Rainbow, Rare and Knotty

After a visit the other day with friend Jaye to the long arm artist, Colleen Granger to drop off quilts (City Sampler is now approaching the finish line), we made a stop at Bay Quilts just before they closed.

I managed to find some good stuff in a short amount of time, a few fabrics to add to the Medallion Quilt box, as well as this FQ rainbow pack of collage images. Now I need to find a good fat quarter chunky sort of pattern as I don't want to cut these up into too small of pieces.

In the fat quarter bins, this Tula Pink neon lion caught my eye, the store clerk was very excited for me as she said it was a rare one now. I also got two more colors of Spagetti embroidery thread. I also couldn't resist the small retablo, especially once I read the back of it.

Here's the back of the Our Lady Undoer of Knots retablo from Lynn Garlick Retablos, cool huh? I might have to do an Undoer of Knots quilt.

Now to go update my fabric tracker for the year.

A Place For Hexies

 I had this toppling over stack of hexies ready to go and I was worried they were going to get mixed in with the mess of scraps from working on the Scrap Tape. So they needed a place to hang out together and I had saved a magnetic closure box that was close to the right shape and size. Formerly housed a FitBit. Of course I needed a rainbow, so I used some Inktense blocks on some heavy sketchbook paper.

After brushing on some water and letting the rainbow dry, I trimmed it down to close to the exact size and glued it into the base of the box.

I had to cover up the FitBit logo and UPC codes with some nearly matching washi tape.

It's a really nice box, heavy and a solid closure that sticks with no fiddling around. 

It fits all the hexies I have so far with lots of room for more. I could even have a little sewing kit in here.

A rainbow of Hexies in a rainbow box. Now to sew some together....

Temperature Rainbow

I haven't posted much about the Temperature quilt, because honestly, I hadn't gotten going on it quite yet except for the background which isn't too exciting to look at. Finally I've worked out which colors are which temperatures. That was the hardest part for some reason.  Here's the rainbow! These are all of my own hand-dyes.

So here's some action shots of cutting out the very first temperature bracket 25 -30 (Farenheit to be clear). I only needed to cut out 9 of this color so far this year.

Then I moved onto cutting out the next range, 31-35. There are a lot more required than the first range, already need 36 of this color.

As I have to cut all these shapes ahead of time and then try to keep them organized, I decided to make myself some labels. For some reason, I didn't think about how gigantic these ended up. Also, a second note to myself, check the printer's color levels!

As I go along I'm also figuring out which colors I may need to dye some more fabric to hopefully match closely enough if needed. What are the chances that we get below 30F in the winter this year? Pretty good...so I better figure this out.

Cord Stopper Bonanza

 

I've been getting tired of tying and untying the straps on my favorite go-to mask. So I ordered some cord-stoppers. It really works well as long as I take care not to get my hair taken up in the thing. You can get a good fit on the mask and they don't slip.

I didn't check the quantity. And when the bag arrived I had a good laugh. Anyone needs some cord-stoppers? Let me know and I'll send you some.

And then of course I had to sort them out by color. I couldn't resist. Is that an OCD thing? I have no idea, but it was rather relaxing to do.

I think this might be one of my favorite inadvertent cellphone pictures I've ever taken by accident. 

Can't Resist the Rainbow

 Suckered in by a rainbow once again. This time it was for a pack of Heather Bailey wool blends.

At some point, I'll do a wool hand work project, maybe like this Sue Spargo one.

Rainbow Nails

Yet another rainbow. I really do have way too much nail polish.

Wash the Rainbow

Can't ever resist the rainbow! Now that I've washed, dried and ironed all of these new FQ's from Lecien, L's Modern Basics I'm about done with new fabrics for a while. Pshew.

It sure is fun to play with all these colors though. Nice fabric, good hand, seems well printed and it washed up very well. MassDrop wins yet again.

Unleashing The Rainbow

Time to unleash the rainbow and do some painting with some new paints. Jacquard Traditional Textiles, which I've never tried before.

I chose a piece of woven tapestry weight, yet soft upholstery free fabric. It has a nice woven-in pattern.
I started out with the lightest color first, yellow. The paint is really intense and a bit thick, so I dabbed it on and then added water.

Adding more colors and seeing how they flow together and change.

My thinking/painting face.

Almost done, and look at that muddy water. I'm liking how the pigment is gathering in some spots according to the woven design of the fabric.

And here it is all done. I was going to make ATC's with it, but I decided against it for several reasons:

• just too pretty to cut up
• a much thicker fabric than I usually use for ATC's
• kind of loosely woven (will probably shred when cut)
• the colors are too spread out to read well in ATC size.

Spoken like a true fabric hoarder huh?