Friday, September 9, 2016

Some New Colors Added to the Palette for Mandalas

I finally finished quilting the Reject Mandala quilt.  I didn't use the flash for this picture so the color is  bit off but you can see the quilting in the white area.  There is some quilting in the mandala pieces but you can't see it.  I didn't do any quilting in the border and I have now added a darker green binding and will sew that on tonight.

In addition to the 12 mandalas I did, I did five t-shirts for my granddaughter using her favorite color -- turquoise!  I wasn't sure whether it would work even with the step I take of nuking it at the end.  Obviously it did!  All the t-shirts have two shades of blue and grape so hopefully she will like them!!  She is 7 and not yet as picky as some of the older kids.  The t-shirts did confirm my belief that the Kmart t-shirts dye the best.  These were okay but not as bright as those I do with the Kmart Basic Editions shirts.  These were from a dye house and were Hanes heavy but very reasonably priced.

 The Following six pieces were done adding Strongest Red (Prochem name for a non-pure red) that was probably six or seven years old.  I was worried that it would leave spots on the fabric so I put a drop cloth on top of some old stained 200 thread count muslin that was stored near my dye area.  I also used turquoise on some of these although not so much on this bunch.  I was thrilled with the results.  I did add a little Strong Orange and Sun Yellow as well.  They were scrunched six to a cookie rack stacked at least two deep.







 These next six were done using the Intense Blue, the greens and Turquoise.  I was very pleased with the results.  I was afraid this whole bunch of 12 wouldn't turn out because I was experimenting with new colors and was using my best pfd fabric (Hoffman 1377).  I was overwhelmed with the results.






 These were two of the drop cloths I used.  I believe the first one was the one I covered the fabric with and the second was underneath the more colorful mandalas. The fabric is definitely not mercerised but the color was nice and it covered up all the spots that I had splashed on this fabric and was a good use of it!

2 comments:

Laura McGrath said...

Gorgeous, I especially love the green/blue ones. Do you get your 1377 fabric anywhere online? I've never heard of it, of course I'd love to try it out now.

Elizabeth said...

Everyone loves the blue/greens! I wish I could find the fabric online! The only place I have ever found it was in Mennonite quilt shop that sold lots of batiks. It is the fabric that Hoffman batiks use for their batiks. There was one spot online but it was pricey. I used to find it really reasonably cheaply but it isn't cheap even at my Mennonite quilt shop.