Sunday, January 15, 2006

Dye Value

I organized my hand dyed fabric to showcase them. Or to just show off. ;)

I'm surprised at how many pinks I have. I don't favor pink. (Don't look at my shirt that's on right now! I know it's pink! :P) But I imagine some of the pinks are failed purples. There are a few pink/purple pieces that just seem to be on the fence, since they appear 50/50 of each color.

I have my "uglies" in the top left corner. They're not really ugly, they don't fit so well with the others. I think it's because most of the pieces I used either one or two colors, but the uglies are actually all three colors of various amounts - just a little experimenting.

When I buy more dye powder, I'm gonna get the standard red-blue-yellow and also "Dark Green" and maybe black. I'm not happy with the greens that came up. I feel like I can't fully explore the green, not like I did with the pink and purple. I have sage green, grass green, light green, yellow-green, but not the hunter/forest/dark greens that I love.

I really love parfait value dyeing. It's where you mix your color, put your fabric in, add the soda ash solution, wait 5-15 minutes; add another piece of fabric, add more soda ash, another 5-15 minutes; and keep adding fabric. Usually I stopped at 3 or 4 pieces. Each piece keeps getting lighter and lighter and it's like a rainbow within one color. I find it very fascinating. I did it with green, blue, teals, purples and the raspberry reds. Depending on the dyes, from fabric to fabric, it just may be a soft difference, or it may make you go "wow!" at the dramatic change. The purple's bottom piece was actually very dark burgundy-like. The next piece was lighter and more balanced, but still had the red dye accent to it. The third was pretty balanced and the forth was almost blue-purple. Definately something I want to keep exploring. :)

I really multi-task don't I? You keep seeing my posts jump from subject to subject. I talk about scrappy quilts, then the mystery, then dyeing, then the mystery again, then a love block, then the mystery's bonus triangles/Bear's Paw and back to dyeing again! The crazy thing? I really do bounce around all the projects like that. I was afraid to cut in the hand dyed fabrics at first. So I switched over to the Bear's Paw project. Then I reminded myself I can always dye more fabric and I'll create more masterpieces... so go and cut Leah. :) Not to mention that the 9-patch swap is due soon and I need to get beyond the cutting stage. But my machine is "distracted" by the raggy jean quilt that I'm free-motioning (which I haven't even taken pictures of, it's just lots of blue fabric) and I don't want to keep changing presser feet on the machine. And no, I don't have another sewing machine. :)

I'm looking forward to going to Costco in more than a week, I want to get Kabnet Wax Paper, for string piecing. My drawer of strings is starting to get very cramped. I drove myself crazy trying to find the Kabnet paper locally, but everybody on the Stashbuster group seems to find it at Sam's Club or Costco. I have tried using muslin (now I'm out, thanks to dyeing) and it just seems to have too much shifting and wobble to the block. I have paper pieced before and I find paper to work nicely. I already have a bunch of hand dyed "strings" cut - won't the blocks look really pretty with a black center strip? :)

Leah

5 comments:

Nancy said...

beautiful fabrics. You make me want to try this one day. And I don't see any "uglies"!

Sarah said...

OOOOHHHH! Great fabrics! I may have to try this one day. I agree with Nancy - I don't see any uglies! Thanks for sharing the photos!

Sarah

Quilts And Pieces said...

OOOOOOO!!!! Ahhhhhh!!!!! Very pretty! They are really nice!

quiltpixie said...

With eye candy like this you're really tempting me to try dying

Granny said...

I love your dyed fabrics. I have a ton of supplies and haven't dyed anything in years. I'll have to re-learn the process when I'm ready to do it again. Do you know if the dye powder has a shelf life?

Judy L.