More progress from the retreat

I played with a new technique of dyeing fabrics a la Amy Johnston. I'll describe it more when I don't have to tap it out on the phone.

Snow Day

I have finished my stack of badge sewing so now I can concentrate on fun things, like quilting.

The kids were off yesterday because of snow and I stayed home with them. I got my sewing room straightened up a bit and got the floor vacuumed.

Our quilting bee is doing an exchange this year where we choose our fabrics, then pass them around to members to make the next block in the pattern so in the end, we'll have a set of blocks made by our fellow members. We're using Big Horn Quilts' Beige Behemoth pattern.

I dyed all that fabric a couple weeks ago for this project and was anxious to pass it on. Frankly, I was tired of looking at it. To my dismay, we are to make the first block ourselves with our fabrics, thus setting the tone for the entire quilt. I didn't want that responsibility. I needed distance from all that fabric I just spent hours and hours dying.

That was two weeks ago. It took that long to work through the paid sewing obligation. So, yesterday I was able to start on the exchange blocks without much anxiety. The 20" block is made up of eight components, two of which I got done.

We're due for 12-24 more inches of snow tomorrow so it looks like I'll have plenty of time to work on the rest over the weekend.

I'll try to upload a picture from the camera later since I still can't find the memory card reader for unloading the photos from my camera.


 

Folded Rainbows

Work is still crazy-busy, and I still can't find my card reader so this is from my phone of 54 of the 71 pieces of fabric I dyed over the weekend.

To-Do List

Today, I'm breathing.

The other day my boss heard me exhale. It was one of those long exhales at the end of a short encounter with him and my mind was reeling from all I had to do and ws making mental lists of things I had to accomplish pronto. We are mailing out a survey on the 26th and I've been working on validations and fixes non-stop for several weeks.

Our sponsor is known for taking their time on things despite the firm mail-out date, for example, we just got the final form last week. So my boss tells me I wasn't allowed to breath yet, had to wait until mail-out. Yesterday we pushed the survey out to the public server so the sponsor can do their testing. (I hope they know they don't have until March.) So, today I can breathe a bit until the testing results come back to me and I have another list of things to do.

I've been working through a pile of Girl Scout vests in my spare time. I've gotten five done in the last week or so, but the pile isn't diminishing any. I hate sewing those badges on when there's not a lot of room left for them. I raised my rates again to $40 so the workload is more palatable.

There should be a package on my porch right now for me (aren't tracking numbers and the Internet the greatest?) containing a new bolt of muslin to dye and two new dyes. I plan on dyeing a slew of fabric this weekend so it'll be ready for our bee's next exchange project next Wednesday. I'll post pictures of my dyeing adventures. If I can find my card reader, that is.

I was rooting through old photos and found this one from 2003. Enjoy.

My husband called home on Saturday from Colorado, evidently having read my last blog entry, "Did she really say that?" (Referring to the last bit.) I think he thinks my readers will think he does nothing while I'm gone. But in reality, my girl just misses me and there is nothing to worry about. I've gone many days without touching the dishes or laundry. And she'll start a load of her own clothes.

Husband got away to Denver for the weekend to hang with some high school buddies and play golf. It was pretty uneventful while he was gone. Well, there were plenty of events, but none bad.
The girl had a sleep-over Friday, the boy went to an open house at the community center.


I took myself out to the new restaurant in town for supper. Saturday, the boy went to Swim-n-Gym and the girl had practice at church for Youth Sunday. Which went well, by the way. She did the opening announcements and the call to worship. The boy handed out bulletins.


He did fine, but there were a lot of kids at the doors too. I was secretly disappointed he didn't get to shine more than he did. Saturday afternoon was the neighborhood block party and Sunday afternoon I vacuumed the garage.

Somewhere in the mix I bought another gallon of whole milk with the hopes of making another batch of cheese, but kept myself busy knitting instead.



I finished the regular sized socks for AM and I'll make a cast sock for her when she gets her new cast tomorrow. My ADD kicked in again and I found myself thinking I could make more pairs of socks for Christmas presents since they work up so quickly. Let's just see how many pairs I can actually get done before I get bored.



I also got my hand-dyed fabrics rinsed out, washed and dried and I've been trying to work out a pattern for the challenge quilt to use them. I have six weeks to get the quilt done.

Socks. Quilt. Quilt. Socks. Kids. Kitchen. Laundry. Socks. Quilt.

sheesh.

Ever have one of those days where you're standing in yoga class in the triangle position after having done your warm-ups in the table position and moved on to the seated spinal twist and hero (my favorites) and your feet are stretched out pretty wide and you hate this position because it hurts your feet and you're facing the folks across the room facing you and your arms are up, stretching, reaching, and you realize the woman across the room in looking in your direction but you continue to gaze at your own spot on the wall and then you start wondering what she is looking at?, and ohmigosh, when was the last time I shaved, think, think, not this morning, not yesterday, oh and I can't very well check right then and there, can I?
Yeah, that was my Friday in Yoga at lunch at the gym at work.


Oh, and on a creative note, here are my batch of hand-dyed fabric I did when I had my quilting bee over on Tuesday. It's a set of fuchsia to black. Today I did a dark to light set of one of those middle purple colors. I'll post a picture of those when I have time to rinse them out, hopefully sometime this week.

Quilt Show: Day One. I got 14 bundles of hand dyed fabric ready to sell and my four quilts delivered (Thanks Dr. B!). By the time I left at 2pm only one bundle had sold, I'm hoping more sold after I left and more will sell tomorrow. The quilt I made for Miss Kingsfield's daughter is on display and they both came by to see it. A friend of their's was at the show and is a photograper for the Bowie Blade. She took a picture of the quilt with CG's daughter so I'll have to remember to look for the article on Thursday. Tomorrow I'll take pictures to post so those of you who aren't local can see.

We had a two hour snow delay this morning—from the 4" of snow that fell yesterday—so I had some time to put up this batch hand-dyed fabrics before the kids had to catch their buses. A blend of red-brown to olive green. I'm thinking about making more to sell at our quilt guild's show next month. Should I? Whadiya think? What colors should I dye?

Another quilt finished! This is Kevin's Autism quilt as it hangs in his room on the wall.

This is a close-up of the quilting I did in each block. I used mono-poly in a stipple meander in the background fabric and thread to match the star points in the centers of each star.

This is a sink full of hand-dyed fabric the women did at the quilting retreat. I love the colors! Click on any picture to enlarge.

Here is a little "Trip Around the World" I made over the weekend from my new hand-dyed fabric. (click to enlarge.) I'm debating whether to put on a border to make it bigger. What do you think?

I finally got around to taking a picture of the purple batch of fabric I dyed last week. It was supposed to be a plum to fuchsia blend, but the fuchsia is so strong not much of the plum shows. You can see bits of the plum in the light spots since the fuchsia reacts so quickly and the purple takes longer to seep in. If I try this blend again I'll have to use more plum powder and half the fuchsia. It's so hard to tell what you're going to get in the end by looking at the bags, these looked like beets in the beginning, but they rinsed out so pink.



I started yet another batch last night, this time using the new dye I ordered from Dharma: peacock blue and kelly green. I did an eight step blend instead of the usual six but the end colors are pure, (there's no green in the strongest blue bag and no blue in the strongest green bag).

I couldn't wait until my new dyes came so I dyed a batch last night with dyes from my stash.


This set is Kilt green blended with hollandaise yellow. The green is so strong and very blue you can hardly see the yellow much past the first piece.


This is my second attempt using the kilt green and yellow. This time I used a quarter of the amount of the green dye powder: 1/2 tsp in a cup of water to start. I use half of that in the first bag and fill the cup back up to the cup line. I keep that proceedure going for all six bags. I do the same thing for the yellow using two tablespoons of dye powder to start but put in the bags in reverse order.

I can't wait for my quilt guild's retreat next month. It's usually a wonderful time, away from the kids and spilt chocolate milk, staying up late, sewing until your hands fall off, starting way too many projects to ever finish.

I volunteered to lead a fabric dyeing workshop one afternoon. I have no idea why I do things like that. Especially since I haven't dyed fabric in about eight years. I've been looking at my old notes and am I'm slowly remembering how to do it, I even placed an order at Dharma for two new colors of dye. I decided I needed to practice dyeing first so I'll round up some of the girls and moms in the neighborhood and lead a class one afternoon. AM said she'd bring her girls. I figured if I could teach them, the adults at the retreat could not be harder, right? My plan is to show them how to do a six-step two-color blend. Is that too much for the girls? Am I crazy? What colors would you blend?