Dye Happy

I'm so happy that I'm dyeing fabrics again. I was delayed in getting back to this task because I had run out of pfd fabric and also I decided to order some bulk perle cotton to dye along with the fabric. The perle cotton finally arrived yesterday, so I'm now back in business. Well not really, cuz all these luscious dyed fabrics and threads are for me. Here are my ready-to-dye goods:


I currently have 14 half yards of fabric along with threads batching away in dye buckets. I will let them batch overnight and start rinsing tomorrow.

I also am playing with fabric painting lately. Don't have any of that to show you just yet, but the other day I was at one of those oddball stores (one that I just don't get to often) and found a four pack of sponges. Two of the sponges were like the purple one on the right, you know, the normal kind of sponge. But the other two were a little different and they caught my eye. I think they may be fun to stamp with, we'll see.


Yesterday I played with making screens for screen printing again. The first time I did this I was using designs that I had scanned into my printer and printed out onto paper. This time I played with drawing directly onto paper with a Sharpie. It worked very well. I did a sample first just to see if it was going to work and that is the first design you see here that I actually tried on fabric.


Here is the screen I made. This is a 8.5" x 11" size, and I did these with the Sharpie marker too. X's and O's! I have one sheet of the screen making material left and I have designs all ready, but it's too windy today to make them.


Are you still with me? Whew! This is getting to be a long post. The other day I happened along a project that I've been working on now for oh, a bajillion years I think. So I pulled it out and slapped it up on the design wall. There are 10 blocks that are ready as you can see, although I haven't pieced the arcs and the centers together yet. This is a Karen Stone pattern and the pattern has 25 blocks in it. I have all the block centers done, now to work on the remaining arcs. The slow part! Paper piecing! I am hoping to, challenging myself to, daring to, get a few arcs done each week. I'm not going to pinpoint a specific number or else I'll get frustrated if I don't meet it. But now that I've declared that I am going to do this to all of you, well, I'm hoping that I'll feel obligated.


And just look at this lovely ATC/ACEO. I purchased this from an Etsy seller, Sojourn Quilts. I just love the simplicity of this small work of art and decided I just had to have it.