December To-Do

 

Here's how my design wall was looking on December 1st. There's my half-way assembled Temperature Quilt, and then the three pieces of dyed yardage waiting for their second dye baths.

Here's my To-Do list for December:

Sew-a-Long Thingies

Trinket - layer and quilt.

Color Collective - Quilt and bind the Slopes Quilt, 

and make another side for the Clover Pillow with Swerves, start cutting for Colorwash

Temperature Quilt- cut remainder of needed pieces from newly dyed fabric, keep piecing monthly columns.

Pantone Project - keep making blocks and pass them on to friend Jaye.

Secret Lives of Color- it's still oh so very secret, keep reading the book and making the blocks, post some too.

Indigo Way - Begin work on this year's Bonnie Hunter Mystery quilt. Assemble fabrics, make the first blocks.

New Work

Wedge Quilt - finish assembling quilt top, make a backing, quilt, bind, label.

A Hot One - planned quilt celebrating the color of the year, Viva Magenta.

Garment Sewing Academy - finish Cielo top.

Make It Work - assemble a quilt top out of the materials for BAMQG, make backing, layer, quilt, bind.

Make binding and finish the other BAMQG quilt for donation.

Dye Mastery Class - finish final unit on over-dyeing and patterning.

Finish It Already

Make a back for Metro Twist, layer, quilt, bind, label.

Finish quilting Japanese Houses, bind, label.

Y.E.S. Coat - lay out what I've made, make more elements, start assembling.

And finally and most importantly: finish making the gifts before Christmas.

That should keep me busy enough for December!

2 Hits 2 Misses

 

Here are the 2 yards of Cotton Couture that I also dyed. Three of them are attempts at matching some Temperature Quilt colors. The brown one is an older mixed dye that I had in my dye box, Palomino Gold from Dharma Trading. It's quite a nice brown, but as I've now learned in class, a lot of these dyes have reds that can be problematic.

See those spots and streaks of fuchsia? That was in the dye mixture, and that one dye is harder to dissolve completely in solution, so it can streak and spot very unpredictably. Thus the lesson on how to get to a brown that you like, without using the more tempermental reds. I'm going to over dye this one to hide the ickiness of those red spots and streaks.

Yet again another beautiful pinkish purple, but not even close to the 25-30° color. These are all of my attempts to get close in one photo. Nice colors, sure, but not *that* color.

Finally got close enough for the 71-75° range. 

Here are the greens I dyed to get there.

And another close enough color match for the navy, 46-50° range. I really like the mottling I got on these one, I used a much smaller container.

Here are all the lovely blues I dyed on my way to getting there.

Step One

 

Here's my step one results from the Dye Mastery class on dyeing full yardage. This is a yard that was flag-folded as I wrote about here.

It will be over-dyed in step two, but I'm so far very pleased with the results.

Oooh, ahhh, this flag-folded one is very complex even before getting into a second dye bath.

The flag-folded manipulation was very effective.

This one had a bunch of rubber banded "circles" that I tried intentionally to make as wonky as possible. Success!

This looks like the outline of a Hawaiian island to me. 

Can't wait to over-dye all three of these beauties tomorrow.

To Be Used And To Be Dyed

Keeping track of various purchases that I've made lately. Some more WonderClips as so many of mine are being used in the Temperature Quilt piecing process. And some of the colorful bobbin thread keepers that friend Jaye recommended. Help me keep it together please. Some emery sand and ground walnut shell stuffing for the pincushion I'm working on for the BAM pincushion swap. Also a couple of yards of bright white Cotton Couture, all ripped into 1/2 yard pieces edge machine embroidered and ready to pre-wash and then dye.

Some fabric and tank tops and bamboo shortie socks to be dyed from Dharma Trading. I got one each of all the tank tops they have on offer, they're all jerseys of various weights and fabric contents. Some black Pimatex I bought by accident (it was supposed to be the white version, whoops!). And some very on sale rayon/linen striped fabric to be dyed grey and used for the lining for my YES coat.

This fabric has a really lovely silky hand which will work well for a coat lining. It has a nice weight too, I think it will stand up well to all the pieced cottons on the outside of the coat. Hopefully it will take dye well.

I need some help with my EPP methods so I bought the new gizmo that SewTites recently came out with. I'll let you know whether it works for me once I try it out.

And in the preview of coming attractions section, I'm now moving onto the next unit in the Dye Mastery class that I'm taking. These three are in the first dye baths right now, but here's how they looked before I dunked them. Two are flag-folded, with steam pressed in folds. The other is covered with rubber banded circles.

I think these are going to be pretty cool patterns when they're unfolded. Fingers crossed!

Then there will likely be at least one more dye baths before they're done. More on the outcome later..
 

Mixed Colors Unit

Here's the most recent results from the dyeing class I'm taking. There were three different "experiments' of various mixtures of colors assigned, each is shown in one column. These are all combined in the dye solution, not over-dyed like in the previous units.

First up, on the left, trying for various shades of a color. Combinations of dye colors from top to bottom: Red-Orange+Violet, Blue-Violet+Red-Orange, Violet+Orange, Red-Violet+Orange

Next, on the right, Analogous combinations, from top to bottom: Yellow-Green+Green, Blue+Blue-Violet, Blue-Green+Green, Red+Violet-Red

 Finally on the right, Complementary color combinations. From top to bottom: Yellow+Violet, Red+Green, Yellow-Green+Violet-Red, Blue-Violet+Yellow-Orange.

I think this one is my favorite out of the twelve. Sure, it looks kinda like a bruise, but the way the colors split and combined as well as the patterning from the rubber bands in the upper right really look like something to me.

I'm really learning a lot more about how the pure colors work alone and in combination, this is going to be really useful going forward. 

Color+GrayX2

 
Here are the results of the second part of the toning with grey lesson in the Dye Mastery class that I'm currently taking. This is the same 12-step color wheel with a less color and more gray dyes used.

So interesting that the upper left Yellow is such an olive color. The violet and blue violet were only slightly affected. Fascinating stuff, huh?

I really like that red-orange in the upper left corner of this one. 

As usual one of my favorite things about dyeing is the wonderful dyed threads that result.

More about the Temperature Quilt dyeing, there were some absolute failures like this one above. Although this turned out to be a gorgeous pink purple with a lot of variation that I really love. This fabric I'm trying to match I've realized was not dyed, but instead painted with SetaColor. So if we have a cold spell over these last two months of the year, I'll try painting some. So far I have enough to cover all the 25-30F days so far this year with lots to spare.

There was also some success. This is will be one of the most used colors this year (76-80F), so now I have plenty.

This one was a happy accident, I was trying for one color range but succeeded in dyeing the next one that I also needed. So it all works out. This is also a popular temperature range this year 36-40F, so I'm happy to have enough now.

I'm now realizing that I haven't ever tried to dye an exact matching color before, and it's quite a lot harder than one would think. Especially when there's no notes from back then to go off of. I'm learning, so now there are notes! The result is a lot of colors that I really enjoy and will use, so it's all good.

Grey+Color

 I took the weekend off for family stuff mostly, but I did finally get to washout my dyeing efforts from Friday on Sunday. So these babies were in the dye pots and bags for a while. This is the results of the toning with grey exercise from the Dye Mastery class that I'm taking.  

Just by using a small amount of grey, the same 12 step color wheel definitely looks a lot different. That's yellow up in the top left corner, now a nice olive.

I'm pretty pleased with the results and now I get to try doing the second part of that lesson.

Here are my most recent efforts to produce some more useable dyed fabric for the Temperature Quilt. I've hit it right on with some of them, others are way way off. So that will be another part of what I'm dyeing tomorrow.

I started putting up the next month's worth of pieces for the May column of the Temperature Quilt and got stopped halfway through because I'd run out of the fabric that represents some of the more common temperatures. 

Now I can get back to cutting and carry on assembling the columns. They go together pretty fast once I get them laid out.

Using hand-dyed fabrics for this quilt was going to be a risk in just this way, I predicted it. But, I'm really enjoying doing the work to try and get close enough. Thankfully with the variation in the dyed fabrics I've already used, it'll work out pretty soon.