Amish Diamond blocks

The latest project that I’ve been working is the Fall Block Swap with my fabric dyeing forum group. This block – Amish Diamond – is based on a pattern from quilterscache.com. It’s a fairly basic block which is what our group wanted since we would be sewing quite a few of them. The block is based on three colours, one of which is the standard Amish black.

The idea is to pick two different colour combos and then swap out a block of each combination to every person participating in the swap. This current crop of members seems to be a bit on the tentative side so we only had six people sign up for the block so I had to come up with 12 blocks. Given I’ve been trying to find time to do them in the past four days, I’m kind of glad only six signed up.

Anyhow here are the two colours combos that I chose.

Amish diamond - Navy blue, Pagoda Red

Amish Diamond - Olive, Butterscotch

The navy blue was Dharma and the other colours from ProChem, the black was Kona black. Kona black was chosen as the standard so that when all the different blocks come together the blacks should match fairly closely given dye lots.

I was going to choose purple but when I went through my fabric samples somehow these colours looked good together. Maybe because it’s fall I was influenced by my colour choice. It should be interesting to get all the other blocks back and see how the quilt turns out. These blocks are a good way to use up smaller pieces of fabric so I’ll be going back to the stash to see what I need to finish the quilt.

Karen

Marbles continued…

Well I did the washout today and the material came out sort of how I expected.

Final step.

The purple wasn’t as intense as I’d like, in fact I’m not too sure exactly what it is. I re-applied some of the mixing red to the marbles so there are some spots that are more reddish in the background than others. I do have some purple spots and the rest is well I don’t really know.

The thing that I found interesting was that the circles of yellow were for the most part subdued. There are some really yellow circles but for the most part they are a mix of the yellow, red and purple. This surprised me because I applied the rubber bands fairly tightly and I had a good 1/4″ or more of elastic covering the fabric so you’d think there would have been more of a resist. I think if I hadn’t re-applied the red I wouldn’t have covered up the yellow so much.

All in all, it’s an interesting material. I’m not sure what it can be used for but since I’m swapping most of it away…hey…it’s not my problem.

Karen

Marbles

Well the wedding is over and everything went wonderfully. Jen and Phil made a beautiful bride and groom. I’ll post pictures when I get them. Jen had a photographer and we had a friend of the family taking pictures so I didn’t even try as I didn’t want to spoil the day having to worry about that part of it. What a mad run around though. I made the church five minutes before the ceremony was supposed to start (well before the bride). Truly a scramble trying to get there but more of that later.

I have a September swap that needs to get done but because of the wedding I’m running a bit behind. I’m almost done, just the washout tomorrow after it batches overnight but I thought I’d post a couple of pictures of the process just so I could have something to blog about.

The first part of getting the material ready was to dye it Dharma’s lemon yellow – MX-8G. This is truely an almost neon type of yellow. To bright for my taste but it does give some neat results depending on what you use it for.

The next step was to wrap the fabric around some glass marbles and tie them off with rubber bands. I started out with the flat type of marbles that people use in aquariums and vases but I ran out after two bags so then switched to round marbles.

Marbles in cloth held in place with rubber bands.

The idea of tying off the marbles is to create a resist with the rubber bands. I’ve done this before. What I did last time was to just plunk the whole thing down into a vase and fill it with dye. When the piece came out and the rubber bands removed I had a purple piece of cloth with rough circles of the resisted colour. This time around I wanted to try dyeing the top of the marbles one colour and the background another.

I decided the easiest way to do this was to set the piece of cloth onto a plastic lid and apply the dye. As I was arranging the material I realised that it wasn’t going to work exactly as I’d imagined. Somehow I pictured in my mind applying the dye to the top of the marble and then squirting dye onto the fabric below the marble. This is all good but what I didn’t think of was how do you prevent hundreds of marbles from touching each other and the underlying fabric? Anyhow I tried standing the marbles up as best I could.

Fabric placed on a plastic lid with marbles on top as best I could.

Next I applied mixing red MX-5B to the tops of the marbles.

Marble tops applied with mixing red MX-5B

After applying the red I put purple on the background fabric. The purple is one I created from a mixture of the mixing red and colbalt, it’s a nice deep purple but I’m not sure what it will look like when it hits the yellow.

Purple dye applied to the fabric background.

I re-applied a bit more of the red to the tops of the marbles to try and re-inforce the colour as the purple did hit the tops somewhat. It should be interesting to see how it all washes out. I’ve used the lemon yellow and purple before and because the yellow looks almost neon it does some neat things to the purple but having said that I don’t think I’ve used this colour of purple with the yellow so we’ll see. Also the purple is not as saturated as it was when I did the low water immersion piece, it might not be that purple. I figured the tops of the marbles would turn out an orange colour because red and yellow give orange but who knows. Regardless, I’ll have yellow rings on the fabric from the rubberband resist.

Karen

Swarovski Bracelet

Well I have four days to go until the wedding. I have been busy doing various stuff getting ready running around doing chores. Just thought I would post a picture of a bracelet I made from one of the local bead shops in town.

Swarovski crystal bracelet in moonlight and black diamond.

Same bracelet I like to wear them loose.

I ended up making two of these. The first one I had made for myself but it went so well with my daughter’s wedding dress and she liked it that I made another one. The second has a nicer clasp on it and the wire is softer so it drapes a bit better.

It was hard to get the shiney bling bling in the photos but its very sparkly so I guess thats a good thing

Karen

Batik Fish Pillow

One of my fabric dyeing forums recently had a resist swap where participating members traded in fat eights of their favorite resist method and one of the pieces I received back was a beautiful piece of batik that the owner had created in a workshop she’d done this year.

Needless to say I was flabbergasted to get such a beautiful piece of fabric and I immediately wanted to do something with it. I have to admit this is probably the first time that I’ve ever had the urge to create something right away with a piece of material I’ve gotten. Usually I get ideas but put them off but this one I had to do something with. It just screamed pillow to me and that’s what I did.

My house has limited wall-space as it’s very open and I wanted to make something that could be seen by any visitors so the pillow seemed a logical choice. I got lucky in picking out the matching fabric and cording from the local Walmart that was closing down their fabric department so I probably paid less than five dollars, which made me happy.

Batik fish pillow

Pillow on couch in family room. Kitty wondering why mom is disturbing his sleep with flashing camera lights.

Much thanks to Kathy for sharing her marvellous creation.

Karen

Just a quick post…

To say hello and post a link my son sent me. I’m kinda stoked about it because some of my fabric made it on TV. If any of you have been following my blog then you’ve seen the pictures I’ve recently posted of my son’s redsuit. (Somewhat redundant as I guess the pictures are just below – has it been that long since I last posted, seems like forever)

CHCH News clip

The pants do look good if I do say so myself.

Karen