Field Trips in Fiber

MQ Resource Triptych Challenge

I have been participating in a triptych challenge on the MQResource board. We were put into groups of three. Each person sent photos to the other two participants for interpretation. The finished pieces are 8.5" x 10.5". I'll be honest, I haven't even started my own piece but I will do it soon. I mailed both of my pieces today and I warned my partners that I was posting today so they wouldn't look if they wanted a surprise.

The first piece is based on this photo sent my Beth.

Here's my interpretation. Beth wanted the sailboat to be the focus. I used the same technique that I used for my Splash postcard. I had been wanting to do that technique again I knew it was perfect for this as soon as I saw the photo.

The sails are made of silk and they are padded with some batting to give them dimension and to keep the background from showing through.

Here's the photo that I received from Judy.

This one was more challenging for me. On my first attempt I tried to reproduce the photo. What a disaster - a funny disaster, but a complete and total disaster. Every time I showed it to Chris he just shook his head "no" and quietly went back to reading his book. I put that aside and slept on it. The next morning I had the solution and two nights later I had this.

It's the same yarn technique. The backgrounds of both pieces are made of layers of yarn arranged directly on batting. In this one I sliced the finished piece into diamonds, rearranged the pieces and zig-zagged them back together. the final step was couching black yarn over the seams.

In two days the next Take It Further Challenge will be posted. I will work on my own Triptych piece (my photos are doors) during February and it would be so nice if it fit the TIF theme or color palette! I'm also started the Art Quilt Workbook in February. I would say that I need to stop signing up for things but I  do learn a lot through these exercises and challenges.

Virginia Quilt Museum Raffle Quilt

We are very fortunate to have a quilt museum in Virginia. The Virginia Quilt Museum opened in Harrisonburg, Va in 1995 and was designated "the official quilt museum of the Commonwealth" by the Virginia General Assembly in 2000. The museum is in the historic Warren-Sipe House that was built in 1856. There's some great information about the history of the museum and building on the web site.

One of the primary fund-raisers for the museum is a quilt raffle. Various guilds and groups around the state make the raffle quilts. The current raffle quilt was made by the Country School Quilters of the Richmond Quilt Guild, the wonderful group that I belong to.

Our quilt is based on a quilt in the permanent museum collection, the Wreath of Roses quilt made by Sarah Wooster in 1856. As with the original, the raffle quilt is hand appliqued and hand quilted. The quilting was done by Dot Holloway and Becky Brown, both award-winning hand quilters. One of Becky's quilts is in the permanent collection of the American Quilt Museum in Paducah. I appliqued one of the blocks and helped Estelle Porter assemble the top.

The quilt measures 81 x 100 and I'm selling tickets! The drawing is December 1, 2008. Tickets are $1. If you are interested in buying one or more let me know. If you are going to be at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival you can see the quilt and buy raffle tickets. Please stop by and buy 1 or 100.

January Take It Further challenge

I did it! I actually completed my January Take It Further Challenge! I admit that about a week ago I was having some doubts and regrets about signing up for this. I wrote about my initial thoughts and inspirations on this project here. My thoughts for a piece to properly honor my Grandmother turned into something that I couldn't complete in time. I plan to come back to that later but wanted to get something done for the January project. It was then that I started looking for my sketchbook. I couldn't find it anywhere so that meant that my project should BE a sketchbook.

Here it is and it does still include some references to my Grandmother but primarily uses the color palette of the TIF challenge. The base is a silk dupioni. The purple lace is a piece of lace curtain that hung in my Grandmother's house. I've had these for years and have wanted to do something with them. I love the floral motif in the lace. I painted a section purple and fused it to the base with Mistyfuse. I used ric-rac to trim the sketchbook to keep within the '50's - 60's time frame.

The buttons for the closure could have actually come from her button bag which I "inherited". There's a large mother of pearl with a green flower Bakelite button on top. They are attached with embroidery floss.

The book is trimmed with a satin stitch in the light green and the edged with dark purple baby ric-rac.

The binder rings are dressed in left over bits of ric-rac and embroidery floss.

The pages are 7.5" x 9.5" and by using binder rings I can replace or add pages whenever I need. I added 3 book marks made from ric-rac with large mother of pearl beads attached. The pocket on the inside front cover is made from an orphan block from my Great-Grandmother's quilt box. I folded it in half, added ric-rac trim to the top and stitched pockets between the blocks. The first sheet in the book is a pocket page to hold sheets of tracing paper.

Now I am ready for Sharon to issue the February challenge - I have a sketchbook to work in!

   

Birds, friends, stash and progress

There really has been a lot of progress in my sewing room but I've nothing to show for it quite yet! Today Kim and Anne came over for a fun sewing day. It's a real treat to sew with friends and share a great pot roast lunch that Chris prepared. Anne finished binding a quilt and put the waistband on a skirt, Kim worked on her red wool coat and I worked on my Take It Further project. It should be done tomorrow. I do have a photo to share though. While we were in the sewing room a huge flock of blackbirds flew by the window. I snapped this photo of them while they rested a moment on the front lawn.

A little reminiscent of Hitchcock maybe?

I've also worked on my Triptych challenge pieces. One is complete and I'm happy with it. The other is about to go through a third iteration. I'm not happy with it yet but I think I finally have the right direction. Judy, if you are reading this, yours might be a few days late!

Stash Report

It's been an interesting week. I haven't bought anything (good) but haven't used much because all of the pieces that I am working on are small (not so good)!  But, I have reduced inventory. A couple of weeks ago I straightened out my longarm stuff and decided to get rid of some books and videos that I do not use anymore and some threads that I had accidentally bought as duplicates. I posted them for sale on the longarm list and they were snapped up. Ironically and accidentally I have recovered basically the cost of the paints that I bought last week! So here it is near the end of January and I'm near zero for purchases so far this year! That won't last but it's a good start.

Back to my sewing room and my TIF project.......

The trials and tribulations of curing fabric paint

If you aren't interested in painting fabric you can skip this whole post. It will be incredibly boring for you. if you are interested in fabric painting please note:

This post is about my personal and limited experiments with curing fabric paints. Each product has SPECIFIC instructions for permanently setting the product into fabric. I decided to see if I could shortcut the process for myself. if you choose to try any of my methods you need to first test them under your own conditions: fabric, room temperature, iron/dryer/oven temperature and fabric washing process.

As I have been doing my metallic painting samples of the past weeks I have also been testing curing the paints and washing the fabrics. I have only used cotton fabric. I am using two brands of paints: Jacquard and Stewart Gill. In this post I'm not going to compare and contrast the paints - I use them all. I'm just going to talk about making them permanent and washable on fabric. In the Jacquard line I use Textile Colors, Neopaque and Lumiere. In the Stewart Gill line I use True Colour, Colourize, Alchemy, Byzantia, Metamica and Pearlize.

This experimentation started because I did not realize how much work was required to permanently set these paints! The Jacquard products GENERALLY requires ironing on the reverse side of the fabric for 30 seconds. That's 30 seconds for every spot on the fabric. The Stewart Gill paints GENERALLY require ironing 2 - 3 minutes on the back followed by 20 minutes in a 270 degree oven or another 2 minutes of ironing on the front. That would be fine for a small piece but I couldn't bear it for a large piece of fabric or for a garment where ironing might be awkward. So, I started testing......

(I left all of the photos large so that you can click on them to see it as big as possible.)

My first test focused primarily on the Stewart Gill paints because I use them the most. I painted a 1 yard piece of fabric in stripes.

Starting at the top:

Teal in Colourize, Black Pearlize, Gold Metamica, Bronze Byzantia, White Alchemy. Next I painted a wide stripe of Green Colourize  and a wide stripe of Jacquard Fuchsia Dye-Na-Flow. On each of those I painted 3 stripes: Gold Metamica, Bronze Byzantia and White Alchemy.

After drying for 48 hours I cut the sample into 4 pieces. One as the control (untreated piece), one was ironed 30 seconds on the back and front, one was put in the dryer for 80 minutes and one was put in the oven at 270 for 30 minutes. All of these methods are MUCH LESS than the manufacturers recommendation. I took each cured sample and cut it in half washing one set in cold water and one set in warm water.

In the photo the samples are (L to R): original, dryer, oven, iron.

The results:

1. Water temperature makes no difference at all.
2. The Colourize seems to not need any heat setting at all. There was no fading under any of the conditions.
3. Heat setting in the dryer didn't work at all. Only the Colourize sample didn't fade in washing. All of the other paints degraded on the dryer samples.
4. Pearlize performed beautifully with the oven and the iron samples. I estimate that I lost 10% or less of the Pearlize paint in these samples. I lost about 20% in the dryer samples.
5. Metamica and Byzantia performed the next best but lost as much as 40 - 50% in the samples. Oven curing performed best, ironing the next best.
6. Alchemy performed the worst. It requires the most dedication to heat setting. In my samples, I lost most of the Alchemy paints.
7. They all performed the same when painted over the Colourize and Jacquard Dye-Na-Flow

So, no shortcut so far!

Next I found Jacquard Versatex "No Heat" Fixer.  They also have a product called Airfix. I talked to the folks at Jacquard and they told me that the two products are very similar. I decided to try the Versatex with both brands of paint. The directions say:

"If you don't want to heat set your fabric paints then add a small amount (1-3%) of this fixative to your paint. Apply as usual and let sit for at least 5 days before any water exposure. Done!"

I selected 8 of my paints, added a little water (about 20%) and pained one band across the fabric with the paint only. Then I added a drop of Versatex to the remaining paint and painted another band. I left the samples to cure for 5 days. I did NOT iron them. I cut the samples in half and washed and dried one half and then sewed the samples back together. Here are the results.

The Versatex doesn't change the color or texture of any of the paints.

The only one that I can't show you is the Jacquard Neopaque samples. Why? Because I had the brilliant idea to use red Neopaque on dark pink fabric. Nothing shows in the photograph. From the sample results though I can tell you that the Neopaque, like Jacquard Textile Colors, doesn't seem to require any fixative or heat setting at all. It looked the same after washing with or without the Versatex.

This sample is Jacquard Lumiere Metallic Gold. In this particular sample I washed the right half. The top row is painted with the Versatex. You can see that I lost a little of the paint in the untreated sample but the washed side of the paint with the Versatex looks as good as the original.

The next sample on the right is Jacquard Lumiere Halo Blue. In this sample, and all of the remaining samples, the washed portion is the left side. The sample on the bottom is without Versatex and the paint faded quite a bit. Probably as much as 30%. In the treated sample I did lose a bit of color (not as much as it appears in the photo though) but up close it's barely discernible.

The remaining samples are all Stewart Gill paints.

I already knew from the samples above that Colourize didn't seem to require any heat setting at all. This samples shows that the same holds for True Colour. The left side was washed and the top sample is the one with the Versatex added.

The next sample (on the right) is Silver Metamica. The Versatex (top) made a huge difference. I did have a bit of paint loss even in the Versatex treated sample but that might be acceptable for the convenience of not ironing or baking in the oven.

Byzantia performed the same as the Metamica. The Versatex helped considerably. The biggest effect came with the Pearlize and Alchemy, both of which almost completely washed away in the untreated sample.  The Pearlize sample is the first one and the Alchemy is the last one. Both of them are almost completely intact with the Versatex.

So there, I'm done with this testing! I will be adding Versatex to all of my paints and will probably do a heat setting oven treatment. I think this approach will give me the best permanence to the paint and eliminate hours of ironing.

I hope this information helps you but before you rely on it, please test it for yourself. 

WIP Wednesday

I haven't posted in a few days so you might think that I've been doing a lot of this:

Not so!  But the things I am working on aren't very interesting at this point.

First, I got one of my Great Grandmother's quilts loaded and the quilting started. But the primary projects are my Triptych Challenge exchange pieces and my Take It Further Challenge for January. I don't want to show the Triptych pieces until I send them (by Jan 31) and I have run myself in 5 circles on the TIF challenge. I've decided on two things. One is a longer term project to honor my Grandmother but the other will be based mostly on the color aspect of the challenge but still using fabrics and bits that remind me of my Grandmother. It's going to be my new sketchbook. While I was working though my ideas for the TIF I searched high and low for my sketchbook and I can't find it anywhere. Since I need a new sketchbook I decided to make one. I should have some real project photos to share with you later in the week.

This post is also my list for the weekend. Those 3 projects are my total focus until they are done - except for Sunday when my friends, Kim and Anne, are coming over for some garment sewing help and a yummy dinner prepared by the resident chef.

Almond Mango Soap

I tried a new soap recipe today. It will be 3 weeks, minimum, before I can try it and see if it's worthy but here's the recipe so I don't lose it. If you are into soap making my Shea Butter soap is really poplular with my friends. I designed this recipe to have similar qualities (hardness, lather, conditioning) as the Shea Butter.

***Updated March 2008 - this one did turn out to be similar to the Shea Butter. It has a very soft and thick lather.

Almond Mango

Sweet Almond Oil 3.5 ounces

Mango Butter 4.5 ounces

Coconut Oil 9.5 ounces

Palm Oil 8 ounces

Olive Oil 5 ounces

Stearic Acid .5 ounce

Castor Oil 1 ounce

Lye 4.6 ounces

Water 12.15 ounces

Does paint count in stash stats?

For my tracking all of my purchases count. I have one category in Quicken for my hobby purchases and it's that category that I'm trying to get under control. There was NO control on these purchases! In my defense I basically used up all of the starter packs and sample sets of both Jacquard and Stewart Gill paints. From Dharma (right) I re-stocked dye powders and bought new Jacquard paint colors. From Artist Cellar I stocked up on lots of new colors and even added some Galactica and TrueColours to the stock. Don't choke. I spent about $300.

The sad thing is that I am still below my average monthly expenditure rate and I'm still on the positive side of the ledger.

On the stash use side I used fabric this week! Woohoo! The ugly quilt that I finished yesterday has about 6 yards of fabric in the backing and binding! It was a wide back and there was one long piece left over. I cut that into fat quarters for dyeing. I'm preparing my Great-Grandmother's quilt tops for quilting and the backing and binding are all coming from the stash. I won't count those until they are actually done.

I used some of my dyes yesterday. I took a side trip off of my list and dyed these fabrics. Each is 2 yards. I was going to show you how I made them because I had great plans. After I got everything in the dye vats for curing I suddenly realized that I had mixed my dyes all wrong and used 50% more than I needed. But there's no such thing as ugly fabric - these were all dyed for painting so you'll see them again soon!

You can't keep an ugly quilt down

I have never taken less care in quilting a quilt. Remember that the purpose of quilting this one was to learn to use my Quilt EZ template.  The top is one that I bought off eBay and the fabrics are low quality. I didn't pay attention to the thread tension, I didn't fix any mistakes and I allowed the border to pleat wherever it wanted. The quilt was determined to turn out cute and it did. I used Warm and White batting so it drew up nicely in the wash. I know that a lot of people don't like Warm Company battings but I love them. They are easy to quilt and I like my quilts to be a bit heavy. I generally use either Warm cotton or Quilters Dream Blend if I want a little puffiness.

I'm actually going to use this little quilt. It's about 60 inches square and will work really well doubled on top of my bedspread at night. I like about 4 layers of blankets to sleep.

This afternoon I will be loading the next quilts for the Baptist Fan treatment. If you've ever wondered if color sense is inherited I can assure you it is. I'm pretty sure I inherited my "oh throw it in there and see what happens" attitude from my Great Grandmother Rakes. I think my Mom has it too. Never be afraid of too much color or pattern! These two beauties will be perfect for Baptist Fan quilting!

More bird photos and the weekend list

I forgot to include this photo that Chris took during the snow yesterday. This is a Carolina Wren. We love these birds except early in the morning because they sing very loud for such a tiny bird! But they sing a very happy song.

A couple of years ago we had a big problem with raccoons stealing our suet feeders. I think I read an article in Birds and Blooms about someone spreading peanut butter on a tree trunk. That was brilliant! The birds love chunky peanut butter. We get wrens, nuthatches, woodpeckers, cardinals and other birds visiting the peanut butter feeder every day. That magazine, by the way, has some of the very best nature photography I've ever seen. I save lots of the photos for inspiration.

Work was totally manic today.  I work at home two days a week and today was a home work day. I had both phones ringing all day long! Chris' day was much more successful - he made new cedar Bluebird nesting boxes. One of these is for Mom and we place 3 in our yard. We've been pretty successful at getting Eastern Bluebirds to nest in our boxes so Chris tries to make their accommodations nice.

So, here we are heading into a weekend and that means a list!

• Finish the sample baptist fan quilt. I finished the quilting last night and want to go ahead and get the binding done and get it out of the sewing room.
• Make a batch of soap (because I didn't get it done last weekend).
• Load one of Great-Grandma's quilt tops for the Baptist Fan treatment
• Work on my MQResource Triptych projects. These are due Jan 31 and I want to get them done now that I have my sewing machine back from the shop.

I hope you get to do everything you want this weekend.

More bird photos

We had the perfect snow today. It snowed enough in the morning to cover the ground and it was all gone by mid-afternoon. Since you seemed to enjoy yesterday's photos I thought I'd share a few that Chris took today.  By the way, the first photo in yesterday's post is the view I have when I'm at my sewing machine.

The Downy Woodpecker on the suet feeder.

Out state bird, the Northern Cardinal

Don't they look great in a snow covered tree?

Nature's idea of a Christmas Tree

Look Mom, Baptist Fans!

I really thought it was going to be difficult to get my Quilt EZ Baptist Fan template working. I've used the clam shells template once and it didn't work out so well. My first row of baptist fans on this practice quilt didn't go very well either. But I woke the next morning realizing that the problem was my stylus. I needed to lower and tighten the brass sleeve. It worked! This quilt is about half done now and it's going very quickly. I should be able to get one of the two remaining quilts from Great Grandma Rakes loaded this weekend.  EVERY quilt she quilted was done with the Baptist Fan pattern or tied so I know Mom will be thrilled to see the BF again!

This practice quilt top is even crappier than I though. I just letting the pleats form at will in the full borders. It will be OK for a utility quilt but that will be about the extent of it's value.

A Little Nature

We've had some fun nature activities around here the past couple of days. Yesterday we had a freaky mid-day thunder snowstorm. It only lasted about 30 minutes but at one point visibility was only about 1/10th of a mile. I was glad that I worked at home yesterday to see it because it didn't happen at my office 15 miles away. It sure made the birds hungry! Here are photos from the feeder stations on the north side of the house.

I have two additional feeders in this dogwood tree. We get lots of Cardinals, Goldfinches, White-Throated Sparrows, Fox Sparrows, Tufted Titmouse, Black-Capped Chickadees, House Finches and other birds here.

On the south side we have 4 feeders and we spread peanut butter on the tree trunk.

We get the same birds on this side and also Juncos, Downy Woodpeckers, Red Bellied Woodpeckers, White-Breasted Nuthatches, Rose-Breasted Nuthatches and several other varieties. We are total bird-watching geeks and we track first sightings in a book. Chris identified a new bird this week, the Brown Creeper.  I took that opportunity to take a count of all of the birds that we have identified here since we moved here 10 years ago. I was surprised to discover that we have identified over 73 different species! It helps that we we are located near a river, a pond, open field and woods.

Things got even better this morning. About twice a year 3 river otters come up from the river to play in the pond and eat the tasty fish that Chris stocks there. They are so much fun to watch. They slide off the far bank into the pond and chase each other all around the pond. There were there this morning. I was late for work because I watched too long! They are very difficult to photograph but here are two of the best photos of the 20 crappy ones that I took. (I need a better camera for these types of shots.)

To taunt Chris we sometimes see them pop up with a nice big fish in their mouth! This one popped up for a brief moment to look around.

Here are two of them playing together.

I used to think that winter was boring until I moved to a rural area. There's something interesting happening in nature every day!

That darned rug is done!

Tonight I finished my locker hooked rug. I'm happy with it and I think it looks good in my mosaic tiled bathroom. I believe I'm finally done decorating the tiniest room in my house! So would I make another? Maybe. I liked that I picked a very simple pattern so that I could work on this as a TV project but it wasn't a particularly exciting project!

I suppose I'd do another if I had a place that really needed this style of rug but I'm not planning one anytime soon. It was good for one thing - using up lots of ugly fabrics! I will need this 4 - 5 yards of fabric for my stash report this weekend!

For something much more interesting please check out Summerset's post on her Midnight Garden outfit. She completed it and all of the accessories this weekend. I am so excited that I will get to see this outfit at the Mid-Atlantic in Hampton, VA in February. She is one of the most talented people I have ever met and she generously shares her knowledge on her blog every day. If you don't read it you need to start!

This morning we awoke to this sunrise out our bedroom window. All in all, a perfect day (except for the work part in the middle).

Fabric Dyeing - I learned new things

I had one more dyeing test that I wanted to do this weekend and that was to see if curing time makes a difference. I decided to test two colors to see if the dye color makes a difference. As you can see on the left, the fabric is as dyed as it's getting after 1 hour. I added the gray image on the right so you can see it the best. So given my water, dyes and temperature I know that I can remove my fabrics from the dye after 1 hour of dye time.

I also learned a few more things!

1. I am not mixing my dye powders correctly. I was following some directions from a book and mixing all of my dye powders at the same ratio. After talking to the nice folks at Dharma Trading I learned that those asterisks by the dye names actually mean something! Some of my dyes need to be mixed more concentrated than I have done.
2. I've finally worked out the best way to rinse the fabrics. I used to rinse the fabric under constant running water for a long time and then soak in several rinse baths for short periods. I've learned that the best and least water wasteful method is to soak the fabrics for an hour each in 3 hot water baths. It doesn't seem to matter that the water gets really dark, as long as the fabric is in the water it will continue to leach out the excess dye. It seems that no matter how much dye I used that 3 soaking sessions in very hot water is enough to get out all of the dye.

So, I think I am done with my dyeing tests for a while. I'm sure I'll do some color mixing experiments but I'm over the method experiments for now. I did take some time and dye to have some fun. I did two parfait sets (at left). I don't know why, but I love dyeing black and gray colors so I'm happy with the top row and I think they will look great with metallic paints on them!

  The fabrics on the right were dyed as singles but I used two colors on each. I put one color in the bottom of the container and either folded or waded the fabric and placed it in the container. Then I poured the second color on top. I like them all but my favorite of all of the pieces I did yesterday is the one in the lower left corner.

What fun!

Sunday Update and Stash Control Report

I knew that last post would bring someone from my family out of hiding! My brother added his 2 cents in the comment. My family is a laugh riot - in a good way!

(The stash report, such as it is, is at the end of the post.)

I didn't get through the rest of my list (no soap, no apron class prep) although it was quite a productive day anyway. I went into my sewing room to prep Mom's quilt for the longarm and realized that it needed a clean up before I could fit anything else on my cutting table. It only took a couple of hours but I moved out one big trash bag and reorganized a few things. It's much better now!

And this is not Mom's quilt on the longarm! Don't worry Mom, this project is still all about you. Mom's quilt has a nice open section for some special quilting but I just can't decide what I want to do. It will come to me though. I remembered that I have two tops that my Great-Grandmother made and I wanted to quilt them with baptist fans using the Quilt EZ templates that I bought a year ago. So I pulled out this supremely ugly and poorly made top that I purchased off eBay when I first bought my machine. At the time I thought it would be good practice for feathers. Unfortunately the sashing fabric is paper thin and horribly cheap. I know the baptist fan template requires practice so I decided to throw this one on the machine as a practice piece. I'm absolutely treating it as practice. I'm not removing any stitching, fixing any bad tension or correcting wobbly lines. This one is all about learning the template. I don't know what I will do with the quilt but I'll find some use for it. I will do Great-Grandma Rake's quilts next. My Mom and Aunt will get them. The older sister got her quilt about a year ago. Now I will get these last two done.

While I was straightening up I found this little stapler. Mom gave it to me a few weeks ago - it's vintage! At MQX last year I took a class from Jessica Schick and she mentioned that she staples her quilt backing to the leaders. I mentioned it to Mom and she remembered that she had this stapler. It works great! I'm so tired of stabbing myself with pins and this solves that problem. I don't care if the zippers wear out faster. At my rate of production the zippers will still last a good long time!

I did make more progress on my locker hooked rug last night and will work on it again during Masterpiece Theater tonight. My SIL told me that they are doing Jane Austin movies for the next several weeks. Chris and I have agreed to watch TV in separate rooms.

On the stash control front I have nothing to report. Nothing in. Nothing out. Well, I did buy a respirator with vapor cartridges to use when I am painting or doing other things with chemical exposure. I used it yesterday and it works great! My fabric paint orders have not come in so I can postpone one more week on that confession! I sure hope I actually finish a project soon so I can show some output! I also REALLY need for my sewing machine to come home from the spa. I've got projects due at the end of the month and need my Pfaff!

   

I get no respect......

I wasn't going to post a progress report today, Here I was minding my own business and working my list quietly and diligently and what happens? I get calls from my own Mother and one of my brothers to harass me check on my list progress! They think my list is FUNNY!

Ha! So what did they get done today? Did they get this much accomplished?

• Another paint curing test on Jacquard paints. I completed one yesterday on the Stewart Gill paints but I'll wait and share them all together. Done! I have to want for the paints to air cure and then do the other tests and I'll share the results later in the week.
• Paint a few more metallic pieces of fabric Done as part of the tests above.
• A dye test for curing time. Last week I tested curing temperature and curing methods (immersion, flat, in a plastic bag). Now I want to see if there a difference in dye absorption for periods longer than 1 hour. I think I'll also do some fun dyeing for a change. Done! I'm testing curing times of 1, 4, 8 and 24 hours. preliminary results indicate there is no difference beyond 1 hour but I'll have that finalized tomorrow. I also dyed about 10 more fat quarters and I'll share those tomorrow too.
• Load Mom's Stack-and-Whack quilt and start quilting
• Do some planning for my Retro Aprons class at the LQS
• Work on the Chinese Coins OQV (I have 35 of 56 blocks made so far) I finished all of the blocks! If my Pfaff doesn't come home from the sewing machine spa this week I'll probably continue with this project during the week and add the sashing and borders. Here is the pattern that I'm making. The gold fabric to the left of the blocks in the photo is for sashing and the other fabric is for the borders.
• Work on the locker hooked rug - This is what I'm going to work on while we watch the rest of the football game on TV.
• Make a batch of soap

Of course now that I am reviewing the list I know the real reason that Mom called. She wanted to know if her quilt was loaded on the longarm yet. Nope, not yet! Tomorrow, if you are lucky.

And the real reason that Tim called is that he wants me to give him whatever I make honoring Grandma Dove. He can't help it, it has two things he can't resist. First, all of the grandchildren have raised Grandma to the status to sainthood and you could give Tim a pile of leftover sewing room trash and if you told him it was handmade just for him he would display it in his home.  He can't help it. He's salivating for a handmade item honoring his Grandma. Tim, get over it. I'm keeping this one!

On to the next item on the agenda!

The Weekend List

My Pfaff 7550 and my serger are still at the sewing machine spa so I can't do some of the things that I want (sewing on the Triptych Challenge pieces, making anything of the TIF challenge assuming I get a design worked up) so here's the list of what I want to accomplish.

• Another paint curing test on Jacquard paints. I completed one yesterday on the Stewart Gill paints but I'll wait and share them all together.
• Paint a few more metallic pieces of fabric
• A dye test for curing time. Last week I tested curing temperature and curing methods (immersion, flat, in a plastic bag). Now I want to see if there a difference in dye absorption for periods longer than 1 hour. I think I'll also do some fun dyeing for a change.
• Load Mom's Stack-and-Whack quilt and start quilting
• Do some planning for my Retro Aprons class at the LQS
• Work on the Chinese Coins OQV (I have 35 of 56 blocks made so far)
• Work on the locker hooked rug
• Make a batch of soap

I'm happy that there are very few chores this weekend - just catching up the accounting and the laundry.

I hope you get to do what you want this weekend too!

Take It Further - January - Take 2

I talked a little about the TIF challenge in my last post. I had decided that I would not take on the theme part of the challenge (admiration) but do the color palette instead. I went through my supplies and pulled out an assortment of materials in the selected palette.

That was the plan until today. We have the nice luxury of having fresh flowers in the offices each week. (For those aware of all of my allergy issues, yes, the florist has a list of flowers that he cannot use because of my allergies.) This arrangement is the one that's on Myra's desk. While I was talking with her today I looked over at the arrangement and realized that it's basically in our color palette! I borrowed the digital camera from HR and took a photo for reference. I started pondering the flower arrangement as my inspiration and realized that purple/lavender was my Grandma Dove's favorite color. She had a dress that she wore a lot that was purple and white floral. I have wanted to do some sort of piece to pay tribute to her and what better way than to incorporate both of Sharon's challenges into one piece! This photo of Grandma is my favorite photo of her. It was taken before she married. When she moved from her home and was sorting out her stuff this photo was the only thing that I wanted. She also loved flowers and had big flower gardens around her home. One was a 3 foot deep iris bed the full length of the driveway.

So that's it. I have a new direction and it's perfect because if I can get this done in January the timing will also be right because it would be done by her birthday. February 28 would have been her 99th birthday.

Next I was off to gather a new set of materials. On the bottom is a lace curtain from Grandma's house. I have had these panels for at least 20 years wanting to do something with them. Grandma didn't quilt but her mother did. Later in Great-Grandma's life, Grandma would machine piece blocks for her. The 16-patch quilt block is  in the color palette and was machine pieced so I believe that Grandma Dove made it. The embroidery is her work. I will not cut it up for the piece but I may use the flower design in some way or even print an image of the design on fabric. I also have a collection of her pearl buttons and some pieces of embroidery. The rick rack, lace edging and embroidery threads are all from my stash. I'll add these in with the fabrics that I pulled yesterday and start again. The yarns, metallic threads and Angelina all went back into the stash.

I'm excited about this one so now I'm off to work out some design ideas!

Mom, are you reading this? Do you have any ideas or materials to add to the mix?

Some things in process

In my last post yesterday I forgot to report on my weekend list. Basically I got everything accomplished that I wanted. See, miracles do happen!

• Second testing of the gradient dyeing, this time controlling the temperature better. If that doesn’t work I will try a stronger dye mix and a painting technique instead of immersion. You saw this in an earlier post over the weekend. I am pondering a few more test that I can do but that will be a little later.
• More testing of metallic painting techniques. This time I will use the Stewart Gill instead of the Jacquard and see if the results are different and I want to see what the results look like when I do dry vs. wet painting. I got what I wanted done but am still fooling around with heat setting the fabrics. I think one of the mistakes I made this weekend was not letting the fabric air cure long enough before heat setting. I've decided for certain that I do not want to iron heat set (waaayyyyy too labor intensive) so I will be working to perfect dryer or oven heat setting methods. Of course, if the fabric isn't going into something to be washed all of this is moot. I have one other painting technique I want to try as well....so on to the next weekend list!
• Start working on my Triptych Challenge swap pieces. This is a challenge that has been organized at MQResources. I’ve been pondering my techniques for a while and think I have one of them fairly well thought out. I have a pretty good idea for the second one and absolutely no idea yet for my own. I accomplished what I wanted on this one too! Here's a peak at the start of one of them. The second one is still eluding me for the time being but I am sure that I will eventually get there! I was going to start the sewing on this but, alas, my 7550 is still at the sewing machine spa for it's R&R. Hopefully both machines will come home this week!
• Consider what I am going to do for the January Take It Further Challenge. Another task basically accomplished! Sharon gave us 2 options: a theme (someone we admire) or a color palette. Since I already have 2 things due at the end of the month and I am absorbed in this painting, I decided that I didn't have the time to delve into the theme so I am choosing to do the color palette. Here are the materials that I pulled (the color palette is printed on the paper at the bottom of the photo. I need to do a set of postcards so I think I will use this color palette.  Last night I perused this book for theme ideas and I think I am on a path now.

There are a few chores thrown in as well – cleaning the gas fireplace in the bedroom (20 minutes), taking down the Christmas tree (1 – 2 hours) and laundry. Yes, I even completed all of the chores and a few more! I closed out the weekend with some more progress on my bathroom rug. I like how this is coming along and the end is definitely in sight!

This week I'm planning more of the metallic painting, working on my rug and my ideas for the second photo in the Triptych Challenge.

More Metallic Fabrics

I had more fun with the metallic paints yesterday and painted these fabrics.

The green one in the middle (third from the right) is  painted with Jacquard paints and all of the others are painted with Stewart Gill. The point of these samples was to see if I could get enough paint coverage to cover the print of the commercial fabric underneath - as a good way to utilize ugly fabric! If you click on the picture you will see that it doesn't totally cover the print but it would have worked just great if I had used the back of the fabric instead of the front.

They really don't photograph very well. There's a lot of depth to the color and they really sparkle! My favorite is the third from the left, the black/gray one. It is base painted with Stewart Gill Black Pearlize. What an awesome paint!  The fabric on the far right was made at the end of the day and just has every paint roller run over it to get some of the excess paint out of the rollers before cleaning.

The other paints I used are Colourize, Alchemy, Metamica and Byzantia. Once the fabrics are dry and heat set the hand of the ones painted with the Stewart Gill paints are the closest to the original hand of the fabric. The fabrics painted with Jacquard are much stiffer. They are both soft after washing but I don't think fabrics painted with these paints will often be washed.

I don't want to totally knock Jacquard paints because they are still very good paints and they are less expensive than the Stewart Gill. But I love the Stewart Gill paints and Jacquard doesn't make anything similar to Alchemy or Byzantia. Alchemy is an interference paint and is great as the final layer. If you want to try Stewart Gill paints I recommend trying one (or all) of the 4 white Alchemy paints and a couple of the Byzantia colors. I particularly like color 03 Illuminata. My sewing expense control efforts were totally shot last night when I ordered a huge supply of the Stewart Gill paints!

The final thing that I wanted to test was colorfastness of the paints. I heat set them with the iron on high and keeping the iron in place for 5 seconds as I moved it over the fabric. I made sure to overlap each stop and I ironed front and back. On one fabric I barely ironed at all. I washed the fabrics in my regular laundry wash load on warm.

From left to right:

Jacquard painted, unwashed and washed

Stewart Gill painted, unwashed and washed

Stewart Gill painted, minimally heat set, unwashed and washed

The heat set fabrics all performed about the same. There was some fading of the color on both samples. The one that was minimally heat set lost lots of color. So, heat setting is important but the heat setting I did was not enough. Next I will put the fabrics in the dryer for 30 minutes or more and see if that makes a difference. I'll also do a test with cold water washing instead of warm.

More on this next weekend!

Sunday Stash Control Report

I actually had a good week from a stash control point of view. I had to take my serger and my Pfaff 7550 in for service so stopped by Hancock's right next door. This is all I bought - 5 colors of acrylic felt to restock base fabrics for my mixed medial boxes and about 10 yards of cheesecloth. I paint this to use in the boxes too. All totaled only about $32.

But wait until next Sunday. I went mad buying Stewart Gill paints last night. I'll do that confession next week but I'll post later today about my experience with the.

I haven't produced much in the way of finished product. I have taken about 3 yards of ugly fabric from my stash and transformed it with the metallic paints. I don't think that counts as stash busting since they are still just fabrics!

Don't forget to check out other blogger's stash reports through Judy's blog.

Fabric Dyeing Gradient Test - Follow Up

Remember my frustration with my fabric dyeing last weekend? I had dyed a gradient of green and even with full strength dye concentrate I did not get good color saturation. Thanks to some great blog readers I received some good guidance so was ready to try it again today. The primary recommendation was to control the temperature of the dyeing area better. I dye in the basement and it can be pretty cool there in the winter. I cranked up the space heater this morning and kept it running the entire time that the fabrics were dyeing. Every other variable was the same: fabric (size and type), dye, soda ash mix and dye ratios.

As a reminder, I am using fat 1/8th pieces of fabric and 6 teaspoons (1 ounce) of dye. The lightest shade is 1/8th teaspoon of dye with water to make 1 ounce. The darkest shade is 100% dye concentrate. I left the fabrics to cure for 5 hours. I was even still listening to the same audio book!

What a difference the heat made:

The fabrics in the top row are from last weekend, the bottom row are todays efforts. The color saturation is much better. Here is the photo in black and white so you can see just the value differences.

Another recommendation was that I might need to make this dye concentrate stronger since green is a mixed dye. I decided to compare the results of the green (mixed dye) with red (a primary).

Here it is in black and white so you can see the value comparison better.

The green fabrics are actually a tiny bit darker. My opinion is that I am happy with the results. I'm still not thrilled with the actual hue of the green. It has more blue in it than I wanted, but it's dyeing much better with the heat added and I think the concentrate ratio of dye powder is OK as is.

I also received some other suggestions about the dyeing method so I decided to test them as well. I use the Ann Johnston method of immersion dyeing. Joanna suggested soaking the fabric in the soda ash water first, wring out the excess moisture, immerse the fabric in the dye and then lay it flat to cure. Wil suggested that I apply the soda ash first, wring out the excess moisture and then immersion dye the fabric. I tried both of these methods with the 3 teaspoon concentration of dye (50% dye concentrate, 50% water).

The piece on the left was cured flat in the open air. The piece in the middle is from the set above (immersion dyed with soda ash water applied after the dye). The piece on the right uses soda ash soaked fabric, the fabric was folded to fit in a zip-lock bag and the dye poured in. I sealed the bag and squished the dye around and then let it cure with all of the other samples. The fold lines do not shows in the final fabric.

It's easy to see that all three methods worked very well and all are acceptable. The sample on the right has the most even color (dyed in the zip-lock bag) and the one on the left (cured flat) is a close second. The middle piece is the most mottled. I'm glad I did this particular experiment because it will help me when I am trying for specific textures. It also seems to me that there's less water waste with the methods that require the fabric to be soaked in the soda ash solution.

All very interesting......in a geeky obsessed sort of way. I'm making great progress on the weekend list. The Saturday chores are done and I also painted 6 more metallic fabrics. I can't wait to show them to you tomorrow after they have dried and been ironed to set the paint.

The return of the weekend list!

I haven’t done a Friday list in a while and I know that Cindy misses seeing it! Here’s what I hope to get done this weekend:

• Second testing of the gradient dyeing, this time controlling the temperature better. If that doesn’t work I will try a stronger dye mix and a painting technique instead of immersion.
• More testing of metallic painting techniques. This time I will use the Stewart Gill instead of the Jacquard and see if the results are different and I want to see what the results look like when I do dry vs. wet painting.
• Start working on my Triptych Challenge swap pieces. This is a challenge that has been organized at MQResources. I’ve been pondering my techniques for a while and think I have one of them fairly well thought out. I have a pretty good idea for the second one and absolutely no idea yest for my own.
• Consider what I am going to do for the January Take It Further Challenge.

There are a few chores thrown in as well – cleaning the gas fireplace in the bedroom (20 minutes), taking down the Christmas tree (1 – 2 hours) and laundry.

Metallic fabrics

Here is the second set of fabrics after metallic painting. These didn't turn out as good as the first set but they are still much better than the fabric that I started with. There's more metallic painting in my near future!

Make My Day Award

Marie sent me this award. I'm surprised! Thank you, Marie!

Who knew that blogging would be such a great way to make new friends. Now I am to pass this along to people whose blogs bring me happiness and inspiration and make me feel happy about being a member of the blogging community. The recommended number is ten. Since Marie already tagged Sue and Wanda, I'll leave them alone. It's difficult for me to narrow my list of favorite inspiration blogs to 10 but here are SOME of my favorite!

Summerset

Terri

Judy

Debra

Mary

Shirley

PurpleMissusTany

Judy L.

Dawn

Ladies if you do not want to carry the tag forward that's fine with me. I just though it was a good opportunity to show everyone some of my favorite blogs! Marie, if you had not tagged you would have been tagged by me! 

Dyeing and Painting - Frustration and Fun

I had planned on several chores today but reconsidered over breakfast and decided to do some fabric dyeing and painting. The dyeing results are a little frustrating but the painting was a success.

I have been frustrated with my dye results lately because I am not getting the deep colors that I want. Today I decided to do some testing of dye strengths to give me a basic guide for mixing my dyes. I cut exact fat eights and measured my liquids by weight so that I could control the variables. I made 8 different strengths from 1/8 tsp dye in 1 ounce of water (far left) to full strength 1 ounce of dye concentrate only (far right). I did get a gradation, as expected but I am disappointed with the lack of deep color in the full strength samples. I have gotten much better results than this when Anne and I have dyed fabric at the river. I have some fabrics from a few years ago that are very vibrant. I think there are 2 variables that I need to test. First is the temperature. I do use a space heater in the basement when dyeing and I use warm water to wet the fabric and mix the dye concentrate but the ambient temperature during the day is about 72. Maybe the basement is too cool.

The second possible variable is the brand of dye. Anne and I use Pro Chemical dyes at the river and I have been using Dharma at home. Does anyone have any insight to offer on this one?  I think I will order some dye powders from Pro Chemical and do some comparisons. I am also not at all happy with this green dye. In the lighter shades it's blue. This is supposed to be a real Kelly green. It's not even close.

All is not lost - it was a good exercise. I finished up the dye session by painting some more metallic fabrics. The ones that I painted last week were done over some hand dyed fabrics. I painted these over some ugly commercial print fabrics from the stash. I think I've found a great way to rid myself of some ugly fabrics! I'm experimenting with a couple of different techniques and two brands of paints. (I did not make a resolution to be "free and easy". I will continue to obsess!)

I also made a couple of batches of lotion. It is the season of "heavy use"!

Tomorrow my serger and my Pfaff 7550 go into the shop for a litle R&R.

The final, final Christmas package

I made this for a Chirstmas gift but couldn't show it until I gave it to Kim. She got it today! It's basically a giant envelope. I made it as the packaging for a sewing book but wanted her to be able to use it as a project folder. For the base fabric I basically used the technique in the Fibre&Stitch Checkbook Cover. It's a free project on their web site. I used Timtex as the base and determined the size of the envelope from the book.

It's very pink. I'm over pink.