Procrastinating caftan

Well!! I have been tossing this white rayon caftan aside, into drawers and anywhere else that I can't see it. WHAT can I possibly do with this HUGE caftan. I think it was a case of "white page fear".
Yesterday I decided to dye some sports bars that I recently purchased (more WHITE) that needed lots and lots of color. I also dyed burlap, scrim, cotton thread both embroidery and pearl and corn husks which didn't come out. I learned a  very important lesson.

Lesson learned:
When you soak fabric in soda ash and use your high speed spinner to extract all the soda ash, you need tons more dye than if you had just hand squeezed out the soda ash.

What happened:
After squirking ALL the dye I had made up on two measley sports bars, a small piece of burlap, an even smaller piece of scrm and two small hanks of floss I ended up filling a spray bottle with soda ash to try to get the dye to MOVE.

After Lesson:
I wrang out the caftan by hand (slightly drippy) laid it out on my open trash bag, did my gathery thing and squirted dye which to my delight wicked and spread through the rayon. See me smiling?

The reults:

 

close-up of caftan draped as only rayon can...

Aidan my Springer who knows what to do when anyone shows up with a camera!

Later that day I soda soaked 5 yards of white cloth for a new technique I am working on (stay tuned). T H A T is an appropriate use of a high speed spinner. The fabric was dry, folded and put aside for another play day within a hour. I think I loved my high speed spinner just a bit too much. When used for the correct thing, it is invaluable but when not...learn from my lesson.

Spring Flowers

I renamed the "spring 9 patch" after dyeing more fabric for another improvisational quilt about spring air. I have not started on this. I am doing a parfait dye for the technique driven blog I am involved with called And then we set it on fire  As I type I am over-dyeing 6 pieces of black and white fabric using yellow (bottom), blue (middle), and red (top) dyes in a parfait for the blog. Photos will be added to THIS post later today so if they're not here check back in a few hours.
I lost a good friend this week. She was a lovely lady I stayed nights with for 3 years and her loss has left a bit of a hole in my heart. I wanted to do a mindless piece of quilting to just let my mind spin in neutral so I made a pin cushion out of scraps from Spring Flowers. It was the first piece I made using paper piecing. It was fun and just what the doctor ordered. I got the pattern from the Kemshalls, Thr3fold Journal #4.

Meanwhile...
Here are the pieces I dyed Parfait style. What a bust. They are too primary even though I added a pinch of black to knock back the colors. Not every experiment is a success.

                                                      These are embroidery threads I added

                                                       This one I like.

the FIVE at play

Well. We had another playdate thanks to Veterans Day - Judith could come!! First, the big news our 50 yards of silk charmeuse came today with other play things from the west coast (Dharma).

Now all I have to do is measure and cut this 50 yards into 10 yard pieces.

During our play date, Marcella from Rockland came and brought me a surprise gift of two shirts from her wonderful store, Mace's, in downtown Rockland (Maine). I buy all my hippie shirts from her and they are known as my summer "uniform". She brought me a pale yellow shirt which I tray dyed with blue, turquoise, green and brown. You can't tell from the picture but it looks like an oil slick (in a good way). It's almost iridescent looking. VERY nice. Thank you Marcella.

 

 She also brought a robins egg blue shirt which I decided to batik with dye - much more traditional than my painted batiks. It is unbelieveable. I applied the wax with a tool that I think looks like a baked potato. Then I over dyed it in khaki. Please don't groan until you see the final outcome.

This is the blue shirt with khaki dye and the next wax applied with a rectangular sponge. See the dark shapes?

Judith did a black gradation which we read about on Melody Johnson's blog. You can check Judith's blog for her pics. Here are a few of mine:

I also dyed some embroidery floss and I also bought a gilded feather wreath which is fabulous so I MUST share!

I LOVE my playmates!

dyeing from the heat

Is this HOT summer ever going to end? I moved to Maine 31 years ago to get away from the heat but this summer it seems to have found me. Well at least I can spend the time rinsing dyed fabric in cool water. Here is my last batch. The pictures look a bit weird and I am not loving the auto setting on my new camera. Must experiment!

The tray dyes are fabulous and I will do more of them after the SAQA event. I learned to dye embroidery thread with each color from Laura and Linda Kemshall and Design Matters TV