Half finished treasures.

Those of you who read the blog often may have noticed that there is a lot of procrastination and lots of play going on here. In the background I have some ideas for the next embellished piece but somehow can’t quite start on it, perhaps after my holiday. A couple of years ago I dyed and printed some fabric with thickened procion. I started a quilt but then just stopped.

 I think the machining just got too tedious and the purple dyed backing too over the top. Well over the last couple of weeks I found someone who I think will benefit from the gift of a quilt and so got it out of its box. Like so many other neglected pieces there was actually very little to do to finish it off.

 I also decided to make some labels. Did you know that there is a whole Pinterest site devoted to making fabric labels, well here it is.  I sketched mine on the ipad and then printed them out.

 One thing I have noticed is that both the ready for printing fabric and the dylon dyed fabric backing are so difficult to get a needle through. Not something I would want to do regularly. But now it is finished, I am pleased. I hope this may inspire you to get out one of your neglected half-finished treasures and bring it to life.

More Stash

The good news is that I am working steadily through my stash of dyed, painted and printed fabrics, merrily cutting curved seams and making a variety of blocks to be used together at some stage. On the less sensible track I decided to dye some more material, in fact to use up most of my store of cotton and silk which I bought prepared for dyeing. I will have to look at Whaley’s updated price list so I can get tempted.

I don’t know about you, but the more I read about dye recipes the more confused I get. This is despite the fact that I once wrote a dyeing workshop for Workshop on the Web. I think it’s a bit like felt making, everyone seems to have their own pet method which tends to come over like it is written in stone. I have been watching the Complex Cloth DVD and decided to go back to basics. I have started with a low water immersion using an initial colour, binding the silk and cotton, and then intend to go for over dyeing for the next step. I am even using up my Procion Dyes which is another good thing as I have had them for a long time.

There were two enthusiastic people joined in the Doodles (Tadley) printing workshop this week. We printed on envelopes and old book pages using water based printing inks; by the end of the session there was some creative buss about and I enjoyed that very much.

I have put this together using a 'new' to me version of blogger,which should make it much easier to place pictures, when I get used to it. It was a steep learning curve for me when I started this blog, when I had to ring my son to check out how to insert code. Things have become much simpler since then, but I am stuck in  my ways, and felt a moments panic when the familar uploading was nolonger there.                   

Elderberries

I made my first attempt at making Elderberry Jelly this week. I added plenty of lemon juice but it took two attempts to get a set. Left with the debris from the jelly bag I was inspired by Cathy Cullis’ description of no pain natural dyeing to just dunk some pieces of cotton into the jug and see what happened.

The cotton had been mordanted in alum a long time ago; in fact when I gave up on the tempting idea of natural dyeing feeling that I didn’t really have enough space or energy. I have washed these pieces and the colour seems stable, although it may fade with time.