Dyeing More

 What have I been doing? I have been doing more fabric dying again. I have a sales booth at the Edmonton and District Quilt show next week end. I needed to get more fabric ready for my booth. These first two photos are Fat Quarters rapped on poles and dyed.

 Sorry it went side ways. The Yellow things in the dye pot are silk cocoons. I am dying a fiber kit. More on them another day.

 I like to dye them all twice to get a cross over of colour. I find it easiest to rap the fabric dry, so between dying, I rise them and hang to dry. Them only when I like what I have I do a finally wash in the machine with hot water and soap. The fabric is now being ironed by my mom so it looks good. I will have to update you on the great stack of pole rapped and dyed fabric soon.

Snow Dyed Results from April

Back in April, before my little visit to the hospital, I got some fabric dyed in the snow. Here are my results. I have many pale blue and purple ones because I used all I had in my sales box. I wanted to replace it all. I also have one larger piece (60x80) to use as a backing on a lap quilt. It turned out great. I am pleased such a large piece turned out so well.

I was kind of hoping for snow in May (got lots last year). Then I could snow dye again. I have my bedding plants bought and plan to get them in the ground Saturday, so now I really do not want snow till December.

Mail and Quilts

My Blue Days of Summer quilt should be on the way home in the mail. BUT we are at the beginning of a mail strike. They plan to do rotating strikes but I am worried. Wishing my quilt was home already. My quilt was at Quilt Canada this past week and is normally mailed home on Monday. In past years it has made it home by Wed or Thru by express post. Thur is here and going and no quilt yet.

Help wish it home.

Blue Days update from yesterday

I have an update on my Blue Days of Summer quilt. My friend Dawna is in London ON at the National Juried Show and tells me, my quilt got a ribbon. I got third place in the class it was in. Wow, I like this quilt but I really did not think it would get a ribbon.  I will have another ribbon to add to my wall.

OK now to work on next year's quilt. Not sure I have time this month to start something new but maybe this summer.

Blue Days Of Summer

 This quilt is currently on display at the Canadian National Juried Show in London ON this week. The National Juried Show opening was last night. Today it is open to the public to view. I can now show my quilt to you.

I named the quilt Blue Days of Summer, it is about 60 by 80 inches. I did most of the indigo dying in the summer of 2001, when my youngest was a new born. He is now 10 this year. This winter I got digging in a box of fabric and found all my Indigo fabrics. I had hand stitched many of the fabrics when I was pregnant. A few fabrics were folded and clapped to get the patterns. Others were hand stitched to get the pattern into the cloth. The hours of hand stitching I did was enormous, and all the hand stitching comes out after dying it.   

 This piece was rapped with large broccoli elastic bans, then dyed. I did the small pebble quilting around the hole. I think of these as Pot Holes in the Garden Path. I have a name for almost all of the pieces of fabric.

This piece of fabric was folded once and hand stitched. I think it looks like Garden Trellis, you know the diamonds.  I quilted it with a curly vein that I like to do on my long arm.

Thank You for viewing my quilt. I want you to know this quilt is one of the quilts that got my back on track this winter. When I found the fabrics in the box I just got them out to play. In a matter of a day I had desired to sew them together and make a lap quilt. So over the Christmas holidays this is what I worked on. I got it quilted in early January in time to still enter NJS.

PS I do not know who won yet at the National Juried Show. If you find out let me know. Other else I have to wait til my quilt is home to find out or till the CQA posts the winners on their web site.

Customer`s Quilts

 

Here are some great quilts from one of my customers. She would like to stay anonymous. The first one is a New York Beauty table runner. I love the colours, lime green and blue.

 The bottom quilt was a lap quilt to be given away as a gift. Lots of fun fabric in this quilt.

Later this week is the Canadian National Juried Show and I can show you my enter on Wednesday. I got a call from the committee people today so I think the judging is happening today. They were asking if the machine quilting was on a long arm or domestic machine, Long arm for me of course. If you are any where near London Ont. You had better look into going this week. You do not want to miss the quilts.

Spider Web Quilt update

I have not done much quilting in the past few weeks. Being away and then my surgery. I am healing and plan to get back to work now (customer quilts today). I have sewn the blocks for one quarter of my spider Web Quilt. They are going together slowly but I am being picky about my points and do not want to lose them. I sewed two together, so far so good. It is great to see what it will look like now.

Also this past week I had to finish my guild challenge and hand it in. I will show you in June after the quilt show. I forgot to take a photo before I handed it in and it is a judged quilt so I do not show them early.

Off to work, Hope you enjoyed Quilt Bee Tuesday.

New Surface Design Group - Snow Dying

 I have a new Surface Design group started out of the Edmonton Quilter's Guild. We are going to meet the second Friday of the month in each others homes or yards. There are five of us. Our first gathering was earlier this month and we only have three of us this first day. I hope we will have all five next month and talk more about what we are going to do. I really want to meet over the summer months and do some dyeing and painting outside.

 Here is a couple of the girls dying fabric and taking photos of what we have done. I led the small group in Snow dying fabric in melting snow outside. We do not get much time we can snow dye outside. I did a lot of meters last year this way. It leaves the mess outside. Our outside temp was about 6 C this day.  We left our fabric outside for about four hours ( 11 till 3).

 Here is Dawna adding dye to a snow cover piece of fabric. We had large hills of snow, so we made shelves in the snow to place our fabric. We had presoaked the fabric in soda ash. Then we placed a meter of fabric in the snow. We crimped or pleated the fabric. We covered it with snow and then covered it with dyes.

Yes I am behind in making blog posts, sorry. I have had the most busy two weeks. I hope to get caught up in what I have been doing. I have much time to rest now. On Friday I had gall bladder surgery so I am not doing much. Time to get some paper work done, play on the computer, and taxes soon.

Maui Trip

 Brad and I at our Hawaii Dinner.

Wyatt on the Beach

Flowers in our resort yard.

What more can I say. We had a great time in Maui. We will look forward to the next trip.

Maui Journal Cover

I have made this journal cover to use as a travel journal. I am returning from a trip to Maui. I wanted to make something fun and useful to take with me. I used some of my poverty piecing I made last month. I quilted the patch work with six flowers - hibiscus like. There were six of us on the trip. I also did little waves curls.  I used YLI thread called Sea Mist and Maui Sunset. I bought these two threads five years ago in Maui.

I bought a blank sketch book to start off. This time I have made zipper pockets on the inside of both front and back. The pockets can then be used to put my pens and pencils. I packed a glue stick and a tape runner so I can glue in tickets and other bits from the trip.