More Colour on Cloth

This post concludes my blogging about my "Dye Happy" class at Cherry Tree Quilts in Summerland, British Columbia.  My second fabric line with Northcott is coming along and I have a date with Electric Quilt this coming week to design my second pattern. This is a post about various other ways we used colour on cloth. 

Joan and her 12 step colourwheel:

Sue and her two colour run (yellow to red):

A two colour run from fuschia to turquoise:

A two colour run from dark green to grass green:

Diana's value gradation:

Barb's scrunch dyed multi-colour fabric:

Diana's parfait:

Eileen's flour paste resists:

More flour paste resists:

Marilyn's flour paste resist looks a little landscape-like.

Denise's flour paste resist ... perfect for old walls.

Eileen's soy wax batik:

Denise's hand-painted soy wax batik:

Students worked on a painting using thickened dyes on the last day. This is Sue's:

The entire "Dye Happy" class, each holding a piece of their work.

Timmy-Jeanne and I with her painting of crotons.

This is what the world outside our classroom would have seen!

There are always so many photos to share after a dyeing class. I hope you have enjoyed the inspiration. I shall be immersing myself in Electric Quilt 7 now. Wish me luck!

Dye Happy, Part 4 & Student Work

Yesterday was Session 4 of my Dye Happy class at Wabi Sabi, so I'm sharing some photos. By the way, for those of you on the western side of Canada, I will be teaching this 5 day class at Cherry Tree Quilts, in the beautiful Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, August 18-22. My "Hosta Leaves 101" class has also been added for August 16.

This fabric was created by Ruth using black-eyed peas bound with elastic bands.

 

More flour paste resist 

and bomaki shibori

 and a value gradation by Bev.

 Folded fabric by Valerie.

Arashi shibori T-shirt by Bev.

Becky at the soy wax batik station, wearing her arashi shibori T-shirt.

Students took turns at the soy wax batik station, and at other times worked on whatever project they wanted. Becky decided to dye another colourwheel.

I treated myself to a couple of dyed tunics recently. These are actually dress blanks I purchased at Dharma Trading Company. They fall a couple of inches above the knee, and I think will look best with cropped leggings.

On to some student work. Judy took my "In Full Bloom" class several months ago, and made this poppy. She dyed the background fabrics in our Dye Happy class and brought the finished result to class yesterday. Love how the centre picks up the blue of the background and the diagonal value gradation in the background.

Barb Westfall took my In Full Bloom class in Winnipeg back in March and sent a photo of her finished piece. Her work also features a diagonally pieced background. Great job on the values.

This is my original quilt, "Kissing Joy". The poppy pattern that students are using comes from the bottom poppy on this quilt. This photo of Wendy Wood and I was taken at the Manitoba Prairie Quilters show and conference in March 2014. Thanks for the photo Wendy.

I heard a report that several students at the Huron-Perth Quilt Guild finished their poppies and had them displayed at their quilt show this spring. This one, by Thea Rijkhoff-Ramler, was shared on Facebook. I love the little red accents she has placed in the wonky background blocks.

This peony was made by Sylvia Young in my two-day (design your own) "In Full Bloom" class last year.

Heather Williams won a second place at the Common Thread Quilt Guild's show two weekends ago, for the piece she began in my Liberated Radial Piecing class.

Always a pleasure sharing student work :-))

Dye Happy, Session 3

Today was Session 3 of my Dye Happy class here in Ottawa at Wabi Sabi. This store specializes in knitting, weaving, and spinning, but has a classroom in the back that makes an excellent dye studio. Renting the classroom to run my workshops is working out really well, and I will have a few new classes to announce in my next post.

Today's dyeing topic was pole wrapping/arashi shibori. In between waiting for the poles to batch, students had a chance to do other dyeing. There are a couple of pictures of today's work, but most are from show and tell from the previous class.

Bev's arashi shibori

Just a picture of the TShirt I dyed on a pole last night. New life for an old TShirt!

This is how the fabric is dyed, wrapped and tied on a pole and placed in an immersion dye bath.

Ruth's piece of bomaki shibori.

Neera's piece of stitch resist shibori on silk organza.

Ruth's flour paste resist

Neera's flour paste resist on stitched fabric.

Bev's folded fabrics turned out great!

A two colour run.

 More parfaits.

I hope you enjoyed the colour and texture. I know I did!

Dyeing to Quilt

Last night I returned from a fabulous week of teaching my five-day Dyeing to Quilt class at the Haliburton School of the Arts. We drove the 4 hours to Haliburton last Saturday, and found there were still colourful leaves on the trees. It is a quite quiet and pretty drive from Ottawa to Haliburton. My husband joined me for the weekend, and he took this picture.

We lucked out! It stopped raining and the sun came out for a while on Sunday. We walked in Haliburton Forest.

We also paid visit to the Wolf Centre. Since my last visit two summers ago, the wolf pack has declined in number, due to an intruder cutting the fence, such that all the male wolves (including the alpha male) escaped. Two were later found shot. Four females remain and an alpha male was brought in from another location. The wolves are protected and studied within an enclosure that is about 15 acres.

This is the new alpha male, Fang.

Last week was study break at the college, and only two classes were running. It was a quiet week, and it turned out that I was the only teacher staying in the teacher cabins. I was basically in the woods by myself during the week. 

Except of course my deer friends, who greeted me outside the cottage, or on the road, each morning.

Here is a picture of Haliburton School of the Arts in the early morning light. It is a state-of-the-art facility, set in the forest.

A closer photo of the blue horse sculpture to the left of the entrance.

WARNING: LOTS OF INSPIRATION TO COME IN THE MANY PHOTOS I AM ABOUT TO SHARE.

I had nine eager dyers in the class.  We began with parfait dyeing.

Some students chose to dye gradations.

We did a little Bomaki Shibori.

Barbara placed her dyes carefully to create this sunset-like piece of fabric.

We wrapped PVC poles and tried some Arashi Shibori, using an immersion dye bath. I absolutely adore this piece of fabric that Candice created.

 

Some close-ups of arashi shibori.

Jo-Ann tried some stitch resist. Her mokume shibori turned out looking like the wood grain it is supposed to look like.

This is Barb, holding up one of her pieces of fabric created using a flour paste resist.

More flour paste resisted fabric.

Wow, Libbys collection is yummy!

 

Everyone had a chance to try some soy wax batik.

 With the following results:

We tried dyeing some folded and manipulated fabric. I am dying to do some more of this myself soon! This piece, made by Ruth, is my favorite!

On the last day we had Show and Tell.  Everyone dyed approximately 15 meters of fabric in total. A great stash to see them through the winter.

Barb organized and labelled all her work so she has a record of how she made it. A great idea, I should try this more often!

 

I had a blast, and am feeling inspired to dye, but in the mean time, I am getting ready to teach session 2 of The Art Quilt tomorrow at The Running Stitch. I am going to be home a lot more in the next couple of months, and will be updating on some of the projects I am working on.