Green Cascade quilt

A small quilt I can create within 2-3 days. If the size is bigger, it will take longer, but this quilt holds the record :-). I posted about this ice cube dyed fabric in this post of October 11, 2013 and about the quilting in this post of Augst 16, 2014. And after that I needed time to think about what I wanted to do with the quilt.

I knew that I wanted it to be more textural, but the cord I had dyed with the fabric was not usable. The centre of the cord was cotton fiber, but it was covered with a polyester net. I found other 100% cotton cord and dyed this. The scary part was to punch holes through the quilt. Originally the fabric was approximately 40" long and the widt of the fabric but as you can see the final result is much smaller. The cords pulled up the fabric creating this rippling which I love.

As I want to see this on a bigger scale I snow dyed a 3 yard piece of fabric in a different color scheme. Here is a picture of half the fabric:

 I did this last month and at the moment the quilt is waiting to be quilted. Hopefully this will not take as long as the green one :-)

last snow dyeing of the season

With a bit of luck we had the last snow of this season last week. Everything is melted now. I took advantage of the snow and these are some of the fabrics I created:

Don't ask me which colors I used as most of the time I just pick a couple of containers. I do know that I used avocado and a blue from Dharma and an old black from G&K. Plus some other colors as well. For the first 2 pictures I scrunched the fabric, for the blue piece I accordion folded it.

Snow

Winter is for people who live on the frozen tundra synonym for snow, but here in the Netherlands yesterday was the second day this winter that we had snow. And if you happen to be a dyer like I am, you have to take advantage of this snow :-). Here are two pictures of fabric I dyed:

There are different ways of using snow as a resist, but in this case I packed presoaked fabric into a colander, put snow on top of it and poured dye concentrate over it, added a bit more snow and some more concentrate. This I left till all the snow had melted. After this I put the fabric into a closed container in the microwave for twice 2 minutes. Took it out, opened the container - the steam is very hot!! - washed it with cold water, followed with hot and some syntrapol.

snow

This is how my garden looked yesterday morning. A - for Dutch standards - thick layer of snow had fallen. Not my favorite type of weather.
The only attractive part of it, is that I can snow dye. Here is a picture of one of the pieces of fabric I dyed this weekend:

There are 5 more of them, but I am not going to show you all of them now. Partly because it might be boring, partly because I have not yet ironed them:-). All pieces are roughly 1/2 yard wide.

snow dyeing

This piece of fabric I dyed for Sally. She requested a purple color. Well snow dyeing is not an exact science. With mixed colors you will get separation of the colors which are used in that specific mix. For this piece of fabric I used blue/violet and lila, both Procion MX dyes. By looking at the separation I am presuming that lilac is a diluted pure purple color either Boysenberry MX-BR or Grape MX- GN. The separation of the blue/violet is clearly visible. This piece is 46" (1,15 mtr) wide.

snow

Winter is starting early this year. When I saw the first snow flakes falling a couple of days ago, my first reaction was saying a couple of words my mother never taught me :-). On the other hand it gives me a chance to do some snow dyeing. Here are the first 2 pieces of fabric I did. The first one is dyed with Moccha and the second one with Kilt Green. As both these dyes are mixed and not pure MX colors, you see the separation of the colors.

At the moment I am dyeing two new pieces of fabric in their colanders.

snow and ice

Two different techniques, but they are related. For the piece on the left side I used snow on top of soda soaked fabric (not frozen), the piece on the right was soda soaked and frozen before I poured on the dye. As you can see when the fabric is frozen, you get a much more crystalline pattern.


Here are two other pieces of fabric on which I used the same techniques.

It is also possible to put snow on top of frozen soda soaked fabric. I cannot say how the result is when you do it like that, as I have not tried that. Here the snow is now gone, so hopefully I will not have the chance to try this one out before December :-)

more snowdyeing

In our average winter we have maybe 5 days of snow during the winter, especially the last few had very little snow. This winter is the exception. Since December 40 days of snow have been counted. What else can you do in a winter like that but snow dyeing :-). Here are pictures of the two halfyard pieces I did this week. I used fuchsia, sage and pearl grey as colors.

snow dyeing

Like so many other people I have been taking advantage of the snow we have here. No need now to use my snow cone machine :-). Here are 3 samples of what I dyed today. I used two variations of this technique. For the top two pictures I used a container instead of my usual colander. There was no way that the melting snow could get away. The results surprised me a bit, I had thought that there would be more even colored fabric as the dye/melted snow mixture would have been into contact with the fabric for a longer period.

The third piece was done using a colander. For these 1/5 yard pieces I used Sage, Musk Melon and Pearl Grey.

and some more snow dyeing

Some more results of the snow dyeing I did earlier this week. All pieces are approximately half yard's pieces of fabric. I did not keep notes on all of them, but I know that the top green one is Aventurijn, the purple next to it is Dharma's plum. The blue one is a mixture of 2 different blues. Of both I had a little bit remaining in the container and I just mixed them up. One was bright blue and the other might have been peacock. The reddish to the left is also a mixture. It is probably Chinese red with nickle.

Temperature has gone up a bit and the snow is melting. Maybe this was the last dyeing I can do this winter with real snow?

snow dyeing

Having snow is not that usual here, but since Thursday the world here is white. It looks very pretty, but I can't say that I like it. The good thing is that it gives me a chance to dye with real snow - instead of having to crush ice. Here are two pieces of fabric I dyed yesterday. On both I used a high percentage of dye concentrate. I did not measure it exactly, but it is around 15%.

As I was dyeing for fun I did not record which dye powder I used for which piece of fabric. On purpose I used mixed dyes, because with them you can see the breaking down of the different colors so well. I presoaked the fabric, scrunched it and put it into a colander. On this I put as much snow as the colander could take and poured the dye mixture over it. This I put on my kitchen sink. It took about 4 hours before the snow was melted. To boost the colors I microwaved each piece of fabric for 2 minutes. I noticed if you do not do this, the colors are much paler.

snow dyeing

As promised, here are the pictures of my other snow dyed pieces. In reality the colors are a bit paler than the pictures show but I have been told that when I nuke the fabric after the snow has melted the colors will be more intense. Never thought I would say this, but I am hoping for more snow the coming days :-).

For these 1/2 yard pieces I used mulberry and deep purple with some nickel. With 'normal' lwi you can predict the colors you will get, but I have found out that with snow dyeing this is much more a surprise.

still life and snow

I finished the quilting on my b/w still life. As the quilting is also done in black and white showing a picture of the front would not have been very helpful. Therefore I am showing you two pictures of the back so that you can see the quilting lines. I used a variety of designs.

I was told that the last couple of days it was not possible to click on the pictures to get a larger image. Hopefully that glitch has been solved.

Another thing I did today was some snow dyeing. When I woke up this morning I saw that there was snow, not much only 0,5" or so but enough to try out this technique. Dyeing friends of mine in the US have lots of opportunities to snow dye, but for me it was my first chance. This picture shows you my tray filled with fabric, snow and dye mixture. It took the snow 4 hours to melt and at the moment the fabric is soaking. I was able to gather more snow for a second piece. Pictures will follow later this week.