A Day of Dyeing!

 Yesterday was a lovely day of dyeing with Dianne at her home which was an ideal setup for dyeing inside which I can't do here.  She had a whole bunch of Dharma dyes in a lovely assortment of colors but not what I am used to (I used pretty much "pure" dyes which I get from ProChem and do my color mixing myself).  It was great fun to experiment with the two blacks that she had, both of which were great.  We did the standard gradation dyeing with 1/2 yard pieces of fabric.  We decided we would like to see some of the "mushing" effect so instead of putting dry fabric scrunched up in the baggies, we wet the fabric down thoroughly before adding them into the baggies filled with the dyes.  We started with a cup of  chemical water (urea water) with one tbsp of dye dissolved in it.  (For the one half yard pieces, we first put a 1/2 cup of the dye in the first bag, filled the cup of dye solution up to the one cup mark again, dumped half in the second bag etc. through 8 baggies -- we used gallon plastic bags which I reuse  until they develop holes.)  I really like the variegated look.  This was Dharma Black 39 and a straight gradation.

This was a variation on the gradation theme.  I did a gradation of Dharma Blueberry and then added 1/8 cup of the New Black dye solution to each of the baggies.  In retrospect, I probably would have used less of the black than the 2 tbsps per baggie as it was pretty intense.  The New Black gives a great grey while the Black 39 does give a great charcoal but in the lighter shades I can see a teense of green.  Blacks usually bias to one color on another and as they age, they also change as the reds they used to make it seem to age the worst.  I was extremely pleased with these although I would like more yardage.  I am actually going to order some dyes as Dianne wants to dye some more -- Yay!!!!

These were all the baggies lined up in their tubs while we waited for them to "cook".

This is Dianne's dog Sophie who made sure we were doing everything right.  She has the prettiest face I think.  She was a rescue dog from a puppy mill and had had a rough life but now has the easy life with Dianne.

Of course no visit to a quilter is complete without showing some of the quilts adorning her walls.  She used to work for the Foreign Service and has wonderful exotic prints from her last assignment in the Cameroons.  She also was stationed in Italy and Katmandu, Napal!!  

This is her African Ladies showcasing many more of those wonderful prints.

I loved this use of the brightly colored prints and may just do one like this using my marbled fabrics which stump me many times.

Loved the beautiful colors and of course the hexagons!!

Hard to see, but this is a picture of the partial solar eclipse we saw here on the east coast last week.  The pelicans flying by were just icing on the cake for me.  You have to look closely at the right side of the sun to see the chunk that is missing.