Friday, August 26, 2016

Back At It Again!! More Mandalas and Purses!

Still staying with the palette I have been playing with this summer -- Intense Blue, Grass and Leaf Green and Sun Yellow with a little Basic Blue.  I have continued the stacking of two mandalas and with this batch, I smushed them a bit as well (not laying them perfectly flat as before).  This one was a nice Kona cotton and the one below was an old piece of muslin which I used as my top piece.  These were pretty close in color but  you can see the effect of the ice more on the top piece.


You can actually see a couple of spots on this one where the soda ash didn't take for some reason even though soaked for a day!

These next two were a pair also, muslin on the bottom..  


You can see those little spots here as well.


Again another pair but I like both of these a lot!

This is one of the top ones that I thought was really effective!

The next two were not a pair but the better of the two pieces in the pair (although they were all pretty good in my estimation).


This is one of the muslin pieces.  Definitely like the Kona cotton better.  It was heavier than I usually use and it seemed to take up the dye very well through all these layers (16 + the drop cloth which is smushed up).

This is the array of all plus one (couldn't find a format for the collage that allowed all the pairs to be shown to their best advantage).  You should be ale to pick out all the pairs here!

This was one of the mandalas from the other day that was really not symmetrical so I cut it into fours squares and will insert the green and blue pieces and then hopefully will square with something to be determined.  It certainly improves the piece IMHO.  I also switched the pieces from their original configuration and cut off edges (it was one of those not carefully cut pieces that was much longer than wide).

 In the afternoons waiting for the mandalas and t-shirts to "age", I am continuing to work on purses with a fall theme.  These are the latest two.  I had the camera settings a bit off so the color is a little off on these.  I am working my way through Inspector Lewis while I am doing this.  I have recently gotten a hearing aid, so am actually falling the plots a lot better than before even though the sewing machine sounds a lot louder!!


I have made two of each of these purses (although their are differences in the linings most of the time).  I have four more to go before I have to buy some more fusible fleece and decide what fabrics to use.  I have quite a stash of upholstery faux suede at this point and noticed the latest Joanns ad said that all drapery fabric was on sale EXCEPT the faux suede!  Hope that isn't because of all I have bought lately and it is not a new trend!  When on sale with another 20% off the total order, it is very reasonably priced -- I even ordered some online of the more popular colors.







2 comments:

  1. I just love your mandalas Beth and want to try it for myself. I have a couple of questions though. What are you using for grates? Also, can you guess how much dye powder you put down?

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  2. I use cookie racks for my grates. I found plastic boxes that they sit in nicely. I have no idea how much dye powder I am using to tell you the truth -- I am sure it is a lot but I have been trying to use up some very old dyes as well so even if I did know, it probably wouldn't accurately effect the amount of dye needed. I was telling someone recently that it is at a subconscious level at this point as each batch gets better and better without much science or effort on my part. I have two more batches to post this week!!

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