Virtual Retreat Aug thru Dec 2015 Info on first post

[JudithA]

Luann and Wendy,
Georgeous fabrics!!! Absolutely scruptous!

Luann,
I suggest selling them as a group. Someone will really appreciate the collection as a whole and will make wonderful use of it. This is a case where "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts."

[JudithA]

There are 7 fat quarters batching for making a purse for a friend. We'll see if I actually get lavender, light grey, grey, and dark grey!!







Tomorrow I can start rinsing these next ones out and put them into their first ice water soak,


And that's all for tonight.
Luann

[twiglet]

Wow do you sleep :blink:

[twiglet]

Wendy,
I do sleep, some. However, this morning I woke up at 3!!!
I had a dream of how to finish quilting the background areas on the quilt that's been on my longarm for a week now. It has squares of deconstructed screen printed fabric surrounded by a lot of various sizes of white strips.



I have very unique designs inside each of the blocks, but I was baffled when it came to all that white, and it's WHITE! So all the stitching is going to show. Well my dream solved the puzzle, I actually have a 'vision' of what it should look like when done. This has never happened to me before, so quite a unique adventure. I believe I can utilize my ProStitcher to do this. It's going to take a lot of time, but I think it will be so worth it in the end.
And with the hubby resting peacefully I'm going to wait to get started.
I came out to my screen porch. It's now 4 am, 74 F, and 94% humidity. Its been raining but the Lightning has subsided.
I just looked at those 7 tubs of fabric for Jennifer's purse. And the liquid in most of them is almost clear. I'm going to make a note of how much dye stock to water ratio I used on those! Usually I mix at a DOS of 4. The lilac was .06% so it should not turn out purple, just a light lavender. Time will tell.
Luann

[anne1]

Luaan,
Where do you get your energy? what ever your on could you bottle it and send me some. :lol:
Love your fabric colours.
Wendy your scarf in gorgeous.
Happy weekend to all my TQS friends.
Anne

[anne1]

Usually I mix at a DOS of 4. The lilac was .06% so it should not turn out purple, just a light lavender. Time will tell.
Luann
Ok..have to ask..what does DOS mean? I have learned sooo much from you Luann!!!! Can't wait to see the quilt with your vision quilted on it :cheer: I so wish I had a long arm...I have quilted 3 quilts on one, and loved it, but just have no room to put one
Dorothy

[anne1]

Anne,
If my energy came from a bottle I'd share. My mind won't rest when it has thoughts running through it. I'm probably low on melatonin or some other supplement!! For now, I'll just take a nap if I need one.

Dorothy,
DOS means depth of shade. Sometimes you will see WOG, which means weight of goods. Basically it's 'how strong' you are making your dye stock. I weigh mine, as there is so much difference if you dry measure the powders. When you get dye powder the company will put it in the smallest, yet adequate, size of container. Golden Yellow is very 'airy' so it actually needs a larger one. This picture shows 2 containers, each holds 2oz of its named dye.




So, if you are measuring the dry powder by teaspoon or tablespoon, you most likely are not getting all of your colors to the same depth of shade. This is not a big deal, but anything over the 4% tends to waste dye and the washouts take a lot longer. I started out this way, but since taking Candy Glendenning's classes I have gotten more structured with my dyeing. I still find that I like doing serendipitous dyeing too. That would be methods like ice dyeing, thickened dye painting, marbling, etc etc. When doing these it's just too unpredictable to try to figure out exact amounts of dye for size of fabric.
Now for how this actually work so:
5 grams of dye powder in 240 ml of hot water, this used on 1yard of P&B Dyer's Muslin, and left to batch for 24 hours in a very warm environment resulted in these




I hope this is helping you and not confusing. Many dyers don't measure the powder by weight, in fact Candy is the only one, that I remember, that did. Don't stress about it, but if your rinsing out is taking a lot of time, try using less dye powder in your solution, keep things very warm, and try to batch for 24-48 hours.

Have a great day,
Luann

[anne1]

Luann What do you use to thicken your dye so you can paint with it? I tried dye painting one piece, but I didn't thicken it, and it didn't turn out to well :blush: I really want to be able to do that too
Dorothy

[anne1]

Dorothy, years ago I was making an Andy Pandy costume for a school play/sketch and it needed to be wide blue and white stripes. So starting off with the usual white sheet, my parents bought me some dylon cold water dye and wallpaper paste (Mum is a chemist and so knows about these things). I made up the dye and then thickened it with the wallpaper paste. Apart from adding too much paste, which made it go lumpy, it worked really well. Alternatively you could try corn starch, like when you are thickening gravy. Failing that I am sure there are posh (expensive) specially designed for dyeing, packets of thickening agents available.

[anne1]

Luann What do you use to thicken your dye so you can paint with it? I tried dye painting one piece, but I didn't thicken it, and it didn't turn out to well :blush: I really want to be able to do that too
Dorothy

Dorothy,
There are a lot of thickeners out there. I've used sodium alginate, made some too thick and another batch too thin! If you use a product that you can add the dye powder directly to you just need to be sure it isn't too runny for what you want to do with it.
I've wondered if you could use aloe Vera gel, the clear stuff. Perhaps even liquid starch, or school glue could be used. The idea is that it just needs to get it thick enough for you to work with and stay where you put it for 24 hours to batch up. Remember that you may want to make sure the humidity stays high enough so it doesn't dry out. That would stop the batching process and skew your results. Let us know what you decide to try.
My washer is sitting with hot water, dawn soap, and 50 fat 1/8ths, and 7 fat 1/4ths in it. Tomorrow at 5 am I can drain, rinse and spin. Then start on the next hot water soaking!! I really got some scrumptious colors on those 1/8th yard pieces.
Have a great day,
Luann
Maybe I should put together a 'real' retreat for dyeing cloth. We would have so much fun. Hmmm??

[genevacarroll]

LuAnn, your fabrics are wonderful! Will you be selling them?

Wendy, I love your scarf. Silly LuAnn thinking it belongs to her! When we all know it's mine!

Well, I busted my tail, knuckled down, and put my nose to the grindstone. I finished Victorina's quilt today. Tomorrow we fly down to So Cal for the weekend and the baby shower. Whew! I had a lot of fun quilting this one. Here you go:



And some close ups.






Yesterday we learned that grandbaby number 5 will be a boy born in January. I love being a graneva!

My poor sweetie. Sometimes it pays to stay in bed. He plays golf with his buddy on Thursdays. Today when he came home I asked the usual "How was your game?" He said "Lousy!" that is very unusual for him. Then he said "That wasn't nearly as bad as almost finishing my sandwich before my tooth broke." He shows me a piece of one of his molars. We are leaving early tomorrow morning, so he called our new dentist and they got him in at 4pm today. I suspect Lorchen would agree, but the only thing to make this day better for him is MacCallan scotch. :S

Have a great weekend everyone!

geneva

[genevacarroll]

Geneva - Fabulous quilting on Victorina's quilt!! The weather 's cooler here in SoCal the next couple days enjoy your trip! Yikes sorry to hear re DH's tooth.

BarbCA

[rehak]

Love the quilting on Victorina's quilt! You always do such incredible work! Glad hubbie was able to get his tooth fixed so quickly. Have a great trip!

[ajclapp]

Finished piecing the last 2 red and white wall quilts. No time for details but they were a slow process, only doing 1 per week. Of course there were other things that took up some of my time. I'm hoping to finish all of the quilting and binding this weekend. Then I have a lot of catch up to do on things not quilt related.



A couple weeks ago my oldest DGD said she wanted to learn to do machine embroidery. I showed her my fancy machine thinking maybe she could get some use out of it since I still haven't. I could tell that it was a little overwhelming to her. So after much research I found an almost new machine on Ebay at a great price. This one looks user friendly and also sews. I'm hoping to check it out over Labor Day weekend. She said she prefers pictures instead of words so the Quick Reference Guide is perfect. She won't get to take it home until their new house is finished so it will be set up at my country home for now. I'm hoping to find a nice bag to hold all of the pieces so it doesn't have to be stored in a cardboard box. It also needs a walking foot and a 1/4" foot so will have to do some more shopping.



And I decided to get an embroidery only machine to keep at my country home for others that might want to use it, also at a great price. I've never sewn on a Brother before. This one is still in the box. It will eventually be passed down to another DGD in the future.



I ordered a CD with lots of embroidery designs and alphabets, about 1000 items that I want to turn into PDF documents so they will be easier to sort through. I can open them 1 at a time in my Art and Stitch program, then save them with different endings including what I need for my Pfaff. That will take some time! Maybe I will get motivated and actually start some machine embroidery soon.

I'm enjoying all of the discussions on fabric dyeing. It looks like so much fun. That definitely is not something I will be doing, anytime soon anyway. Years ago I did some sponge painting on fabric. I would probably enjoy doing something like that again.

[twiglet]

You are going to miss the red and white rush, they are gorgeous again so congratulations what a display they will all be. Your DGD is going to have some fun with the machine lucky girl.

Graneva love the quilt, the embroidered name came out really well. All your baby quilts are so inspiring, I love to see them. and you've a little nor due in Jan, congratulations. Another baby quilt!