Thanks Lotti! I was just wondering as I was posting a comment on your B/W quilt, what are you going to make with all the blue fabrics you are collecting? And is it going to be a blue and white quilt or just all blues?

Rita, what a wonderful floral appliqué. Thank you for putting in that butterfly - flowers are so much more 'so' if there's a bug present... Well you know that I'm bonkers about beasties that hang out in and near flowers, well the butterfly, bumblebee and honeybee type of beasties anyway Welcome back

Okay what is going on here? I go away for a few days and suddenly your have all turned into alchemists! Maureen it was great to see the photos of the Chinese Whispers quilts from this years show at Loch Lomond. What a fascinating progression it took. Lots of room for artistic license thank goodness.

As for all the beautiful dyed fabrics... what a wonderful collection. Terrie, I bought myself a bolt of plain off white cotton from Ikea and used that to dye lots of different colours. I did the low-immersion method and had mixed results. I also just used Dylon because that's all I can get here. Thanks for the links to the UK companies for Procion dyes and cotton for dying Maureen they will be useful. It is great fun dying your own fabric as you never know quite how it will end up. I used one of my own hand-dyes for the borders on my Laura Nownes quilt and I used the same fabric on the back. Here's a link: http://www.thequiltshow.com/os/classes_image.php/classes_images_id/1118/classes_id/1028

My thoughts were that if it was not good enough to use in a quilt I could always just use it as the backing for a quilt. And the Ikea fabric is 54" wide so that is big enough for a small quilt. I also used some of my own fabrics on the Primitive Blocks quilt challenge. Here's a link: [url]see-quilts/show-and-tell-quilts/[/url]

I could be very easily tempted to do some more fabric dying but I think I would want to get some of the proper cotton for dying fabric rather than just the Ikea stuff. So I would need a little time to get my act together.

As for what I have been doing, well i finished my floral applique piece that I started ages ago and turned it into a cushion cover. Here's a photo:

I also took away with me and finished making about 150 3/4" hexies for a project I will be working on for the a long while to come.

Marilyn I am glad that you are getting a bit of a respite now and hopefully it will continue.

Now back to quilting my Sampler.

Wow Lotti those colours are fabulous, I can only aspire to a collection like that

Lottie, I love your dyed fabrics especially the silks. I have dyed silk as well and the colors are georgous.
One day I will use them in something.

Lotti - What wonderful colors! I especially love the silks, too! I have plans to do more with silks, starting with some wholecloths, but I'm sticking with commercially dyed fabrics for now. Although I'd love to dip into yours!

Nancy

twiglet wrote:
Wendy, I think you will find that Rosemary used indigo dye, not Dylon for her scarf.

Actually, i think that most of limbania's stages are part of the rinsing process, and how ever much fun the dying is, there is a lot of rinsing involved in hand-dying. But finding out how the fabric has actually turned out is oh so worth it.

When I had my course last year, we did mainly plain colors in various shades (using procion dyes, with the fabric soaked in soda-ash water beforehand to get it to "take" the dye), I.e. we took half the original dye mixture of 1 cup for a color bath, filled the remainder up to a cup with water, took half again for the next piece of fabric, filled remainder up to a cup, used half for next piece, etc, can be done 3-6 times before the dye mixture becomes too weak... (any extra dye mixture was collected in a separate container after each bath)... We did this with a few different colors and after we had finished we spread one large fabric piece of about 2 yards or so out on a double layer of plastic sheeting ( the kind used to protect furniture when painting ), scrunching the fabric up a bit in some places and leaving a good bit of plastic on each side, then four people held up the edges so the dye would not run all over the place and we poured all the collected dye leftovers onto the fabric willy nilly, trying to cover all fabric bits and not getting too much of the color over each other (as we didn't want to end up with a brown piece)., we then covered it up in another piece of plastic sheeting and folded the edges in from all sides to make a nice bundle, put the bundle in an old plastic bag and left it to cure for 24 hours...
The next day I got to rinse all the fabric bits.... Lots and lots and lots of rinsing.... But oh what wonderful fabrics... I especially love the silks, and the 'leftover- bit isn't all bad either...
I'll try to add a picture or three - gotta find em first...

it's amazing how much difference the type of fabric makes to the brightness of the resulting fabric.
i used my grandma's old duvet covers - some were mercerized cotton - some cotton batist - these give great designs as the the color appears different depending on the weave.
i used some of her old bed sheets - fairly rough - more loosely woven cotton
i used some new - but cheapish cotton - both of these use lots and lots and lots of dye
i used very tightly woven cotton - more batik like (these have great colors - but take a bit of work to absorb them)


and i love the dyed bits of old lace - these are great for embellishing

and my lovely lovey lovely silks - it will be quite some time till these get cut into
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sorry - colors much brighter in person , and the multi-colored "leftover-piece" is gone - i used it in my friend rosemary's quilt. i used strips from all the other fabrics in there too - all except the silks that is

Great fabrics and scarf. I can see the difference now between Maureen's vibrant pieces and Rosemary's more subtle shades using the Dylon.

Limbania your method has far too many stages for me

Super cool! Thanks for the photos! They are way cool! I definitely have the dyeing bug now. 3-day quilting retreat in two weeks, then Houston, then recover, then Christmas, then 2014. THEN dyeing! If the fabric exchange doesn't appear before then, I think I'll be up for it!

I'm wondering which of the many projects I'll bring to the retreat : Maybe the spools/reels.. .

Thanks for the links, Lotti - BTW did you see the beach hut quilt on the main page? Made me think of you

That is really cool, Rosemary!

Just reading the last post and realised that I was wearing a piece of hand dyed, so I gave it a quick once over & photographed it for you lot. It started life as a (bed) pillow case, which I took to an indigo dyeing class (which I got from a friend, in exchange for some sewing ) It had a fancy embroidered end, so I copied the design onto the other end using running stitch & whip stitch pulled up tight, ran out of time so I just tied a knot in the middle and added it to the vat. I love how it has come out and it makes a great scarf.{!-- ia0 -->CIMG7034.JPG{!-- ia0 -->
think I should have let the iron warm up a bit more

Here's what I think would be fun. You folks that are already into it post, like Maureen has just done, what you've done, how you did it and the results. The rest of us could learn from that and join in as we have time and collect the things we need. It sounds as if a few of you have your own hand dyed fabric sitting on the shelf just waiting to find a new home in someone else's quilt. Looks like Maureen, Lambina and maybe Rosemary could post an exchange today. I remember Rita mentioning using her own hand dyed fabric for the backing of a quilt. Maybe she has some on hand too.

BTW, thank you Maureen for posting those beautiful, beautiful pieces of fabric.

Maureen - Your hand-dyes are luscious!! I can understand why you have difficulty cutting into them!

Nancy