More FQ's, Halloween quilt progress, new quilt top

I worked all day Saturday on going thru my stash and making more FQ's and some half yard pieces. Here is the box of FQ's and the 1/2 yard box is now overflowing.

Sunday I quilted on the Halloween quilt. I got 5 more blocks quilted and worked on the quilting the border also.

As I was quilting thoughts of what I needed to get done bounced around in my head. I need to get this quilt done by Oct. 31, BUT I need to get two smaller quilts done by early October so I needed to switch gears and start on those two smaller quilts. The first will be made with Yo Gabba Gabba fabric. This is the progress made. I like the way this quilt looks despite the goofy fabric.

The other quilt will be made with Elmo fabric. I dug thru the stash and found some tone on tone fabrics and some polka dot fabrics I will add into the mix.

BLue hand dyes and weekend plans

I worked on the blue hand dyes last evening and my second box of hand dyes is filling up quickly!

I have a few more blues to go thru and some green then the majority of the hand dyes will be wrangled! Here is what is left.

This weekend will be all about finishing up the hand dyes and getting back to quilting the Halloween quilt. To recap on the Halloween quilt, I have 10 blocks out of 30 quilted and part of the bottom striped border quilted. I plan on putting a serious dent in quilting this quilt this weekend.

Have a great weekend!

More hand dyed FQ's and a quilt I saw across the street

I managed to get more FQ's pressed, folded, and stacked in my box. I am going to have to start a third box soon. I have three more stacks of hand dyes to go thru.

Across the street is a junk shop that sells all kinds of stuff. They buy at estate sales and auctions. I saw this ocean waves quilt hanging outside yesterday. It is about a twin sized quilt. It is hand quilted - I forgot to see if it was hand or machined pieced. The batting is thick and the backing is off white fabric that looks a bit like feed sack. The quilt is more striking from a distance and overall is in very good condition. I didn't see any hole or tears. They are asking $165.00 minus 10%.

I like the section in this picture where the background fabric was used with a dark tan color. It looks like the dark tan triangles are floating. I am not a green person, but I do like this quilt.

Hand dyed fabric

Next month I am going to give a presentation to a guild on improv piecing. They are ok with me setting up a table to show some of my hand dyed fabric. I am going thru my hand dyes right now turning them into fat quarters and a few half yard pieces. I haven't been using hand dyed fabric as much and now it will be an opportunity for someone else to make something with them. Here is a picture of one full box of FQ's and the beginnings of another. The small shoe box is the 1/2 yard pieces.

Here is the fabric I still need to wrangle into FQ's. It takes more time than I thought it would. I still have a nice stash for myself on the shelf. I did find that the greens and blues have a tendency to develop fold lines where the color fades out. I don't know if this was due to too much light or not. My fabric storage room now has room darkening curtains that I made so light is not an issue. Before the new curtains I had some flannel covering the windows. I have sorted those pieces out as I have gone thru the fabric and will over dye those sometime in the future.

More dyeing results

I bought some of this stuff call Color Magnet. It comes in a jar and pen form.

I decided to try it out by stamping it but the stuff is like slime or snot and not easy to get to stick to a stamp. I should have bought the pen which has a foam end for applying the product. When I saw stamping was not going to work I decided I would free style it and brush on some stripes. I let the product dry and on Sunday we threw it into one of the dye pots and this is the result.

The spots where I had heavier blobs the dye absorbed more and is darker. It didn't seep threw to the back much. I am going to have to play with this stuff a bit more.

Another technique I showed was putting the dye powder on wet soda ash soaked fabric. This first piece I scrunched the piece - a pinky coral color - and sprinkled on burnt orange. To me it looks like the fabric is rusted.

This next piece I just laid flat and sprinkled the dye powder around. I did spray it with a bit more water. I should have thrown on some salt to see what that would do. I started out with fabric that was pink and threw on hot pink dye powder.

This last piece was also pink and I sprinkled on fuchsia powder. I rolled the fabric and then twisted it. I let it sit for an hour then rinsed.

Saturday's gig and Sunday's dye-palooza

We left my brother's house for the gig at 2 p.m. The band was to play from 6 to 8:30 with a break between sets. We got to the client's house - what a beautiful place! As we were setting up we heard police sirens. I thought we hadn't even started playing and someone called the cops!

As it turned out the police were headed next door. The neighbor was in their backyard, fell down and broke their ankle.

So here are some pictures of the backyard and the band. Since it was a party, things didn't run exactly on schedule. We thought we would be back to my brother's house around 10 or 10:30. I ended up getting to bed at 12:30 a.m. Everybody seemed to have a good time at the party and I sold 12 CD's and a couple of t-shirts. Michael autographed their CD's. One lady said she excited to say once Michael hits the big time that she saw him play at a backyard surprise birthday party.

I got up at 6:30 to get ready for the dye-palooza. I still had tables to set up and some straightening up to do. The dye-palooza went great! It lasted from 9 am to noon. Five women showed up - one with her granddaughter. I had a table set up in the laundry room and then one in the garage. The garage is attached and there are four steps to go up between the two. It worked out great. Five was just the right number. Any more and it would have been too crowded. I will post pictures of the results once we have our monthly meeting on the 28th. In the meantime here are a couple of shots I managed to take. It was hard to take pictures - I was busy trying to make sure everybody had what they needed. I did get one shot of Joanna's fabric after she rinsed it.

After everyone left I tore down the table in the garage and got some lunch. One of the ladies brought me peaches from a local orchard - oh, if you could only smell them! I will be cutting them up tonight. The ladies had cleaning up any mess so other than taking down the table there wasn't anything else I needed to do. Thank you ladies. We all decided that this was a good lesson in understanding why hand dyed fabric costs so much. It is hard work!

Art museum and dye books

We had a huge crowd last evening - much bigger than they expected. The weather was cooler so that brought the people out. Everyone loved the cookies. There were three left.

I managed to finally get the books I wanted to get made up for the dye session on Sunday. It has directions for dyeing that I have collected over the years. I hope I made enough copies.

I have this afternoon and evening to get some more examples dyed and clean up for Sunday's dye session. Saturday I am helping with the band at a surprise birthday party they were hired to play at. It is going to be a busy weekend!

Have a great one!