Back to October.

The month of October for the Temperature Quilt is up on the design wall now. But there are a few spots missing.

Time for more cutting. I counted too for November and December and cut out enough for the last two months. In theory I should be done with cutting.

The box of color! There are going to be a lot leftover of some of the colors. I suppose that'll end up on the back somehow.

Here's the October column with the missing pieces filled in. October turned out to be a really colorful month, I think it might have the most colors on it, but I'm not sure. Just a lot of highs and lows.
 

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.

Into June

 

I laid out the June column for the Temperature quilt yesterday. And I noticed an error? A miscalculation? The red piece for May 13th was representing a day that was 94°F. The one in the layout for June 30th is supposed to be representing 97°F.. So it should look like a different color, but it's doesn't. 

Here's another view of the color difference/sameness.

The red-orange and the red color just don't read differently enough from a distance. Here you can see how different they are close up.

So I'm taking out the red that's reading too close to the 94°F day. That's the stack of pieces on the right. I'm  moving the temperature range up a step. 

Now to cut a few out for the 101-105°F that will be in the more hot pink range.

That's much better for June 30th! I just want June to get the credit for having a 97°F day I guess.

Last week on dye day, I tried one more time to match the 25-30°F weirdo mauve color. This is the one I'm pretty sure was painted with diluted SetaColor. As you can see, I'm not even close, but what a lovely purple that one is. Hopefully we won't have an extended super cold spell for the rest of the year, and I should be okay.

I did finally match the 36-40°F range which is good because I'm definitely going to need some more of this temperature.

I'm also happy enough with the 71-75°F matching attempt. That's good because there's a lot of days in this range for the upcoming months in my piecing journey as I go through the temperature year that was.

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. 

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.

Pantone Choosing

 

Time for more Pantone Project blocks to get made and that means auditioning fabrics. 

I was surprised at how many options I had for matching rust.

I really wanted to use one of these prints, but they just weren't the correct intensity of yellow.

I love this blue.

Now I'm all ready to go to make five more blocks.

Mostly Analogous

 

Here's the promised group shot of all the over-dyed strips. I've arranged them in the same order as the FQ group shot..

Turns out the Yellow group is the only one I did "correctly" or as per the class instructions. All of the over-dyed colors were supposed to follow this scheme: analogous to the right on the color wheel of yellow, analogous to the left on the color wheel of yellow and finally the complement of yellow. So two adjacent analogous colors and one opposite on the color wheel complement. My favorite of this group is the complement with the over-dye of violet. Left to right: Yellow, yellow-orange, green, violet. 

For some reason, I did the complement correctly for the next color, Yellow-Orange, but then instead of doing two analogous colors to Yellow-Orange, I did two more complements Blue-Violet and Violet, but analogous to the complement (Blue), not the original color. The correct colors to over-dye would have been Yellow and Red. So...my over-dye work except for the Yellow group is very very different than the rest of the classes' work. But luckily, I really like them quite a lot. The patterning especially is super interesting to me, some of these almost look like plaid tartans.

From left to right: Orange, Orange and Violet, Orange and Blue-Green, Orange and Blue. The blue one is So Dark and mysterious, in person there are so many colors creating so much depth.

, 

Red-Orange, Red-Orange and Blue-Green, Red-Orange and Green, Red-Orange and Blue.

Red, Yellow, Blue-Green, Green

Red-Violet, Yellow, Yellow-Orange, Green. 

Violet, Blue-Green, Orange, Yellow

Blue-Violet, Orange, Yellow, Yellow-Orange

Blue, Red, Yellow-Orange, Orange

Green, Violet, Orange, Red

Blue-Green, Red-Violet, Orange, Red

Yellow-green,violet, red, red-violet.

Pantone Project Recently

Here is an update on the Pantone Project, these are the most recent blocks that I've completed. One set is going to friend Jaye at the upcoming BAM retreat. That's on the very top of my list of things to remember to bring (and do).  It would be a total Julie move to remember to bring the blocks, but then get all excited and wrapped up with the retreat goings on and forget to actually hand them over. Writing this down like this in two places now will hopefully help!

I'm pretty excited about how this recent set looks together. 

I think that the colors would make an interesting color palette for a quilt.

Here are all 40 blocks that I've made so far along with their corresponding 4.5" square of fabric. Plus one of Jaye's that got mixed in by accident.

While so many of the blocks were out and on the design wall, I decided to put them up with the blocks Jaye has made and play around to see how they are looking so far.

Some interesting possibilities are already coming through. We're not even halfway there yet on making these, so there will be a lot more variety in combinations.