Field Trips in Fiber - Adventures in quilting, hand dyed fabric and fiber art.

Blending hand dyed fabrics with commercial fabrics

Nancy H., this one is for you!

Nancy recently posted some of the hand dyed fabrics that she purchased on the MQResource site and asked people for suggestions on how to use them. Of course, I think they can be used for anything and everything! But it did get me to thinking. Her questions not only applies to hand dyed fabric but to any fabrics that we consider "special" and that can only be used in just the right projects.

I had a plan to use the Three Creative Studios Block of the Month blocks for a new project so this was a great opportunity to take some hand dyed fabrics and show how they can be blended with commercial fabrics.

 

The three hand dyed fabrics at the bottom of the screen are from one of my parfait packs. These three were dyed in the same dye bath so there's a little purple in the orange and pink, a little orange in the purple and pink and a little pink in the other two. They don't exactly match though so I thought it would be a good challenge for blending with other fabrics. The pattern calls for 6 fabrics - there will be 3 hand dyes and 3 commercial fabrics.

This first set shows, in my opinion, the easiest solution. Nothing mixes better with hand dyed fabrics than batiks. I pulled the stripe batik because of the great purple and orange and I really loved the addition of the green. With that I pulled 3 solids: purple, green and pink. If I were using this set I would use the purple and green, not the pink.

But that was too easy.

A more challenging option is to use a commercial print. I found this print with a watercolor feel. The pink, dark red and purple of the flowers blends really well with two of the hand dyes. Then I pulled a 2-tone purple stripe with solid green and pink. I like this set a lot and if I were using it I think I would use the purple stripe and the green and leave the pink out....but who knows.

But that still wasn't challenging enough.

Can you mix hand dyed fabrics with fussy florals? Yes, you can!

This floral print has been in my stash for YEARS and I really don't care for it much but I pulled it because the colors are almost perfect with all three hand dyed fabrics. Then I found the strip on the bottom right that I love with the floral and added a solid turquoise and dark purple tone-on-tone.  This is the set I chose to work with.

I decided to make a color map replacement for the original colors in Terri's blocks. I used the floral in place of the gold, pink for the black and the other colors followed the pattern (orange, dark purple, light purple and turquoise). After cutting everything out I decided that the solid light turquoise was too stark and I switched it out for a medium tone-on-tone turquoise print. I didn't use the stripe because it would have required a lot o fussy cutting.

What do you think? Does it work? I think so! They will work even better when I complete the project. The final project will bring back that funky stripe and add in more of the purple fabrics. Stay tuned in a couple of weeks for a project tutorial on Three Creative Studios using these blocks. Sign up for the newsletter if you want to be notified when new projects are available.

Here's my official month 4 block for the BOM project. I'm caught up for at least 2 weeks!

Handwork Wednesday

I haven't made a ton of progress on this lately but Monday night I did finish all of the beaded draping on the lower half of the ball. That probably took about 4 hours all together. The rest of it will go a little faster and maybe I will have Gold Coast done next week. I think I'll make one more before I let the cat out of the closet again. After my last post about these ornaments did anyone decide to do one of these?

I've got the rest of the week off and have my normal excessively long list of things I want to accomplish. One thing I am working on is cleaning out closets and rooms of unneeded STUFF. My goal is to work on it one hour each day. I missed yesterday so I spent 2 hours this morning and cleaned out the office and guest room. It certainly won't take long for me to fill the pick up truck so Chris can go to Goodwill.

No, I will not be contributing things from my sewing room! I did that last year.

The other thing I am doing this week is working on my Initiative piece for the Fiberactions challenge. Tomorrow is totally dedicated to that.

Whistlestop Web Tour, Vol 31 - Resolutions

The Whistlestop Web Tour is posted at the MQResource site. We have also opened a discussion of creative resolutions on the Three Creative Studios blog. Please tell us what your resolutions/goals are for 2010!

For me, joining Three Creative Studios with Terri and Sue and starting my fabric dyeing business was an early resolution to move personally and professionally further into the creative arena. I can't share the details yet but I have set 2010 goals specific to:

• growing my fabric dyeing business
• working in developing my skills with a particular technique (to be revealed in January)
• doing something big to celebrate my 50th birthday!

Of course, I have all of the usual goals that I try to stick to every year:

• stop buying things I don't need (i.e. fabric) but I tend to replace that with some new thing (thread, crystals, beads....)
• be better organized but generally the best I do is to make a run through the house about once every 3 months to get everything back in it's place
• finish projects! That one is on everyone's list, I think but I am beginning to realize that some projects really do not need to be completed. Some projects are stepping stones on a learning path and it's OK to pass them on to a charity sewing group or recycle the materials into a totally different project.

What are your 2010 goals? Please go over to the Three Creative Studios blog and let us know.

Don't forget to enter the December postcard challenge!

The December postcard challenge closes in just 2 days but you still have time to enter. Remember, you don't have to actually make the postcard, but you do have to describe it. Go to the post and check it out.

Need some motivation? Here's the prize package that Thearica won for the November challenge!

Check in January 1 for the announcement of the winner and for an announcement for how the challenge will be even better in 2010!

More note cards made

I'm still going through my sewing room for things to use to make note cards. Here are 3 sets that I did this weekend.

 

These two sets are done with my sun printed fabric. I fused Mistyfuse to the back of the fabric and then cut it with the wavy edged rotary cutter and fused then to the front of the cards. In the first set, I hand sewed vintage buttons to the cards, adding ric rac bows to two of them. In the second set I machined stitched the ric rac trim to the card and then added the vintage buttons. In bot sets I cut out some button images and fused then to the lower left corner of each envelope.

This set is made with the basic instructions from Sue's Foiled Silk Cards tutorial. Instead of using a single piece of fabric as the base, I used a fabric sheet made by fusing small scrap strips of fabric into a larger piece of fabric. I added the fused foil before I cut the fabric up for the cards.

There will be more - I'm still unearthing interesting things from my fused scraps drawer!