June Cornucopia

 

June is done and with that 2023 is half over. Hard to believe...time flies...etc. Here's my cornucopia roundup of all the things I consumed online this past month.

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I really want to make this great scrap quilt, Unallocated by Michelle McKillop

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Fiber Is The New Painting an article in Arts in America about new artists creating with fiber.

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An informative post from Clover & Violet about sew-in magnets for bag closures.

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A video single from one of my favorite bands, The Smile with a super interesting and beautiful visualization.

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A good review of Jane Dunnewold's new book, Damsel,Hero,Artist,Judge.

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A great article about fiber artist's sketchbooks.

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Should I enter this year? It's been awhile since I've tried to get into the New Quilts of Northern California. Maybe I will to celebrate PIQF being un-cancelled.

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Houses Under The Needle

 

I've gotten a lot of the quilting done on the Japanese Houses or Village quilt done. It's mostly just walking foot, anchor it down sort of quilting, but it was a lot just to get started on it. Now I'm on to figuring out how to feature each house. I'm thinking I'll meander about in the "sky" of each block and the sky vertical separators, and then do something on each window and or door? Not sure yet.

Working on this quilt today I was so struck by the difference just in the colors from the Trinket quilt. This quilt is absolutely crazy and packed with vibrant color and pattern from all the variety of Japanese fabrics. But it's not super-saturated like the Alison Glass fabrics I'm using for Trinket. I like them both a whole lot, but for very different reasons.

One of Each

 

Here's a full layout of the Trinket quilt. This now has the regulation 13 across and 15 down arrangement as per the pattern. I cut a lot of squares from all of the fabrics I've used in piecing the 40 blocks to have a lot to play around with. I really like the look of this arrangement except for the two white squares which really bother my eye. I could undo the background of the one pieced block and swap out the strawberries on white print. Or I could try painting the background of the pieced block. 

I have 21 extra squares that may end up in some sort of border arrangement or more likely on the back.
I am also going to play around with another layout idea before committing to sewing this top together.

On Background

 
Time for some background checkerboard action. I cut out some 4.5" squares to use in the Trinket quilt out of the Painter's Palette in Blackberry that I bought for just this very purpose.

It really does read as black when it's up on the white design wall. My first configuration was 9x15, nope too long and skinny to be useable.

11x15, much better.

I used my initial coloring page sketch to start filling in the white spots. I decided to not piece additional paper pieced blocks, 40 is enough for me. Instead I'm cutting out 4.5" squares (fussy cutting mostly) of the fabrics I used in piecing.

Sixteen more to go and then I'll get down to sewing the rows together. Now that there are other colors to compare to, I can see the background fabric is a dark purple. I like it.

Six PPPP Blocks

 

(PPPP= Pantone Project Paper Pieced)

Back into the Pantone Project box, and I found that I had 6 postcards from friend Jaye to match up and make blocks for. Here's my fabric choices for each one.

Here's all six blocks and 4.5" squares X2 and their corresponding postcards. Oooh I really like how this arrangement looks. So very pointy!

A bit closer up view of three of the blocks and fabric squares.

And the final three. Yes that one for Desert Sand isn't reading too well here, but the seed shapes are pretty darn close. I thought the patterned fabric looked better than the solid that I had that still wasn't an exact match. Close enough is our rule, so there you go.

That makes 51 postcards received, and 51 blocks made, that means we're more than halfway done!

Max Temp

 

One of the main reasons that I recently pulled all the dyeing stuff out, dusted it off, and actually put dye powder in chemical water and onto white fabric was that I needed some orange and red-orange for the Temperature quilt. Although given the last month's temperatures, I really may not need all that much after all.

The hottest temperature that I've cut out pieces for so far is the 86-90° range. That cheddar yellow-orange in the upper right. So that means that the next step should be 91-95° and it should be just orange, then the next would be red-orange, then red, right?

Well the fabric I had initially chosen for the orange and red-orange spots as you can see in the picture are really not those colors. Because I didn't have anything dyed in straight-up orange, I think I've probably used it up over during my non-dyeing years. Just like I've run out of lime-greens. You tend to use up what you like and all that, right? The color I put in the orange slot was instead a strange washed-out peach? Which does not fit in at all with the rest of the intensity of my rainbow of choices. And the one I put in the red-orange slot is much too pastel and more of a pink tone. The red was fine.

I tried out a few rearrangements of the fabric that I've just dyed and moved some of the choices around.

I think this arrangement will work out much better. And boy oh boy is it ever hard to photograph reds and red oranges well.  The bottom two fabrics look like very close shades of red and they are not at all.

The last category fabric represents 116-120° and if I need anything past that, I'd probably just make something with X's on cartoon eyes because we'd be absolute goners. Here's' hoping and fingers and toes crossed that does not come to pass this year or any other.

Around The Bend

Another week's worth of ICAD (index card a day), continuing on with my theme of "words in landscapes".  This one is "Soar Through Oceans". Inspired of course by the whole submersible tragedy this week, all those images of just how dark how fast it gets below the water's surface.

This one is pretty far afield of a landscape, could be a stream with square rocks I guess.

Another cityscape.

I got on a roll with city landscapes.

"Out of towners continue to pour in"

First one with a magazine image. From an article about the kangaroo overpopulation issue in Australia.

A dead of night landscape, definitely "Before the sun"

A creek scene based on the creek in my parent's backyard that I recently got to splash around in with my niece and nephew. "Rushing water drowns out all", it really does, you can't hear the freeway at all even though it's right there, just around the bend in the river.
 

Dye Results

 

I stacked up all of the dye bath containers before pouring and rinsing out for a little before picture. So colorful! It's amazing how long these plastic containers have lasted, from back when we bought the enormous jars of peanut butter and mixed nuts. I really like having containers that have lids.

First up to rinse out, was the cotton tank top I'd poured the three different greens I was using to dye fabric had turned out. This is after rinsing, but before washing out.

This was a big thick sweatshirt that I left in the dye solution in a tray bucket with no lid, just a plastic bag over it. It was pretty hard to wash this one out because it was super heavy when it was wet. Pretty black huh? Just wait....

I think it turned out pretty well when washed out. This was using one of the black dyes, and you can see that it is not a "pure black" dye, but instead a mixture of many colors. That's why there's purple-y and blue-ish spaces. 

This sweatshirt was a cotton/polyblend so the dye only took up on the cotton which makes it not as dark. That's ok because you can still see the all-important CAL logo. I should have taken a before picture of this, it was very messed up, it had gotten left outside for months and had all sorts of disreputable stains that made it seem unclean even though it was. So now it's wearable again and sort of cool and definitely unique. DH is very excited about it.

Orange Crush dyed up as a very very intense red-orange. I'll be using this one in the Temperature quilt.

From left to right, Orange Crush, Atomic Fireball, Dye-na-mite (a pure red)

Three pieces of cotton print cloth and one tank top laid along them in the bottom of the picture. I'm very pleased with how all of them turned out. That green one over on the right is "Electric Green" which yeah, that tracks. The other two are Chartreuse and Apple Green.

Some variations in color separation, again these are not pure color dyes and you can see some blue areas or the more yellow areas.

Hooray, I'm back on the dyeing track and one of my toenails is a bright green! 

Return to Dyeing

I've been dyeing for a very long time (2000!), but with a very long recent break in there. I had to pull out a couple of my most-used dyeing books yesterday to remind myself of the formulas and procedures. I mostly had remembered the important stuff, but not necessarily in the correct order. I got seven colors mixed up and poured and will be washing it out today. I'm so excited to see what the results will be.

No pictures of the process though as my hands were (and are a mess) due to leaky gloves. Sigh...now I'm remembering. My DS said it looks like I have a dead woman finger. 

While I was gearing myself up to go dig through the dyeing stuff, I finished off February of my Temperature Quilt by adding in the background ending pieces. What a terrible picture this is! Turned out I had a smeary camera lens.

That's better. Here's January and February snuggled up together. They'll be separated by black background sashing in the quilt top. I'm liking how this looks, you can really see the difference month to month.

Supply Time

Getting back to dyeing after many years off, a new box of provisions from Dharma Trading arrived and now I'm all excited to get to jump in again and make a colorful mess. I bought some new dye colors, most especially two reds with great names: Atomic Fireball and Dye-no-mite. I also got one ready to dye tank top for myself to throw in with the reds.

I also got two cotton fabrics to use for dyeing, one is 60" wide sheeting, and then some mercerized cotton print cloth. Mercerized refers to a fabric treatment used to help with dye uptake. 

I also received my order from Hancock's of Paducah, which is where I normally buy my batting as they usually have a good price on the ones I like to use. I got one Hobbs 80/20 that is fusible and one that is not. I discovered I didn't have a big enough non-fusible batt for one of the quilts I was trying to sandwich the other day. I also got a big cone (6,452 yds!) of Aurifil 50wt thread, a couple of super on-sale fabrics, some Steam-a-Seam2, Chenille needles (friend Jaye recommended to try for hand-stitching).

For Hancock's free shipping deal, you can only buy two quilt batts at a time. It definitely makes for a big box to pick up at the post office, but at least it's not too heavy.

Trinket Blocks All Pieced

 

This is the last group of Trinket blocks, except for the two bonus optional ones, and now I have to decide whether to make more or what. I'm honestly kind of tired of paper piecing at this point. I may do fussy cut squares of the Alison Glass fabrics to sub in for blocks in the checkerboard arrangement I wanted to do. I think I need to cut out the background squares and put it up on the design wall to see how it looks before I decide.

This one looks like a tie, or if you turn it on its side, a fish.

A moth or butterfly?

A small heart.

A cat's head?

This one ended up a bit wrong, but it's okay enough for me.

ICAD Landscapes

Another week full of ICAD work. That's one Index Card A Day. Continuing on with my "Words In Landscape" theme. This first one is the sort of hard rain where you really can't see anything else.

Just felt the need for some cartoon clouds.

The next two cards were created together. I first sketched between two cards side by side.

Then I added the water.

Next was the addition of some words. 

I like how different each one looks on its own when you separate them.

Prairie feelings.

Have I been here? Death Valley maybe? It's a landscape that's just there in the back of my mind.

Cities are part of the landscape too. If only the buildings could be this colorful.

An attempt at somewhat brutalist architecture, except for the curved windows. Influenced by my time at Cal living next door to the Berkeley Art Museum and very near the impressively brutalist architecture building, Wurster Hall.