How I Came To The Point Of Creating My Ice Dyes-Rerun 2018

These are 3 of my experiments on the journey to create the BEST. I consider the above so-so but it takes a lot of these to achieve the best.
Thanks you to everyone for all your comments about my most recent piece which I consider the BEST of the best Florida Ice.
This never could have happened without a lifetime of learning involving fabrics and color.
Many have asked how I do this and it is not something I can share.
For one thing, the results are serendipitous.
And the other thing is unless you have lived the same life I have for 78 years you will never achieve these results.
I am no longer teaching, but am pursuing my own art.
To attempt to share this would not be fair to myself, nor to people who would try it and not get the results I do.
When I was doing one on one teaching for a fee I had a student ask if she could come and learn everything I knew about color from me in a one day session as she would have to travel a distance to get to my studio. It would not have been possible as she had not lived my life. I could have taught her about color theory but even if I did that until she did exercises,etc she still would not have learned what I attempted to teach her.
I can only suggest you take as many color and design classes as possible from the very best instructors and do the work from the classes.
Don’t concentrate only on working with dyes, but with paints, fabrics. yarns, food and papers.
Then play with your chosen materials until you get results that please you.
Devote every waking moment to your art as only then will you achieve your potential. You can multitask and think about your art being influenced as you live your daily life and think about what you want to do and how you will start.
You are all welcome to follow me on my BLOG and sign up to the email list on the page which will notify you each time I post to the blog.  In addition to my art I share parts of my life on my blog. There are times when a week or more may go by with no posts as I have nothing to post. The blog address is: http://quiltspluscolor.blogspot.com/
And in closing I am going to share some not so successful things I’ve dyed recently so you don’t thing I get a winner ever time.



The above are some less than lovelies but it takes creating a lot of these to find my direction to make the BEST!
Even the less than lovelies are useful for backs of quilts or they can be cut up and used in piecing. So all is not lost no matter what happens in my work.
And now 3 years after I originally wrote this post, some of these less than lovelies have been made into very successful pieces with some overdyeing or quilting!
I wish you success on your art journey wherever it takes you.

Back To My Color Roots?

My friend Mary Stori remarked that some of the current work I am doing reminds her of the colors I used when she met me 30 or so years ago.
Maybe it’s what comes around goes around.
Yet with the availability of today’s fabrics there is no comparison to what we had to work with 30 –40 or more years ago. I remember how excited we got when we found some of the newest most sophisticated fabrics at the time.
I remember Jeff Gutcheon telling me he would buy any yellow fabric he could find even if it was ugly! Yet, when I worked with him as he developed his first line of fabrics, there was NO yellow!

Autumn Rainbow was a break through piece for me. I used only solid colors which were extremely difficult to find at the time. I also included some lames. It was one of the first quilts I won a first place with. Yet more importantly it was the piece that developed my Tubular Spiral Patchwork technique that I went on to teach across the Midwest.

My Tree Of Life quilt was inspired by vintage quilts, yet was not a copy of anyone in particular. I did created kits for this as part of my Historic Concepts series. The kits are now collector items as I sold the last of them.

I designed and drafted this fan quilt. I taught it several times and it was not only a good learning experience in piecing and applique, but if was an excellent learning experience is using and balancing color and a variety of types of fabrics.
I remember my granddaughter Heidi who was probably 7 years old looking at one of my quilts and saying that looks like a “grandma” quilt. I thought she meant it looked like it was made my an “old grandma”. NO….that she meant was she could tell I made it as she knew the colors I used. (I had started her playing with color when she was between 7 and 10 days old. by the time she was about 3 she could arrange a box of 64 Crayola crayons in color flow order.
If you are following my recent color choices with my knitting and strip piecing I think you will see what Mary Stori was saying.

Selecting Possible Fabrics To Add To A Quilt

When I am starting a project or adding to an already started project I get out a grouping of fabrics that relate to what I have in mind or what I have started.

This is the group I selected to hopefully finish this quilt I showed you recently. I have used some of these fabrics in previous compositions so there may be just a little of some of the fabrics. Being limited this way can be a good thing as it makes me use my critical thinking to solve these opportunities…something some of you might consider problems.
All of the fabrics I chose have either been hand painted or hand dyed by me, Some have layers of pattern, both painted and/or dyed. The group also includes some fabrics I consider failures or ugly fabrics. Almost any fabric is a success as it can be cut up and when seen in a smaller strip or section can be very useful.
As I work on a project like this they no long are all neat and organized like this. You might even call it a “mess”! Having them in this mess style lets me see the possible combinations and when I open a piece of fabric I see things I may not have seen when it was folded neatly.
This is one way I work. I know some of you want the answers before you cut your fabrics. If I knew what it was going to look like before I started to me there would be no reason to make it as it had already been done! I also never worry about wasting a piece of fabric as if it doesn’t work in this composition it might be the perfect piece for the next one.
I hope this will not only give you an insight into how I work, but possibly rethink your ideas on how you work.

Spider Mum not really a scrap quilt

Spider Mum is a quilt I started with the cuttings left from other fused quilts. I soon found out I needed a lot more pieces and still more and still more. I ended up cutting at least 6-8 times as many pieces as I started with.
The focal point that looks like it might be an eye is really a flower center. This is all done with commercial printed fabrics. The background is Gutcheon polished cotton. I stockpiled quite a bit of this fabric and I am so happy to have it since it hasn't been available for years. The quilt is heavily machine quilted.

If you click to enlarge this photo you can see the quilting better.

It's been quite a while since I used the USA puzzle cut so I'm testing your knowledge of geography as well as your skill in putting together a puzzle tonight.

Day 4- Shibori

The class is fantastic. How lucky can a girl get? Carol Soderlund one week and Jan Myers-Newbury the next.
We've really been busy dyeing yards and yards of fabric. Most of us have at least one composition on the design wall or maybe even stitched. Some have more than one.
I came to the class with no agenda other to learn whatever I could and create some unique fabric. I have definitely done both.

This is my composition. It is only pinned to the design wall. There will be some slight adjustments when I sew it together but the design will remain the same. For those of you who are familiar with my work you will notice the colors are softer than what I usually work with. I am pleased with it.
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When we take our dyed fabric out of the dryer it is like getting a wonderful present.
If you are there when the dryer stops and you help sort it you really get to appreciate each and every piece.

We learned how to dye ombre fabric like this. It is just gorgeous. I haven't done this one yet.


Pauline is definitely the Queen of black and white shibori. These are just a few of the many pieces she has done. She is very prolific and each one is more wonderful that the last.

Jan showed us how to inset a square piece today. The green and brown section with 4 squares is inset into the piece. This is something worth the price of taking the class.

After Jan showed us how to inset a square one of our fellow students showed us how to inset a circle. We were all impressed. What slick trick to sew a pefectly round circle.
Tomorrow is our final day of class. We are going to hate to see it end as our minds are still full of so many ideas.