Tomorrow is the 5th anniversary of this blog. This summer I've added another fiber arts passion to a long list! This hand dyeing craze is here to stay, I think. I have been trying all sorts of ready for dye fabrics as well as DMC embroidery floss and perle cotton. By the way, those DMC StitchBow floss holders are fabulous! I wouldn't go without them next time.
Without them, this is what I end up with. Several evenings of untangling I expect!
Now for the good stuff. I had lots of leftovers of the pimatex cotton, linen and combed cotton lawn from my previous dye session. Also I've been collecting some other brands, Kona Cotton pfd, Moda Bella pfd, Maywood pfd, and I got some unusual stuff from Dharma like a hemp/cotton blend and a rough woven cotton. Oh, and the ready to dye cotton lace. I knew I wanted some nice sky blues and various greens. Other than that it's just what comes over me as the mad scientist inside takes over. It's a ton of work, but so much fun.
Scrabble's just had a bath so he's not so fluffy!
The hardest for me so far is creating nice browns! Who would've thought? This time I also experimented with watering down the dye to make lighter colors. Oh, and I tried various shibori techniques. I'll have to take some photos of that soon. I will take a good look at what I have and see if any of the regular quilting cottons are favorites. Right now it seems they all dye nicely, some brighter than others, but that's not always desirable. I love the hand of the Kona cotton and the Moda Bella. I definitely don't like the pimatex for hand sewing, but it would be great for a machine sewed quilt. I have an idea to help Ryan make small art piece using the pimatex and some fusible. That's the perfect use for it really, but I won't buy it again because I don't like hand stitching with it.
Well, since it's a celebration and all, I've decided to make up 5 packs of hand dyed fabric scraps. Nothing too big because I want it to be inexpensive to mail. I'll choose 5 random winners from the comments. Leave a comment on this post telling me where you're from and what is your biggest quilting inspiration right now. Comments close on Saturday, July 31 at 9 am Pacific. Good luck!