Something About Nothing

I am leaving for Craft Napa today to take classes from some great teachers!  One of the classes is Thunderstruck Star Improv taught by Victoria Findlay Wolfe .  I have always wanted to learn to make a Star Quilt and so I knew I had to take this class!  I decided I wanted to create the class project from my own dyed and printed fabrics.  I have brought a selection of indigo dyed fabrics, as well as some snow dyed fabrics I created the other night - or should I say morning?  It was about 3 a.m. when I started the process. The snow was completely melted when I woke up later that day. I liked the indigo blue. . . . . .but not so much the hot pink and fire red. So I over dyed it with fire red using a low water immersion. I didn't get photos of the green ones but they didn't come out exactly as expected either.  It's all good.  I'm getting on a plan in about 7 hours and going to have a great time no matter what.

The Printed Fabric Bee theme for February was the Forest Floor. I've been playing with the idea of mushrooms for this project. I drew a little mushroom forest for inspiration. . .   . . .and created a stamp from the drawing. I also designed a mushroom stencil I planned to cut using my Silhouette Portrait electronic cutter and then WHAM!  The Hard Drive on my Mac Crashed! Fortunately I had most everything backed up.   Sadly my mushroom stencil was not in those saved files.   On to plan B: Using my stash of leaf stencils and my mushroom stamp. I started with a piece of snow dyed fabric,  because it's always a great base for surface design.  I used Setacolor transparent blue paint for the leaves.   I wanted to give a soft semi-transparent feel for the first layer of leaves.  Next I mixed an orange brown from my Setacolors to stamp a few more leaves . . .  . . .and mushrooms.  And even with all...

I finally took advantage of the snow and created a one yard piece of snow dyed fabric.    I used three different blues. This watered down fabric might be a fun image to play with digitally. And here you go!   One lovely piece of blue.   I think I see some fish in there.  Here are a couple of close ups: Of course, Mister had to put his stamp of approval on the piece. Almost all of our snow has melted now but we are due to have more later this week. Woohoo!   I know, some of you think that is a horrible idea!   But here in the high mountain desert we NEED all this snow up in the mountains so that we will have water to grow our gardens in the summer.  Please feel free to send all your snow our way.  We will be more than HAPPY to take it! Not to mention that the snow storms keep the valley clear of inversions so that we can breathe fresh clean air! And if I can find the rest of my pdf I'll be doing mor...

Congratulations Gayle!   You are the winner of my Snow Dye Giveaway! Email me your address and I will get the piece mailed out to you as soon as possible.   Gayle  said... I hate to say it, but I can see a squashed frog in there! LOL I dye lots of wool fabric for my hooked rugs, but this piece of cotton you've done is so, so pretty!

Keiko anxiously inspected the dyed fabrics as I laid them out to photograph them. She really likes this piece! It's the top of the snow dye parfait. This is the bottom of the parfait: The colors are much darker on the bottom. This is the orange sorbet, dutch chocolate and rust brown: This is the coral pink, chartreuse and light red: Mister had to inspect them all as well. . . . . .and he wasn't very happy when I decided to put them away. He wants a pretty snow dyed blanket all for himself.

A Blank Canvas can be a beautiful thing. . . just add one yard of soda ash soaked pfd, a layer of snow and powdered dye. . .   . . .and just for fun cut one of those yards in half and create a snow parfait. . . this is the first layer  . . .and this is the second layer. . .  . . .bring it all inside and let the snow melt. . .  . . .then rinse, wash and iron. Tomorrow I'll post the beautiful masterpieces!

I love roses and grow some in my yard.  My husband loves roses too but doesn't always buy them for me.  He likes to buy them but I protest because they are so very expensive for something so short lived.  Not to mention that the cats like to climb onto the table to eat them.  On the other hand they are so absolutely beautiful and fragrant and always make my day.  And so some years he has bought them for Valentines and some years he has not.  This Valentines was a buy year. There were actually a dozen of these red beauties but somehow I managed to miss photographing them.) Last year was also a buy year.  Maybe there is a trend here.  As I sat and admired the roses in the pretty new vase I received from a friend for Christmas I wished the flowers would last longer.  I decided I would turn the petals into a dye and also experiment with wrapping some up in fabric to make prints. So one snowy day I took some pfd fabric and laid the ...

No the title doesn't refer to me being tired of dyeing fabrics.  I don't think I've done enough dyeing for that to happen yet.  It refers to these blocks here: At a Quilters Holladay meeting someone gave me these lovely hand appliquéd blocks and wondered if I would like to try spicing them up a little.  They sat in a bag for a while and were finally pulled out during the last snow storm, along with some dyes I mixed last fall.  The dyes have been in the refrigerator but I still wondered if they had any oomph left in them. Apparently they did! I'm thinking about over dyeing these blocks again. Any color suggestions?