Marbling Mania!

Well, as I knew would happen, the Okey Doaky quilt top was finished by Sunday night. This was even with the help of my orange kitten who pounced and attacked the pattern, quilt and sewing machine with great glee! When he tired out, he found a nice soft place on the sewing machine table and slept. It is clear he doesn't want me out of his sight, just in case I may put down another can of food for him.

Then of course I did marble what was left of treated fabric and socks -- not much but I did treat another five yards of fabric today so tomorrow.....

I am relatively happy with these socks. Think they look better in person. The color is relatively evenly distributed. It is hard to coordinate my two hands moving in opposite directions across the tray getting these socks covered. Doing one at a time just doesn't work!

These were definitely Easter egg colors today!!

An Okey Doaky Class!

Well, Saturday was spent in a paper piecing class with Carol Doak who is without a doubt the final word on paper piecing!! She has taught for many, many years and is a wealth of knowledge and techniques and approaches paper piecing like an industrial engineer! She can tell you how minutes you save by doing each individual step in a certain way and get perfect results besides! This is the wall hanging we were striving for.

Anyway, I took the class just for fun and to see if there were any cool tips she had and yes, there were! Of course, I didn't follow directions and Carol undid my mistake (which was a big one which I compounded). She was very patient and spent time with everyone in the class which is a big plus in my book!

I also chose to make up my own variation of her pattern which seemed to puzzle her but I like it! The piece is based on patterns from her last book called "Simply Sensational Nine Patch Stars" and is a very clever approach. Mine is the block above. I left out the diagonal stripes on the outside and used the same background in the stars as the border fabric.

Below I have the different versions done in the class. As usual, overachiever that I am, I am halfway done the rest of the blocks that make up the wall hanging!! The rest will get done this afternoon so the top should be done by tomorrow -- you can get a lot done when there is no husband around for awhile!

Etc.

Okay, twice in one day -- that's dedication. This azalea did nothing for the first 25 years of it's life and then we moved it. It has amply rewarded us for the past two years!!

I couldn't resist sharing my latest marbled pieces. I am at one with my size and can't stop myself. I also did four pairs of socks and finally got a couple that were okay (I am a bit of a tough critic). So now I have to order more socks from Dharma!! I still have some thin socks to do and they do marble beautifully.

I do love the colors of these three pieces a lot!! Double click for a closer view. Each one is a fat quarter -- that is what the past few days of pieces have been. These were all made using just one Golden red, one bright blue and the white mixed with my Pro Chem pigments to get yellow. I just mix willy-nilly. Can't even remember now which of the colors is faster but they all behave pretty much the same.

This was literally made with the dregs of the paints so I was mixing all my mixed colors together, thus getting the gold (lavender mixed with yellow) and of course the turquoises (just a teense of yellow with the blues). Great, great fun and satisfies my appetite for color.

GVQC and Marble Mania Yet Again!

Our May meeting was held yesterday with Carol Doak as our speaker and featured teacher. The Club surprised me by making me a lifetime honorary member and presented me with a dozen beautiful roses as well! This is a very nice group of women and I am soooo glad Janet Root got me to join ten years ago! Retirement has been very busy ever since and I have gone off in directions never dreamed of ten years ago when I was in my stress filled corporate job.

This is Carol Doak's legacy quilt which contains 300 of her blocks. This is just a fraction of it.

This is a peak at the quality of quilt that will be in our June show at RIT. It will be huge with over 40 vendors as well as around 800 quilts altogether!!

Another beautiful example of a quilt which hopefully will be in the show next month!

This woman fell in love with redwork after taking a class in this with Betty Alderman a few years ago at GVQC. It is a beautiful alphabet quilt.

These were three blocks made by our extremely talented Ann Nash. These blocks were from the Kumiko Sudo books.

Of course I have been marbling again, trying to get some decent looking socks and almost succeeded with one pair. I love being back in my basement with my bigger tray and more predictability with the marbling. I am beginning to suspect that another culprit in my poor showing in the class was that I didn't stir my size enough initially as I did mine last and therefore was interrupted to hear the directions for the day. Oh well -- it is all a learning and humbling experience.

Tomorrow I am taking a class from Carol Doak and intend to have fun and not follow directions (of course).

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Freezer

Well, the mad marbler is at it again!! After three days, I was totally exhausted and had a good long nap the following day (the kitties were keeping me awake at night as well). I did manage to pour the leftover methocel into my tray at home and as I was passing by yesterday, decided it was time to do the leftover socks that I had "alum-ed" for the class.

I have decided one of the main differences between the class conditions and my home marbling is the size of the tray! At home, I use a tray that can easily fit a fat quarter while I was using a tray about 14 x 18" in class. I do think that made quite a bit of difference. I did two pairs of socks yesterday as well as four prints and didn't have to use any surfactant at all. In fact, I used some of the slower paints to slow down some of the speedier ones. I didn't have any yellow left in my stash here so mixed up some using my white and the Pro Chem liquid pigments -- worked great! Looks like I will be able to finally use up a lot of my old stuff.

Of course I felt compelled to alum all the remaining socks I had! So there will be a lot of marbled socks in my future!

These are three of the four prints I did after they dried and were sitting on my car! The fourth print was a "ghost" print which is the second print taken from the same marbling tray without adding any paint.

A Goodbye Wave to Elin!

No, this is not a marbled piece, but is a picture of the bottom of the tray and the elusive color that sits there immobile and worthless, although one woman in the class used paper towels to sop up some of hers!!

These are some of the socks that we marbled today -- what fun!! I didn't do that last summer during the class but was bound to do them this time!

These are my nice new marbled socks which I have decide whether to keep or gift to my youngest daughter! I may make some more SOON!

This is Elin who has just finished marbling one of the many fun things people brought in to marble!! There were also two bras, a few pairs of sneakers, scarves and many pairs of socks -- we will be a very colorful bunch of women and the folks of downtown Webster must have been very curious about what was going on as we had everything hanging outside today!

So we send Elin off to her next teaching assignment with a "Noble" wave doing the tango and being in the present! It is a treat and an honor to spend any time with this wonderful, intelligent, wise teacher!! She is the best for any of you who want to learn about dyeing of any kind or marbling fabric or paper! You won't regret taking a class from her!

Mother's Day Marbling!

What better way to spend a cold Mother's Day in Rochester than marbling with a group of like minded women! The weather was chilly but almost everyone brought in one of those indoor hanging racks so there was plenty of space to hang our pieces. Elin cracked the whip today and pushed us through our paces -- no letting up even even for such an important national holiday (especially for us new grandmothers)!

These pieces on the side were what I did yesterday. My size and I were not communicating well and I was using paints that are not my favorite -- not a good combination. It is obvious that you need to relax and be reflective to do this well. Today went a bit better but I am playing trying to push myself a little.




These two pieces were from today and the one on the left was a complete surprise! I had just let the paints float around where they wanted to at lunch and obviously some stuff came up from the bottom and the commotion in the room made it circular in nature. Double click to see better. I managed two pieces like this -- very different from anything I have gotten before (although the colors and softness were not). I learned today that I dip way too much to get the methocel out of the pieces!

This is Elin trying to make sure we understand how this all works. We spent some time today analyzing various issues and successes people were having. We are all having an absolute ball! She is such a knowledgable and sharing teacher!!
These were pieces from someone else in the group.
Here is Sarah who arranged for this wonderful class with her pieces in the background. Sarah also was having problems yesterday (as I was) and we decided it was stress about meeting people's expectations about the class and facility.


In the evening, Julie invited us all out to her magnificent house on Lake Ontario with views to die for!! Off in the distance (of course), I saw birds and think this is a common merganser (which I haven't seen before up on the lake). Warren saw a lot of loons when he was kayaking the other day.

This is the view from any of the rooms in the back of the house!!

Julie's husband is a general practice physician who somehow finds time to do stained glass as well. This is one of many windows, decorative elements and lamps he has done. He is obviously as talented as his lovely wife!!