If In Need Of Encouragment

Blue Heron by Ellen Anne Eddy

I just read a wonderful post by quilt artist Ellen Anne Eddy and thought some of you might enjoy it too. Not to mention that it features many of her beautiful and quite different quilts. She certainly has a style all her own. Words of wisdom about tackling tasks (where are my big girl panties?) You can read it here.

I can relate a bit. That dye session for my friend looming before me was intimidating. As Ellen says of her own intimidating task, "So it sat in the corner. And I became afraid of it. I made a myth of it." I too had to reach a point where I had to find my big girl panties. And I'm having to do it again because I am not done and have ventured now into experimenting with greens and oranges, some with recipes, some without, some with dye powders that may have lost their potency. I am more comfortable when I can depend on the results. Case in point: my friend asked for teal which I assumed she meant teal green (some refer to a teal blue but not me) and I have a perfect recipe for that. Yet look at the fabric soaking in the bin pictured above. Does anything about that look green to you? I honestly don't know what happened.

She also keeps emphasizing she want some lime green. No problem. Again I have a recipe for what we named Key Lime and I mixed two leftover dyes that gave me exactly that. Then I started doubting myself. What if my idea of lime green isn't hers? When I googled lime green, these popped up, just as I suspected, more than one idea of what it is. At least my dye trial is in the ballpark.

I went back to the recipe to try again, doing two different amounts of dye solution with a fat quarter in each bag, and waiting a bit before adding another fat quarter in each bag (the dye solution activates once it hits the soda ash solution and gradually weakens over the first 30 minutes or so meaning fabric added later will come out lighter or perhaps really different). Pretty happy with the way this looks so far - gotta be her idea of lime green in there somewhere! However, I may overdye one of the darker fat quarters with a little blue to see if I can get something like teal green. May also take one of the fat quarters that was supposed to be teal green and overdye it with some yellow. Nothing to lose. 

Ellen again: "There’s no can’t like won’t, Sometimes we build myths about our work. “It’s so good.” “It’s no good.” “It will never lie flat” Almost all of that is irrelevant. I won’t know if it’s good for some while after I finish it. I need to stop the negativity and just step into the task". In between these dye sessions, I've had lunch with said friend, handing over with some trepidation the fabric done so far, and she loved it, said it was just what she was looking for. Whew! Exactly the encouragement I need to continue with this task. I am enjoying getting back into dyeing and trying a few experiments. Still fighting those intimidation demons (it's one thing to disappoint yourself, something entirely different to disappoint someone else) but spurred on by Ellen's words and the pleased expression on my friend's face..

Dyeing For A Friend

When a friend moved out of the area back in March, she wanted to give me all her dyeing supplies, including almost a full bolt of PFD fabric. I wanted to pay her for at least some of it, particularly all that fabric, but she'd have none of it. Instead, she asked that I dye some of it up for her, as the reason she was giving all that away was because her new home had no place for dyeing. Well, YES, I can do that, gladly! However, it wasn't until last week that I suddenly felt energized enough physically and excited enough mentally to finally tackle this task. It's been quite a while since I've dyed up some fabric so I knew I'd need to review the whole process, my notebook of recipes, and check my setup out in the garage. I initially felt a bit overwhelmed as when I asked what colors she might want, it was pretty much everything but blues. I also found the dye run worksheet from the last time I dyed and where I'd left off, i.e. what colors I had meant to dye up to flesh out my stash all that time ago. I needed to come up with a plan.

I started by inventorying my friends' individual dyes which I added to the inventory I'd made of my own dyes. Mine are oh so old now - the legacy of my late friend's and my dyed fabric business and a more recent friend's clearing of her art studio of supplies related to textiles. Even some more recent purchases I've made are getting on in years - 2017 looks like when I got them and dyed them up. Scanning through old posts, it looks like 2017 was the last year I did any dyeing except for some snow dyeing early in 2018 & 2019. Hmmm. Not like I don't have a pretty big stash of hand-dyes while my actual making of quilts, etc. has slowed a great deal which might be part of the reason dyeing has waned. At any rate, newer fresher more reliable results-giving dye powders are a welcome addition. I noted there were some I had not tried before, and those became my starting point.

I worked with half-yard pieces, using my standard 4-step gradation recipe on some and choosing select 2 steps for others. My friend indicated she didn't need a lot of lights, just mostly medium and dark values, so the 2 steps eliminated those lightest steps. I checked my old freezer bags for leaks but not very well apparently. I did six bags at a time and every time I had leakage. Guess I should just get new bags.

I got a pretty good rotation going, getting 6 bags of fabric dyeing to sit overnight each day, and while they were steeping, starting the processing of the previous day's bags of fabric. And oh look - the gloves that were fine the last time I used them to dye also now leak. Boy, soaking and rinsing takes so much time. By the end of the week and 24 half-yards of fabric later, I was totally worn out!

Results were mixed. These two were new to me and I absolutely love how the Mixing Red came out. The Jade Green not so much. Does that look like Jade to you? No, it is more aqua marine or turquoise and my friend had asked for greens not blues. 

I did 2 steps each of 3 different purple dyes: back to front they are Purple, Deep Purple and Grape. Ooo, I DO like how they came out. Hope this is not too much texturing for my friend but she did indicate she liked texture. 

These yellows were the last one I did and I'm not all that happy with the results. I think I was getting tired, a little sloppy with my measurements and not doing enough massaging of the bags. The one on top is a four step gradation from Golden Yellow dye and doesn't look anything like the swatches on my recipe. It lost all its yellow and the lighter steps may be destined for an overdye. The next one down is a four step gradation of the Lemon Yellow dye - the lightest steps may need overdying - and the last are two steps of Sun Yellow dye - a little hard to see in this picture but it's a slightly warmer yellow than the lemon yellow. 

So some successes and some disappointments - so goes hand-dyeing often. I still need to work out some greens for her - a teal green and a lime green from my recipes - and some orange and hope for the best. I've made quite the dent in her yard of fabric, will keep a fat quarter of some of these for myself and cut swatches of others for my records. But for now, I need to give my poor body a rest!

A Different Be Well Series

I've been enjoying and admiring my Be Well zentagle accordion sketchbook, stretched out near where I spend too many hours of the day (next to the computer screen). Pondering if I should indeed add some variations (or redos) to the panels on the back. But then I realized I'd saved the e-mails from last year's Be Well series, never doing any of them. Aha! I'll put THEM on the back.

The Zentangle people opted to use their triangle tiles so I drew a triangle in each panel except for the first one where I penned in the series name, date, and my chop. Then I started working through the videos. All short. And each day only had a short saying meant to be encouraging I guess but which didn't seem to relate as far as I was concerned. So I didn't add any of them. And I immediately started messing up, making mistakes in each of the first three. Zentangle people insist there are no mistakes when tangling but trust me, they are wrong.

Fourth (rather than third) time's a charm? Apparently. This one went very well and I am pleased with it. May the rest go as well. And I soon figured out that each day will showcase a single tangle instead of more than one tangle as in this year's series. So I may go back and write in the name of the tangle on each panel. 

It's A Pillow!

At long last! I'm not sure why this project threw up one challenge after another, a project that was supposed to be "quick and easy" (a sure way to jinx myself). I thought surely this very old block would be happy to become something and be out in the light of day. Perhaps it was just as happy between the folds of fabrics in the darkness of a drawer. Regardless, out in the open it now is, and you see it in the chair in which it will reside. A very nice match. 

I was following directions saved from a quilting magazine and with penciled adjustment cutting dimensions for a 16" finish in the margins. Very faint as I've had this for quite awhile. I decided to ink over the pencil marks and must have read one number wrong because when it came time to add the quilted bound block to the pillow base, I suddenly realized the top to bottom measurement must not be right. Instead of being 16 plus seam allowance inches when folded in half, it was 17 plus seam allowance inches. How could that be? Was I accounting for the fullness of the pillow form with the extra inch? I mulled this over for several days, believe it or not, such is the brain fog I often have to deal with, before I shook myself and said, "That's not right - just trim off the excess and amend the notation in the margin." Yeah, stop pretending I meant to do that!

The one thing that did not catch me out, caused me no issues was making the pillow form. It only required about one third of the bag of fiberfill and is still quite puffy - and yet fit right into the adjusted 16 inch outer pillow case. What will I do with the remainder? More pillows? (I hardly need more. . .) Try my had at stuffed animals again? (Not feeling it . . .) Into the closet for now. Needless to say, I'm glad to have this project behind me, pleased with how it looks.