Guess what I did today?
My first task towards the end of the week was to prepare fabrics for the commission piece I'm doing. While I've promised not to post photos of the work in progress, I don't think it hurts to show you the fabrics.
The above three pieces were painted with Dye-Na-Flow fabric paints. They were a tremendous pain in the tush to color set, but after many runs through a hot dryer and some ironing, I managed to keep most of the color from washing out in the machine.
Along with these vibrant yellow/orange/red pieces, I've also finished a blue-to-teal gradation as a compliment.
The quiet, slow task of hand-dyeing fabrics always makes me feel a bit like an Earth Mother. Something about the feel of stiff white muslin in my hands, the puddles of jewel-toned dyes, the lengthy wash-out, hanging yardage outside to dry on the line- it all adds up to long, tiring days that leave me utterly blissed out and feeling connected to the women across the ages who labored similarly.
The weekend so far has been filled with such activity, and the days are perfect for it- sunny, dry, breezy and cool.
Today was spent washing-out, drying and pressing the results of a 30-step, 3-color gradation kit I bought at the ProChem booth of the IQF.
The kit I used was called "Prism", and is aptly named, as you can tell by the photos. The colors contained were the three primaries: lemon yellow, magenta, and what ProChem calls "Intense Blue".
It yielded 30 fat quarters (four yards of bleached, mercerized muslin that measured 108" from selvedge to selvedge- I got 8 pieces out of each yard) in a rainbow of jewel-toned colors. I'm very pleased with the result and now I have to get down to work and produce some quilts!
Finally, I finished quilting this post card for Mom. The piece was painted in one of my IQF classes. She received it yesterday and yes, she loved it.
Next week I'll be spending much of my time at the sewing machine. Hope this old back holds out!
I posted some great shots of fluttery pretties over on my photography blog, Approachable Photos. Check them out!
Happy creating!
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