Thursday, February 18, 2010

Snow Dyes - Rounds 1 & 2

I've done three rounds of snow dyeing so far (with *plenty* of snow left to work with). Here are some results from rounds one and two. All of the pictures can be made bigger by clicking on them.

Snow Dyed, then snowverdyed ;)

Bottom fabric was dyed in the drip pan below other fabrics, so technically it was low water immersion dyed


Center fabric was snow dyed twice - once with chocolate brown, then again with grape
The bottom piece was another "drip catcher"

I confess that for my work I prefer little to no white space on a piece of hand dyed fabric. This has led me to usually dye with fabric that has been soaked in soda ash solution then dried before dyeing, or use a drip dyeing method like Robbi Eklow explains in her book Free Expression. For the snow dyed pieces I either redyed ones that came out with more white space than I wanted, or squirted a little extra dye on areas that I could see were really pale. I have a couple of more pieces I'll post a little later.

I finished up an article for the May issue of Machine Quilting Unlimited this week. It's about designing your own quilting motifs, and it was fun to think of lots of ways you can go about that.

I'm also super excited that once again this year I'll have a quilt in Martingale's calendar of IQA award winning quilts. It will be interesting to see what month they decide to use for Last Dance.

Saturday, February 06, 2010

SN-OMG

Well, we're just hanging around the house today.

That's the end of the driveway near the street. I'm 5'3", just for scale.

It's a lot deeper there due to the plowing, but it's got to go anyway. Thankfully my husband was able to use the snow blower on the majority of the driveway.

That's the birdbath a few hours ago. My husband thinks it about 28"-29" right now. BTW, it's still snowing. All those crazy weather maps showed us right in the middle of the bulls eye all week, and they were right.



To the left: looking out the front door yesterday morning at 10:30, when it started to snow.

Below: the view this morning at about 10:00. Bear in mind that I shoveled that walk last night at 9:30 when the snow was about 5" deep.











Here's one of my enthusiastic helpers.

I'm very thankful for many things today including electricity, good snow boots, and a snow blower.

After I have some butternut squash soup, chocolate babka, and make some gumbo, I guess all that's left to do is try snow dyeing.