Honey I’m Home And I Am Embracing Change!

I arrived home last night and was glad for this reminder!

 

I brought back some warm weather from Florida, or should I say I sent it ahead. When I checked the temperatures first thing this morning it was 74 degrees in WI and 73 degrees in Florida.

The sun is shining and the yard looks quite plush with green grass and vigorous growth on the bushes and trees.

Fortunately the yards and yards of mulch we spread last year has kept the weeds down.

 

I have a lot of changes to embrace today and in the days ahead.

My first challenge is to short through a pile of mail that is at least 4 feet high. Most of it will be recycled right away.

My goal is to accomplish this before my son arrives with my car in the early afternoon!

 

 

My next challenge will be to figure out where to put this wall unit purchased on eBay that was delivered while I was gone.

These are just a few of the settling in things I will have to accomplish.

I’ll intersperse them with working on some quilts. I did hand carry several in my carry on bag. They were quilt tops and some small layered quilts ready to quilt of finish.

A Street In Ireland – Slice Quilt

I recently posted my portion of this slice quilt.

If you would like to read more about how it was created I am providing a link to Tommy Fitzsimmons blog post today about it.

She facilitated this and put a lot of time and work into it. She did an amazing job.

http://tommythematerialgirl.blogspot.com/2012/05/street-in-ireland.html

This is the second slice quilt our group has done.

Last year our quilt was shown in Houston and we have hopes that the same will be true this year.

How Old Are You And Other Interesting Facts

I am going to share a website with y’all that will tell you more than you ever wanted/needed to know about yourself.

Of course it tells you how many days old you are – but that is only one of the things you will find.

http://www.paulsadowski.com/Birthday.asp

You can find out how many seconds old you are, what your lucky days are, who else shares your birthday and so many things you really “NEED” to know!

How else would I have known when to celebrate my 25,000 day old birthday?

You’ll wonder how you’ve lived this long not knowing all this information!!!!!!

It’s More Than A Ball Of Yarn

I know this just looks like two balls of yarn I wound by hand.

There is more to them than what you see.

Stay tuned and the mystery will be revealed in a few days!

I can’t tell you any more right now.

Colorful Quilting Agenda

I plan to get a lot of quilting done this summer.

I also plan on piecing tops from the fabrics I have been dyeing.

I’m going to show you a few of the pieces I am hoping to quilt.

I have a pretty good idea how I will quilt this one.

This is a large one and I still need to add several borders. It will finish as king size.

This is a pretty good size quilt too. It could be a wall quilt or a throw. With some creative quilting it could turn into something amazing.

This needs an integrated border before I quilt it.

I have shared just a few of the quilts I have ready for quilting with you. I hope I am able to finish many this year.

Yes, There Really Are Some Young People In Florida!

I had a visit from a good friend’s son and his daughter and son the other evening.

What a neat cute happy family. I just love this picture of the three of them.

One reason for the visit was I was helping them accomplish a secret mission!

We had a spaghetti dinner before the mission and it was so much fun to cook for a teenage boy with a voracious appetite. His Dad wasn’t far behind in that area! His sister enjoyed the meal too.

After dinner they completed the mission – one at a time in my golf cart with Dad. It was fun visiting with each of the kids alone. I heard all about their recent cruise and saw the photos.

They are really neat kids and I really enjoyed visiting with them.

After the mission was accomplished we had strawberry shortcake for dessert on the lanai. It was a big hit.

I shared some stories about their grandparents who I had known for 50 years. They enjoyed hearing the stories.

Often we don’t share the stories of our lives with our children and grandchildren.

Think about making that a priority when you spend time with your family if you have children or grandchildren.

I've figured out how to do a puzzle again.

Quilt Composition From Last Hurrah Dyed Fabrics

 

I put three of my favorite fabrics from my last dyeing hurrah together on my design wall.

They work well together, but I probably will do more with them.

Will I use them together or with totally different fabrics?

Putting fabrics together on the design wall is usually the first step for me in designing a new quilt.

 

I haven’t shared this piece before. It is almost a yard. I was trying to use up all the mixed dyes when I created it, but found it necessary to mix a little blue and a little yellow to make it work.

I’m quite pleased with it. I may use it as a whole piece or I may cut it up and use sections of it in various compositions.

There are sections of this piece that I feel are very strong for design purposes, and other sections that appear weak to me.

Happy Mothers Day

I hope you all have a great day whether you celebrate or not.

I used two layers of a parfait to create this for you!

I plan to spend the day getting my ducks in a row!

I wanted to share a few more last hurrah pieces with you.

Most of the time I roll fabrics on the pole diagonally. This was rolled with the grain.

This was folded rather than wrapping around a pole.

That’s all for now, but stay tuned as I will still have some “Last Hurrah pieces to share soon.

Last Hurrah Dyeing Fabric This Season! Many Techniques

In reality you could call this my 4th last hurrah.  I said when I finished dyeing a large group of fabrics almost 3 weeks ago I was done for the season.

Well, if you read this blog regularly you know I did a dyeing session when my friend Suzie visited and then a few days later my friend Peggy and I did some experimental dyeing.

When Peggy and I finished I still had a lot of dye left to use so I made it a priority to use if all up – 28 pieces of dyed fabric later – I used it all!

I also used all the fabric I had prewashed to dye in anticipation of the current dyeing sessions.

I particularly loved this as it was a real sunset coloration for this Sunset Kind Of Girl. I had not achieved anything like these colors previously.

I used a variety of techniques creating these fabrics.

Shibori, over dyeing, parfait dyeing, ice dyeing and some unique folding techniques created these fabrics.

This was one of the folded ones.

This used a variety of techniques.

I have heard of ice dyeing, but I made up my own method of doing it. I was thrilled with the results. I was so pleased the way this one turned out. Like many fabrics, it is even better in person. You just can’t quite duplicate the effect on a computer.

Lesson On Doing You Own Shibori Fabrics

I have been asked how I do the shibori I do.

Probably the best advice is to take a class from Jan Myers Newbury.

Many of the techniques I use are proprietary from Jan’s classes and it would not be ethical to share them.

If you can’t do that and you have a rudimentary knowledge of bucket dyeing you can use these three suggestions  to manipulate your own fabric.

1. Fold

2. Twist

3. Turn

Yes, you can come up with your OWN ways of wrapping your PVC poles or simply folding fabric.

I posted these suggestions on a mail list and got these photos from Karol Kusmaul.

She labeled this one shibori and indigo.

As I studied these I am not even sure she did these on a pole which is called Arashi Shibori.

She probably did them by manipulating them in other ways.

So no more excuses, create your own designs. I’d love to see them and if you send them to me I’ll post them on this blog if that is OK with you.

UPDATE: I just got this message from Karol-

All except two were pole wrapped.  The first of the four panels was just twisted around itself and wrapped.  The one I called indigo was just wadded up and added to the dye after I ‘painted’ dye onto the pole wrapped pieces.  Now to just decide how to use them!!!

Karol

More Fabric Dyeing Experiments

I did all the rinsing and wash out for all the fabrics Peggy and I dyed Monday.

I scanned or photographed them all and only sent two pictures to her. She did see the blog post.

I neatly packaged all her fabrics together and took them to our quilt meeting so she could have them.

Here she is opening the “package” and seeing the fabrics for the first time. This group of 3 fabrics that she parfait dyed were so awesome.

These are the three fabrics in this parfait. She thought they wouldn’t turn out as she was sure she used too much dye. I had the same reaction when I removed the fabrics from the container. Were we ever wrong. These are amazing. 

Parfait dyeing wasn’t what we had planned to do, but after doing our experiments we had so much dye left so I came up with ways to used up more of it. I wasn’t even sure how to do this and didn’t have my book here so we winged it. Although we didn’t follow the Anne Johnston method, I was particularly pleased with what happened.

This is the group of fabrics I parfait dyed. They are nice, but certainly don’t compare to what Peggy did.

This is another piece of fabric I created when trying to use up the dyes. It has an interesting patterning.

I intend to shibori dye over it.

This is another one of Peggy’s experimental fabrics. the patterning that happened is very interesting.

Even remembering how we created these, they are fabrics that can’t be duplicated. Each one is a surprise.

I said I was done dyeing for this season two dye sessions ago. There is still mixed dye left so I will over dye or dye a few pieces in the next day or two to use up the dyes.

Fabric Dyeing Collaboration

Monday my friend Peggy and I did some experimenting dyeing fabric and using various chemicals and other things to see the effects they would have on the dyes.

 

 

I am going to share just a few of the pieces we created with you.

I was particularly impressed with this piece.

This one gave some unique results we didn’t usually get with the chemical we used on it.

We worked well together. Peggy would say I wonder what would happen if ……. and I would go and find if! We used “if” on this piece.

We both thought this one reminded us of watermelon. All it needs are seeds!

All of these are Peggy’s work.

I am not going to go into the chemicals, etc  we used at this time. I think we need to evaluate our results before we share them.

These are just a small sample of what we did and I will have more so stay tuned.

None of these were shibori dyed.

Artist Trading Cards

Our little group of art quilters did an artist trading card exchange today.

These are the cards I made for the exchange. I used some Arashi Shibori fabric I dyed.

I embellished each of them with a “jewel” and some super fine glitter.

These are the cards made by the rest of the group.

It never ceases to amaze me the variety of ideas and techniques the participants use in a project of this type.

As we exchanged them today we each shared what we did and how we did them.

As I look at each one I see the people who made them. We each used something that was really quite personal in them, whether we realized it or not.

We also shared ideas on how to display them.

Carol is going to hang hers on a ribbon, attaching only at the top so they can be turned over to see the signature.

I mentioned displaying them in a bowl as I do with mine in my guest room. Another idea is to use the clear plastic picks you get in a floral arrangement that holds the card telling you who it is from. You can put each card in a floral pick and display them in a plant, a flower pot or something else.

My Slice Of Our Group Quilt

This is the second slice quilt project I have participated in. Both were facilitated by Tommy Fitzsimmons.

You will have to scroll to see this entire piece as each section was very long and narrow.

There are 10 of us making a section for the quilt. I am anxious to see the completed project.

Luscious Colors, Great Shibori Textures–Part 2

 

As I show you these pieces, remember – Suzie’s are again on the left and mine are on the right.

This is the other wrap that we both did in the same color. The results could not be more different on these two.

These were done with multiple layers of fabric on the pole. Again, each of ours were very different.

In addition to our squares/rectangles we each did two longer pieces. This gave us an opportunity to use some other techniques.

I love both of these.

These are our final pieces – again a very different way of rolling them on the poles.

 

As you look at these, you can see that even though I was “the teacher” and Suzie was the student mine were not any better than hers.

I have been doing shibori for many years, albeit much more recently.

There is so much serendipity when you do shibori on the poles that you never know exactly what you are going to get.

I think that and the fact that I LOVE color are why I keep making new fabrics.

I definitely intend to create some compositions with these this summer.

A Girls Got To Do What A Girl’s Got To Do–SHOP and support the economy!

Yesterday Suzie and I decided her trip to Florida would not be complete without a visit to our favorite shop at Lake Sumter Landing in The Villages.

We headed over there in the middle of the afternoon.We found a parking space almost directly in front of the store and that was a good omen. If you have ever visited these areas in The Villages you know even finding a parking space near the square is a good omen!

Although neither of us was in the market for a hat, they sure had some cute ones. This is just a small portion of what they had.

Suzie found a really cute shirt that looked great on her.

I found one that was perfect for me too.

We had a light supper at Panera and walked across the square to head home.

This was a visiting group playing for the crowd and the dancers. People really were enjoying them.

We drove back to the house and spent the rest of the evening relaxing.

We weren’t home long when John and Lynn stopped to visit. We were so busy talking I forgot to take a picture.

Suzie and I had a great visit as usual. She had to be ready to be picked up to head to the airport at 5:45 this morning. She is somewhere in the air now heading for home.

Luscious Colors, Great Shibori Textures

These are the color samples for the two colors we dyed our shibori pieces.

We each did the same procedure to wrap the poles with a piece of fabric. Even though we wrapped our poles using the same method, they and look different.

In these photos I will be showing you, Suzie’s will be on the left and mine on the right.

Although we started with the same method, these two are very different.

We randomly put them in our buckets and I think this was one of only two where we both had the same wrap in the same color.

These two both used the same basic wrap but also give a different final design.

There will be more to come so stay tuned!

Rolling Toward the Dye Buckets!

You never know what direction our projects will take.

Yesterday was not really a project day.

We visited the Yarn Lady and Suzie was introduced to the glorious yarns in the shop. Her suitcases will be a little fuller on the trip home.

Then we went to lunch at B D Beans in Belleview. They always add something new to “the décor”!

We sat at my favorite table in front of the fireplace and I took this photo of what was currently in the fireplace. Eat your heart out as I know you’ll be jealous when you see this!!!!!!!

After we came home we both finished our slice quilts and packages them to mail today. The mail lady just picked up the package 10 minutes ago so they are on their way to Tommy Fitzsimmons.

Our evening agenda consisted of wrapping poles for today’s mini shibori dyeing session.

These are our poles ready for the dye buckets. There are also two scrunchies – one for each bucket so we will have a sample of the colors of the dye we used.

The poles are currently in the buckets and have been for 1/2 hour. Only 45 minutes to go until rinse out and wash out.

Anticipating A Week Of Quilting and ……………

My friend Suzie arrived. We try to spend a week each year doing some type of quilting retreat.

We have been doing them at my house now for a few years.

We each work on whatever we want.

She didn’t even have to bring her sewing machine this year as Lynn brought hers over so Suzie could use it.

We each have to finish our section of the Slice quilt that Tommy Fitzsimmons is facilitating. Suzie’s is almost done. Mine is done in my head and everything is ready to assemble. The planning/designing takes longer than the actual construction.

We also will do a little fabric dyeing – shibori that is!

We eat in or out depending on what we feel like doing.

We also find a little time to shop – maybe.

It’s a relaxing enjoyable week while we catch up on what is happening in our busy lives.