Day 3 - Dying

I have arrived! I got my peach! I'm having the most fun doing this.

Garden of the Gods Camera Shoot

This was the perfect week as far as I'm concerned. High levels of creativity and quilt stash building! This is a departure from my quilt life - although some day I may make silkies of my photos! I'm learning to take pictures with an SLR camera and am having some major learning curves! Last Thursday we (a real camera buff & I) went to Fountain Valley Nature Center and I got some training (got the pic of the cat (Oreo) warming up before the trip and the water in Fountain). Evidently I learned very little, because yesterday we went to the Garden of the Gods for a couple of hours to shoot and I got very few usable pics. Why? My camera had no card in it! Arghhhhh! Luckily, I brought my Canon digital (cause it has an awesome zoom and the lens on the SLR I am using is wide angle) and so still came home with some pics (the top two). I am planning a return trip to get some shots with the SLR though!

Day 2 of Dying Adventure

On this day I used acid dyes to immerse several items. I was dying silk, silk velvet, silk ribbon and various laces. I used anywhere from one to four cups of almost boiling water, then added the dye and a little vinegar and the dying victims! I let them sit for 30 minutes and then rinsed in warm water. The silks dyed marvelously (no surprise since I believe acid dyes are geared for silk), but some of the laces came up in unexpected colors.

I started with the golds because I didn't have to mix dyes to make the colors for those. (I had 2 different gold powders, a black, ecru, and the primary colors. The golds were find if not a bit vibrant(!) so I ventured on to color mixing. The green turned out exactly how I wanted it to. I was so thrilled! There were a couple of rogue laces that decide to go more of a lilac color than green - go figure! Then I decided to go for a soft peach and came up with the vibrant reds and pink above. Not exactly what I wanted, but they will go nicely in a Valentines quilt I'm going to do one of these days! I saved all the dyes and today I think I will split the dyes into different pots and add a little black or water to get varying hues of the same colors. I may try some blues and purples if time permits! And I'm going to modify those reds to get some peach! Did I tell you I was having fun?!

Dye Day with Shari

The laboratory and Shari!

Shari came over yesterday and we spent the day dying! We used a couple of different kinds of dyes and came up with some really nice results. Shari had to return to life at 4:30 (something about sloppy Joes to make), but I stayed up and dyed and dyed until 10:00 when my back was bent and broken! First thought this morning was things I forgot to dye, so I'm pretty sure the plan for today is dying!

Christmas Cracker Exchange

This is the lovely package I got from Jill for the Christmas Cracker Exchange (Crazy Quilting International Group). Jill is an expert in making silkies and she gave me 4 of the most lovely silkies I've ever seen! She also gave me some wedding dress fabric, lace, ribbon, beads, charms, buttons, and other little trinkets that can be used for embellishments. One of the little baggies had several unique mother of pearl buttons which are my favorite kind of buttons! Thanks Jill!

Secret Santa Exchange

This is the wonderful package Shari sent me in the Secret Santa exchange (CQ for Newbies Group). On the left is a plastic bag storage bag and on top of all the gorgeous fabric are threads, beads, buttons, and silkies. Shari - you were very generous - thankyou so much! You can only just see him, but on the flor behind all the goodies is my dog Cola who shares all my crazy quiltin experiences!

Lace Buy

There must be something wrong with me. There is an embellishment magnet in me or something! I bought a "little" lace today. If I get it all organized, there is a good chance I'll be selling some of it, because no one needs this much lace. Yet it was a 90-something-old woman who collected it during her lifetime in New York, most of it from 1960s to the 1990s. Sigh. Much of it is very beautiful and there are yards and yards of it......