I hand rinse each fabric. Then I washed about 8 fabrics in the machine together. The fabric gets 2 full longer cycles with the extra rinse. Dry and fold, hoping that I do not have to iron each fabric (I hate to iron). 

I needed to do more dying for some Door Prizes. The Edmonton and District Quilter's Guild has us pay for our ads with prizes. It only makes sense to me to give pretty fabric. I was having trouble making up nice packages. Some of the fabric I did not want to part with. 

Also the Black Gold Quilt Patch also has a quilt show Oct 16 and 17th 2015, and I want to donate a door prize there too. 

These are the last 5 prizes I needed for the Edmonton guild's year end. Next Fall we start over again. 

Fiber Day

Today I am off to play with the paint and have a good time with my Surface Group. Here is a photo of our last day together. We met last month and had a planning day. We had a great lunch too.

I needed to do some dying before we got together today. So Wed I dyed my 3 scarves and a few other meters of cotton yardage.  

This is the scarves drying out and the yardage folded on top. It makes me think of the colours of summer Ice-cream. Or at least something better then winter.

I also had to carve my stamp. I was going to make a new design but I just did a few adjustments to a design I had done last year. I still needed to crave the stamp. I hope it works well. If not I may not have much to do. I plan to stamp at least one scarf with this design and use paint. I am taking some dyed yardage so I can sample the paint and stamping method. I am hopping it can be one gift done. 

Gemma got a new bed. So far she loves it. I have been teaching her "to your Bed" and if she gets it right she gets cookies. Tonight is dog class too.