A Day of Dyeing at Dianne's!

Before I came to the beach this year, I gathered most of my pfd fabric so I could get some dyeing done down here.  I couldn't do any this summer because of the surgery.

This is my second day of dyeing and I was experimenting with this new blue -- ProChem's Blue 420 which is a new color and which I am not sure still whether it is a pure dye or not.  It is not noted as such on their website.  I did three gradations using this color in combination with other colors to see if I could recreate some other colors.  I had a day of mixed successes.

This gradation is a gradation of this blue (starting with 6%) with a 3% concentration of yellow added to half and 1 1/2% concentration added to the other half.  It is actually greener than this picture portrays. 

This is the same blue but with a 2% solution of ProChem's Mixing Red added to each step.

I thought I would try adding some Black to Grape to see if I could get a more intense purple.  It was not very successful.  I only used a 6% solution of the Grape and a 2% solution of the black and then gradated them together.  I think the black was just too light and tended toward blue.

This was an error!  I mixed the Mixing Red and the Blue 420 together and then did a gradation of that.  I had meant to add the Mixing red to each gradation and did that in the gradation further up in this blog.  This was Mixing Red (2%) and Blue 420 (6%) added together.

Here they are altogether.  I think my next foray into dyeing will be to do gradations of a lot of the miscellaneous mixed dyes I have.  There are quite a few I don't have documented in my book and I hate guessing with dyeing!
 

Some Recent Bird Sightings!

This is a female Hooded Merganser who was with her mate down at Carolina Beach Lake.

This is her male counterpart.  They were quite a distance away.

There were several Kildeer in a small island in by the side of the lake.

A beautiful Snowy Egret!

I went over to Greenfield Lake one day last week as there was supposed to be a Wood Stork hanging out.  I didn't see him but saw a large flock of Great Egrets  It was late in the afternoon so they were really beautiful against their backgrounds.

 

Here is one sitting in the water.

There were also several Pied Billed Grebes as well as an Osprey (I didn't get a good picture of him as he was too far away).

Last but not least is an Eastern Phoebe who was sitting in a tree at my daughter's house.  Before I blew up the picture at home, I thought it was a Yellow Rumped Warbler.  

Birds have been much more scarce this year than other years as there always seems to be people walking around in my favorite sites.  Hard to believe, but there hasn't even been the usual flock of Laughing Gulls that I have always taken for granted.  Covid has increased the population down here on the island substantially this year.  

 

Charity Quilts Finished and on to a New Home

This and the following quilts are all finished and off my hands, donated to a local charity group.  I did manage to hand bind all of them!

 

Before and After - Quilt Finished!

This the finished top for the special little girl.  I call this the "before" picture.

I finished all the machine quilting (all in the ditch around all the images).  I was trimming it up in preparation for adding the purple binding and managed to slice through part of the quilt!!  My rotary cutter never works that well through many layers when I want it too....

Anyway, I cut off the top three rows of the quilt, reattached the border (had to do some piecing as it had to be longer now)  and added some scraps of the backing that I luckily had lef  over as well as some batting.

This is the quilt all finished and it looks better a little shorter and it's  still long enough for a 3 year old!  Ended up being about 40 x 60 inches.

The little girl has a unicorn that she carries everywhere so I took the cut-off part and made a small quilt for the unicorn. 

They were both a big hit but especially the unicorn quilt.

II decided that I would sew these 2 tops together for a good sized quilt for my daughter.  I put black binding on it and am sewing it on and hoping to get it in the mail.  It has music fabric on the back in case she doesn't like this side.  Both she and her husband are into music.

In the meantime, I am madly machine quilting a number of charity quilts.  Hopefully I will have the batting for the 10 baby quilt tops I have finished sometime next week!

 

A Day of Dyeing!!

I have been busily spray basting quilts and doing some  initial machine quilting -- whew!  My Juki 2010Q is a dream to work with.  Even without a walking foot, it does better than my faithful Bernina 170 with nice even quilting.  Right now I am just stabilizing the tops with straight line stitching but look forward to the free motion which I enjoy more.

I spent the day yesterday dyeing with a friend.  I wanted to experiment with mixing Golden Yellow with Sun Yellow to see if I could get something approximating Tangerine (all ProChem names).  I used too high a concentration though so may overdye those darkest pieces.  I use a lot of  yellow in my quilting.   The amazing part to me with the yellows is that they looked a lot more splotchy before I washed them.  They are pretty even in color which is what I expect from yellow.  I did a gradation of a new navy blue that I got from ProChem which I thought was a pure color but isn't noted as such on their website.  I must say that there are no hints of anything but the blue in all the concentrations so maybe.  I like it better than the Deep Navy which is a pure color.  To my eye, this looks like it tends more to the red than the other navy but will have to check my book where I keep my records.  The darkest is an 8% concentration.  The purples are two different mixed dyes from ProChem.  The one I really liked and thankfully have the most of is Eggplant.  It doesn't give as much of a solid as some colors and acts a bit like fuchsia does but you can't spot the colors that make it up.  The Deep Purple on the other hand does break down into its components of red and blue.  I will definitely be ordering some of the Eggplant as I really like it!

Altogether I did 28 yards of fabric yesterday which is nowhere near a record for one day of dyeing!!  (I think 70 is my record but I was younger and did have my ankle problems then.)

Here is a close-up of the Eggplant at about an 8% concentration.  Just the purple I wanted!!  I suspect it is a combination of Grape (a pure color) and one of the blacks.

 

I Spy Done !

I had enough of this Christmas fabric for three quilts this size.  I managed to finish two of them but still need to make the blocks for the third.  I used my hand dyed green for the triangles.

I didn't have enough of the green for the second quilt and decided against the red as I would pre-wash and was too lazy to do that!

The second iteration with more of the white.  I have used up 25 yards of white in my latest binge of quilt making and luckily found another huge bolt of white with the dye stains which I just cut around!!  Bad idea to store the whites in the basement!

Each morning I worked on the I Spy quilt and finally decided that 21 rows were enough -- it was beginning to look too long and skinny.  Sewing the rows together was tedious as each row took about 20 pins to make sure everything lined up.

Took this picture with my phone so a little wonky but the top is finished and I still have blocks left over!  I do overachieve in cutting.  I decided the leftover blocks would make good borders on neo-natal quilts.  They were so much work (all that fussy cutting), I want to use them all!  The top measures 40 x 72.

I have been busy the last two days cutting the backs for all the charity quilts, the I Spy quilt and a big quilt that I think will be a Christmas gift.  I cut batting for all these as well (11 tops altogether).  I have spray basted 7 of these.  I actually have consolidated a bit and have three empty boxes (good sized) so must be making some inroads in getting rid of excess fabric!!

 

I Spy!!

This is the beginning of an "I Spy" quilt for a special girl.  I found these blocks when looking for projects to work on when laid up this summer.  I made two quilts 11 years ago with more of these blocks and have enough left for a good sized quilt for 3 1/2 year old.
 

Making quite a bit of progress on the top  It has been a challenge putting it together as I tried to put pairs together so that I didn't have quite as much variation in the surrounding triangles.  I had randomly added the triangles to the hexagons.  I still have about 10 more rows to go and then I will start sewing the rows together.  I do a little each day but am still trying to make a dent in all those stack and whack blocks I have.  I am currently working on 3 from the same fabric as I had 117 blocks!!

Another top from the blocks that were a little larger than the baby quilt blocks.

This is the baby quilt made from the smaller version of the above blocks.  I have actually been dipping quite a bit into my hand dyed fabric lately for these quilts and may have to dye some more yellow, purple and green!