Indigo play date

Marcella and Jean came over for an indigo play date.

overdyed pink with wooden heart resist

Jean doing arashi shibori dyes

My pipe vent resist. This is for a blouse.

Circles of wax for a batik

Over dyed green

Jean's batik

This was interesting. Jean made a rope bowl with variegated thread. The thread kept skipping stitches so she put both the bowl and lip in the vat

Marcella's

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Resist dyeing (smile)

Re-arranging the rail fence part 2

Well, I fell so deeply in love with this fabric that I wanted to make a blouse as well so I dyed yet a third batch using the same colors...well almost. I had about half the blue but made up new cups of grape and chartreuse. I used it full strength and the colors came out garrish.

Looked good in the box but even I can see the lack of blue

OMG! What a disaster!! I almost never over dye because it just goes from bad to worse. In this case how much worse REALLY could this look. 

This is so hard for me to even look at

I mixed up a liter of water with one tiny teaspoon of blue. I forgot blue has a huge appetite.

 VERY pleased with the results though. Look at that beautiful figuring!!!!!

Above are the overdyed skylight covers drying and below on the skylights

Big difference on the skylight covers. Now they look like a freny forrest 

Re-arranging the rail fence

It was SO hot the last few days and I was looking for a cool, simple summer project to work on. As I was walking through the apartment, I noticed this small quilt I made many years ago called re-arranging the rail fence. It was on DMTV, now called Design Matters Arts and Crafts school. This was the one I originally made which came out very pale.  

I tore a piece of fabric 45 X 90 inches and soaked it in water. After squeezing it as dry as I could, I arranged it in a plastic bin approximately 16 X 24. I pulled it into the bin so that it was scrunched but in as flat a layer as possible.

I mixed up  dye solution 1 T in a cup of water in grape, intense blue and chartreuse

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I applied it to the cloth 1/4 c solution to a cup of water. It came out a bit pale.

90 wide 45 high  washed and ironed

Today I decided to dye another 45 X 90 and use the dye solution full strength

This batch was bolder although it looks lighter than in reality in the photos

Second dyeing above and first dyeing below. Now I have 90 X 90 although a lot will be lost in cutting and seam allowances.

I hope you will sew along with me. This is a cool, easy, fun summer project that you can work on when you want to and at your own pace. The full workshop on dyeing the fabric (easy peasy) and the actual making of the Re-Arranged Rail Fence is right here on Design Matters Arts and Craft School for only 6 BPS or $7.61. There are also other projects in this selection of workshops. I'm hoping you will work along with me and send me your photos so I can put them on the blog. Just contact me using the contact form below or email me at: beth dot from dot maine at gmail dot com.

Jean

My friend Jean came over and brought somew pieces she started last MidSummer Maine plus some woven paper vessels. VERY cool.

This was made with long strips of paste paper

This was woven from an old map painted in matte medium.  

The day after I took these photos she emailed with this bowl made from scraps from Marcella.