Bright sunny day and chirping birdies

Woke up to a dreary overcast day this morning around eight am and then realised what I thought was the hissing of the rain was actually the hot air coming through the heating vent and because the government thought it would be more energy efficient to delay, by a week, the process of setting the clocks back an hour, the overcast skies were…well darkness.  You can tell by this sentence that I’m not my brightness in the morning can’t you?

Anyhow, just a gorgeous day today with the freezing temperatures of yesterday being replaced by warmer weather today. The sun was shining, the birdies chirping, I went for a walk; just ace as the Australians would say (can you tell I’m being influenced by hosting the Aussie word bingo?).

I have a bird feeder that I bought a couple of months back. It’s amazing how unobservant I was about spotting birds until I set this cage up. I had it down in the back yard hanging from a dead cherry tree and it was great watching all the different types of birds come to feed and the squirrels frolicking around scrounging for sunflower seeds. The only problem with this set-up was that every so often the racoons would come around at night and hit it. After coping with several broken links in the chain, running down at night to bring it into the house and the onset of colder weather I’ve decided to hang it on the porch outside the kitchen door.

I was worried Nicky the cat would be a problem but he just lays there sleeping away and the birds don’t seem to mind. I took several pictures but the camera isn’t a fancy one so the quality is on the poor side but it gives you an idea. So far I’ve seen blue jays, house finches, sparrows, cardinals, nut thatches, morning doves, flickers, robins, downy woodpeckers, chickadees and grackles. A few of these have moved on to warmer climes now.

Karen

  
      
Blue Jays 

Squirrel – let me in, let me in!    

   
House finches

Pole Shibori and Stamps

It’s been an interesting past couple of days. As the bingo hostess I’ve been setting up the current game. I get to pick the subject from which the words revolve around and since Australia has been near and dear to my heart lately I choose Aussie slang words.

I provided links to several online dictionaries and have enjoyed reading all the interesting words that have crossed my email the last few days. I think the group will be having great fun with this and it’ll be an interesting challenge to try and use some of the vocabulary in my postings as I hand out the words.

The “Path to Hell” quilt is still sitting there waiting for me to start quilting it. I can’t believe I had to spend $7.69 for “one” spool of quilting thread to finish it off; it just seems so offensive.  I checked the Internet, it seems to be the going rate for the brand I bought.

On another note, a friend told me about a new faster way to do pole wrapping. It’s called “fast food shibori” by the two artists who created the technique out of the “Lunn” studios in the states. There’s a clip on the “Simply Quilts” website demonstrating this technique. I’d put up the link but I’m not sure if we’re allowed to put links in our blogs and right now I’m to lazy to find out. If anyone really wants to know post me a comment and I’ll email you the link.

The first four fat quarters I tried turned out so-so as I was rather random with the dyeing. I’d had them shoved up together and just sort of squirted colours together going down the pole. Well when I took the fabric off I had one piece that was composed of two colours but the other three fat quarters were a mish-mash, interesting but not practical.

I tried again the next day but this time I took three fat quarters and pre-dyed them a solid colour (well solid mottled at any rate). I left one piece white to see what effect I would get from applying a single colour to the piece on the pole. I then over-dyed the different pieces.

One turned out quite spectacular – Golden yellow with Boysenberry overdye. The others were fine as well but more subdued. I’ve left the golden-yellow-boysenberry as is but tried stamping the other three pieces today with Lumiere paint. One turned out great the other two are again so-so. The Intense blue gave me some problems at the start because of the stamps I tried using and then at the end where one flower petal didn’t stamp. It does not work to try and apply paint with a brush on a stamped image as it just smears and looks like crap. It really seems to make a difference what type of stamp you use. I improved as I went along but the best piece was the first one I tried – the gold leaf blue.

Karen

              
   
Bronze Leaf

Bronze Flower

Golden yellow overdyed with Boysenberry

Gold Leaf

Bingo Quilt Before and After

Just a quickie today. Took the “bull by the horns” (I need to retitle my blog Worn Out Phrases and Cliches) and riped out the offending blocks that I’d put in wrong yesterday. Awk! No make that AWK!!!.

I somehow found it appropriate as I was working on the final two blocks that AC/DC’s Highway to Hell came on the radio. This quilt has certainly been “two steps forward, one step back”. The really cool part is that I haven’t begun to quilt it yet, another joy I’m sure. Whoever wins this had better frame it in gold I think, snort.

Karen

“The Path To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions”

“The path to hell is paved with good intentions” What has that to do with today’s blog? Simple it’s the name I’ve decided to give the quilt I was working on for the bingo prize in our swap group. You note I said, “was” in the previous tense.

 Yes this little gem was a test in patience from its wonderful itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny pieces, bias-cut edges and the lovely meandering colour scheme. The colour scheme being complicated by the fact that I choose the alternate color-way displayed – you know what I’m talking about. The wonderful alternate colour scheme quilts they display in a book but provide no instructions for from the original blah version.  

I finally finished this top today, all 20 x 20 glorious inches of it after four days of intense labour. Sounds like a lot of time spent on such a small quilt but the thing was so dang finicky.  Truth be told I’d already sort of settled on this name for it but the final kicker came when I put it on my cutting table for one final look and to admire the wonderful border I’d put in with some really neatly done mitred edges.

That of course was when I’d noticed that some of the blocks were being a little rotationally challenged. Not only did I screw up but I did so badly. Out of a possible eight blocks that I managed to misalign by 180 degrees I misplaced six of them! What to do, what to do? If I were a poet I’d add the phrase “Sit and stew” or maybe some other choice word that rhymes with “do and stew”.

Well it doesn’t work to give away flawed work, as the participant would probably wonder “What, I’m not good enough to get something better than this?” And I haven’t got the gumption to pick the whole thing apart…well maybe in a few months (or years…) so I guess it’s back to the drawing board of creativity.

Which brings me back to the phrase “What to do, what to do?”

Karen

“The Path To Hell Is Paved With Good Intensions”

Blue Skies and Parfaits

It’s turned out to be a gorgeous day today, which is quite a treat seeing as how it was so grey and wet this morning. There is nothing like the sun breaking through a grey October sky to improve one’s mood.

 The weather temperature-wise has been unreal this fall with warmer temperatures than normal. Global warming comes to mind, which is a scary thought, but seeing as how it’s not going to go away as of this instant I have resolved to try and enjoy myself. There has been enough of a nip to change the colour of the leaves but not enough cold to make them drop all at once which is usually the case. The autumn colours seem to last about 2-3 weeks and then poof overnight all the leaves seem to drop. Not so this year as the leaves seem to be hanging on forever.

Yesterday was a crafty day with lots of sewing on a miniture quilt I’m putting together for a bingo gift. Our swap group has a word bingo contest every few months with the previous winner choosing the topic of words to be used in the game. Last month I won and received a beautiful book of folk art designs to be crafted. I decided this month that since it was fall I would make a small quilt with some autumn colours in it. To tell the truth the quilt has been fussy to make and I keep asking myself why did I choose a miniature quilt to do? Anyhow, all that’s left to do is to sew the rows together, sew a border and quilt it and I’ll be done. The colours didn’t quite turn out how I envisioned them but it sure is colourful.

I also did a Stormy Grey gradation yesterday to which I added Grecian Rose as an additive. I took it down to eight steps but you can’t really tell a difference between the seventh and the eighth step. It was interesting because the two darkest steps turned a soft muted purple; something I wasn’t expecting. I guess the grey had more blue in it than I thought. I took the leftover dye and decided to throw them together to create a fabric parfait. I’m not to sure about the results because the Grecian Rose is just a little to bright for my tastes but it was interesting to see the stormy grey look green in spots.

It’s always interesting to see how the dyes breakdown and the resultant colours you end up with. Will post a picture of the quilt when it’s done.

Karen

Stormy gray gradation with Grecian Rose additive

Stormy Grey – Grecian Rose Parfait

Discharge revisited

It would seem that yesterday’s catastrophe might not be the mistake I thought it was. It’s been pointed out to me that not all fabrics will discharge to white when a discharge agent is applied. Apparently it is quite common to have a residual colour left over after the discharge is finished and the left-over colour is dependent on the discharge chemical used.

I guess this is where practise and experimentation comes into play. I’d had a sneaking suspicion that the whole process wasn’t as straight forward as it seemed and I guess I was right which leads us to today’s phrase “Practise makes perfect”.

I guess my fabric piece wasn’t a total loss and if you’re into grey grunge then it’s perfect. If fact I have a feeling that I’m limited by my own creativity because I’m sure someone else could take this cloth and do wonderful things with it so what does that say about me?

Karen

Black Kona Discharge piece

This Is Discharge?

The expression ducks in a row is floating around my brain today. I’ve just looked up the meaning of that expression and it means to be organized and prepared. Unfortunately for me my ducks seemed to have flopped over and died leaving me in total despair this morning.

 Last night I’d finished my running stitches on my shibori dishcharge piece, pulled the gathers tight and then having misgivings about the spacing being too large between the rows, tied the whole thing up with artifical sinew. I went to bed with visions of sugarplums dancing around in my head and the bold splashes of colour that were to replace the areas of discharge where the black had been on my fabric. Sure I had doubts about how effective the tightness of the stitches would be in providing a resist in the cloth for the effect I was going for but after all how bad could it be? I mean even if there were only little specks of black all would be well with the colourful over-dye right? Wrong!

The discharge I decided to use was thioureadioxide. Dharma has photos on their website of their black Kona and the different colours the fabric discharges to using the various media. Since bleach produces an orangy colour I decided to go with the Thioureadioxide which produces an off-white.

I mixed up the thioureadioxide with the heated water and soda ash and stirred in my damp material. Joy when I saw the black begin to discharge from the fabric or at least until about the five minute mark when all of a sudden the black disappeared and a yellowish colour appeared. Hmm, maybe if I add more thioureadioxide… no such luck, nada, no more black coming off of the fabric.

 I’m not quite sure what went wrong or if indeed anything did go wrong. From the directions it did say that several dippings  might be needed but at that point it was a smelly mess of dull grey fabric and from what I could tell there wasn’t much of a resist left in the cloth except where some of the sinew was wrapped and the stitches themselves. The sinew was another story because the wax in it disolved, could this be my problem? I don’t know but another phrase comes to mind…”flogging a dead horse”. Somehow at this point it didn’t seem much sense to try and take this experiment any farther since there wasn’t much in the way of a resist. Long story short, I’ve rinsed the fabric and will see what I have. Instead of chucking the stuff I might try some discharge paste I’ve discovered and see what I can come up with.

The swap after all is a discharge swap. Nobody said it had to be pretty right?

Karen

Stitched and gathered thread

Sinew bound Kona

Swamp Thing

Discharged Kona Black to Grey

Gotta Love It

There is something so exhilarating about a bargain that to quote a phrase “it warms the cockles of my heart”.  Take today for instance. I had decided that I would get around to doing my discharge piece for a swap I was participating in and that I would attempt to try the Shibori technique mokume on it.

 

Mokume (wood-grain effect) consists of off-set gathered rows of stitching that are pulled very tightly to provide a resist so that when you dye or discharge it some of the original material is left unaffected by the dye or discharge solution. My first attempt at this technique has been so-so but the areas of cloth that did work looked fabulous hence the desire to do it again.

 

I took a piece of black Kona cotton, folded it in half and marked out my rows 1 1/2 inches apart. Realising that it was going to take forever to thread the rows by hand I wanted a longer needle so that I could gather in as many stitches in one go before pulling the nylon upholstery thread through the material.  Hmm…no long needles with a skinny shaft…ah – bright idea, there may be some at the dollar store down the street so off I go.

 

This dollar store is incredible as it has a craft section that contains beading, scrap-booking, floral and sewing supplies. I mean that’s all you’d ever want in a dollar store right?  I’m standing there glorifying in the fact that not only do they have needles but that they have needles in every shape size and form…and best of all…they’re only a buck a packet. 

 

I left the store mentally chuckling to myself and rubbing my hands together in typical glee. It didn’t matter that I now had two packets of all-purpose needles, quilting needles, beading needles, tailor’s chalk and had spent twice as much money as I probably would have on needles elsewhere.  The fact is “I GOT A DEAL!!!” I mean think of the money I saved by buying all that stuff at a dollar a pop instead of paying full price.  It is after all the principle of the thing you know. 

 

 

Karen