Putting on the color- the shirts

     The ice dyeing shirt results were varied and brightly colored. My daughter in law worked with the kids- she mostly did the folding. They were surprised how they came out and have worn some of them already.

Call it colorful

     The fabric ice dyeing results were certainly not wimpy or pastels. I do love bright color. The pieces were about 22 x 21. I did not know how certain folding techniques would work, so I did not go larger. I am so surprised how clear and clean the colors look even though the melted ice water looked pretty mucky. I will show the kids' shirt results on the next post. I think I would like to try bigger pieces next and learn some more folding techniques.

Pouring on the ice

     My friend and Elizabeth and I are pushing our comfort zone again and tried ice dyeing. On an 85 degree humid day. I got my grandkids and daughter in law involved and they did shirts. We used PFD Kona white. I rinsed it all out 24 hours later, washed and ironed it all. Will have photos later as I have to pin it all up to photo. Will try out my new lights.
     Here are the bins with the ice and dye. I used Dharma's Procion Dyes. Found out that the bins with slits and sides work better than cooling racks because the ice stays contained inside the plastic bin instead of falling off the rack into the plastic basin. Tried to prop up the ice to not much success.

Bin with sides and slits

Propped up ice, could not get ice deep enough

Propped up ice, could not get ice deep enough

Bin with sides and slits

Left for 24 hours

Piecing the blocks

     Finally, I sewed all the components for the floral 4 patches quilts. Now, it is a matter of sewing them by nine patches. I laid out all the blocks on freezer paper, ironed the components down, and one by one am sewing the nine patches by using a webbing method. 
     I turn the middle column onto the left hand side one, right sides together, chain piece, use a leader ender piece, then sew the right side pieces onto the webbed pieces. I press the seams, and then just sew the 2 long rows to complete the block. I do iron the long seams open, not the others.  I have 4 done and had to see what it looked like. Now for 26 more. Pretty picky seams. If I did not have the forked pins, I would be in big seam matching trouble.

     By the way, here are the flannel pillowcase combos for Christmas presents. It is Moda flannel- quite thick and comfy. The skinny folded pieces will be the bands. Now I have to wash the fabric, cut it and make them. Trying to screw up the energy to zig zag the raw edges so I don't have a thread nest mess in the dryer.

 

Pushing past stupid

     Last week was our annual family vacation in the Adirondacks around Old Forge, NY. It is one of my favorite places on the planet. I signed up for a sunrise photo class with the absolute best photographer, Kurt Gardner. He also does sunset classes. I have admired, and bought his photos which he gets printed on aluminum. This gives the photos an appearance of floating on the wall and the colors are just brilliant.
     The class started at 5:15 am in the fog. In fact, it was the heaviest fog that Kurt has seen. After a while, the sun wasn't showing through, so Kurt piled us all in his truck, and took the dirt roads and stopped at various spots. I had not used anything other than automatic in my SLR camera for years. I had forgotten all I had learned in photo class in college. Kurt worked with us on tripods, changing shutter speed, white balance and exposures- all of which are on even the cheapest cameras. Learned how to use the manual mode when I need to shoot close up. I had to think hard and try a lot of different settings. Having control of what the camera takes and how it takes it is monumental. I have lots more photos when it finally lightened.
     Why did I let myself get so stupid? I can take better photos of my work and garden with some thought and effort with what I already have. Where else have I let myself get stupid? (I sew on vintage Singers, so it is not there!)

Where the sun was supposed to come up

In Black and white

Learned how to use manual mode to focus on spider webs