 While I was dyeing my stitched shibori I decided to dye some folded and clamped pieces. I figures that some day I will want to make something with the stitched pieces and figured that I might want some clamped pieces in the final piece.   As I was ironing these I decided that I needed some lighter values to contrast against the dark stitched pieces so I see doing some others in light blue.  Here's how each looked clamped so you can match them up. I replaced the #4 broken rubber band before I dyed the fabrics!
 Way back in August I mentioned a new project to work through this book to practice stitched shibori. I took the book on vacation and stitched several pieces during the drive. Since then I've been distracted by other projects (like those darned beaded ornaments). Now that the ornaments are done I'm ready to get back to this and the first step was to dye the stuff that I stitched in August.  Here they are before dyeing and you are welcome to try to match them up with the finished pieces but I'm not sure that I could even do that! The stitching step takes up to 2 hours for each piece.  The down side of stitched shibori is removing the stitching after it's dyed. The fabric is still wet and you have to be careful not to cut the fabric. It took about an hour and a half to remove the stitching in all of these pieces. This is why you can never profitably sell stitched shibori pieces.  Some of the pieces will be done again until I get them right. The top 2 moons are perfect but the bottom one didn't turn out quite right. That gap is supposed to go from edge to edge so I'll do another of these. I also need to be more attentive in my dyeing and swish the fabrics around more. If I had done that the center of the top left moon would be more solid.  Both of these turned out exactly like I wanted.  The only one in this group that I'm really happy with is the bottom right. The stitching was fine in the other 3 but I would have had better effects with the rows of stitching spread further apart. I'll do them again.
Now the rejects aren't really "rejects". I'll use them in a project sometime along the way. But I want to make my pieces look like the pieces in the book and I'm not even past chapter 1 yet!  Every couple of years I buy some plain white knit shirts and dye them. I've dome tie dye and ice dyed but the ones that I wear most often are the ones that are simply textured dyed so that's what I did with these shirts. These 3 are all short sleeved for summer.  Of course this is my favorite. I'll wear this one out next summer.  I did a red and black version in long sleeved too! I really love the purple/gray one but I don't love the green one. But the good thing about dyeing is that I can just dye it again today. I think it will get some blue added to it.
These shirts came from Land's End. They had a sale around Thanksgiving and I think I got them for between $10 and $15. They dyed great. I've dyed shirts from J Jill, Eddie Bauer and Land's End and they all dye great.  Conifer Shades Pack - 20% off! The fabric of the week this week is the Conifer Shades Pack and it's on sale 20% off through Sunday! Shades Packs are dyed when ordered so there's no limit to what you can buy. If you order multiple quantities it comes as one cut. For example, order 2 quantities for 1/2 yard cuts. Orders received by Wednesday morning (EST) will be shipped by December 18. Orders placed after Wednesday morning will be shipped December 26.  Jenny Lake Gradient Conifer coordinates with the Jenny Lake Gradient. New Shibori Fabrics! I've added some great new Shibori fabrics to the shop this week (and put a few Shibori fabrics on clearance)! Gradients Back in Stock Beach Walk Gradient  Red Sunset Gradient  In October I shared the beginnings of this quilt and you can read all about the fabrics there. The short story is that I sunprinted them while we were on vacation Maine. I set aside this project to work on at sewing days with my quilting club. I missed November when I got the plague (a cold) so i was very excited to get started on it this weekend. Over two days of sewing I got it half done! If I had talked a little less I would have gotten more accomplished but I'm really happy with this and I will be able to finish it next month. I am thrilled with how it's looking. I really like the mix of colors and the balance of sharp prints and more muted prints. While we were sewing Friday it started snowing. It was a very unusual early snow but a perfect snow because it was too warm to stick to the roads.  I took these Friday afternoon after I got home from sewing. We actually got several inches of snow but it didn't prevent me from going back to sewing on Saturday! I think this is the first time that it's snowed while I had the Christmas decorations up.  This is the little guest house that we rent out on Airbnb. It was cool to have guests coming Friday night so they could see the place in the snow.  But forget the houses, this is the best view!
It's pretty much all melted now which is exactly the way that I like my snow. It was just enough to inspire me to put up the Christmas trees and I'll share those photos this weekend.  Majestic Lion by Colette Beighley How about this to get you going on a Saturday morning?  Majestic Lion (2) by Colette Beighley If one isn't enough I have two of them for you! Colette is a longarm quilter at Quilted Mitten Studio and she created these two beautiful pieces using a digital pattern from Karley Porter Designs. Solar Eclipse Gradient made the perfect background for her Majestic Lions.
If you have made anything with my hand dyed fabric I hope you will consider sharing it in the Customer Gallery. In appreciation you will receive a 20% shop coupon that's good for 3 months! Marcy and I were so excited to finish the veterans quilts Tuesday and I brought them upstairs right away to trim and photograph them.  I didn't bother to inspect them because I never have weird tension problems on my Innova. But I've also never used Superior Lava thread. I should have done a little testing before hand. We had a number of thread breaks/shredding while we were quilting but that's not what these areas are. These are like thread burps and I couldn't leave them that way.  I decided to fix them on my regular sewing machine and not tempt the longarm again. As long as someone isn't closely inspecting the stitching I don't think these repairs will stand out at all.  From the front they are completely invisible. There were 18 spots over the 2 quilts and it only took about an hour to fix them. I feel much better about turning them over today.  Let's take a moment to appreciate a truly rare sight....a clean sewing table!  Maybe it's about time that I get back to playing around with these blocks again.
I don't have anything particularly interesting to share today but I am making progress on several things. I hope to get one of my own charity quilts loaded and basted today and ready to start quilting tomorrow evening. I have my sewing things packed and ready to go for the CSQ sewing day tomorrow and Saturday.  Yesterday was dyeing day and I dyed a lot of new shibori pieces for the shop. I also finally dyed these stitched shibori samples that I stitched on out vacation in August. As soon as I publish this post I'll be sitting down in the basement for an hour or so to pick out all of the stitching.  I also got this mandala washed and blocked. It will be ready for binding soon. It looks a lit better without the Cryola markings all over it but it's still pink. I'm glad I got this one out of my system so I'll be ready to do another that's more in my color palette. I learned a lot doing this quilt....certainly more than I could have learned in a class. So even though it's pink, it was well worth the time and effort.
I'm off to my shibori sweat shop. Even though I'm starting my 6th week of laryngitis I know that I'm recovered from that miserable cold because I made a to-do list Sunday with 15 items on it. As of this morning it's down to 6. I plan to get all 6 of those things done tomorrow so that I can enjoy 2 fun days of sewing with Country School Quilters Friday and Saturday. I finally get to work on my Maine quilt.  Yesterday afternoon was a play day with my friend, Marcy. She rents longarm time at Virginia Longarm so she's had training and experience on the Innova longarms at the shop. She wants more practice and she's willing to do it on the veterans quilts. That's a win-win for me! This quilt is one that she made. Another member, Becky, had a lot of pieces of really dark and somber fabrics that were donated to us. She cut them into 1 yard lengths, handed them out to willing volunteers and challenged them to brighten them up with other fabrics. Marcy made this quilt with her dark brown challenge fabric. She improved that dark brown immensely!  I load 2 quilts on one wide quilt back (not side by side, but one after the other) and this was the second one for today. Marcy had never quilted a pantograph so that was the lesson/practice for today and she did great. I got my much neglected glass workbench cleared off while she quilted.  We used one of my favorite quick and easy pantographs, Looseleaf by Willow Leaf Studios. It's perfect for beginners but it's also just a wonderful all-over texture for just about any quilt.
We used a cone of Superior Lava thread that I had bought several years ago. It gave us fits and I found a couple of spots that I'm going to need to fix on my Juki machine tomorrow. That shouldn't take too long but I've never had to do this on a quilt before with my Innova so I think it was the thread....or maybe the needle. I'll experiment a little before I use it again.  Tidal Wave Gradient - 25% off through Sunday! The fabric if the week is Tidal Wave Gradient. If you want some for your stash get it before it sells out. Through Sunday (or while supplies last) this fabric is 25% off or $6.75/half yard.  Are you stuck on what to get your fiber art and quilting buddies for Christmas? How about a eGift card so they can pick out the exact fabric that they want! You can order them in any amount. After purchase I will email you the gift code they can use at checkout.
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I'm Vicki Welsh and I've been making things as long as I can remember. I used to be a garment maker but transitioned to quilts about 20 years ago. Currently I'm into fabric dyeing, quilting, Zentangle, fabric postcards, fused glass and mosaic. I document my adventures here. Categories
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