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