"Groovy" is what I've decided to call these quilts. This one will be Groovy #2 and it went together really quickly yesterday. I'll work on Groovy #1 this weekend. I know I fought using a dark sashing but, of course, it was the right answer.

Next week I need to get a back dyed for this one. I'm thinking a tie dyed spiral because I've decided who is receiving this quilt and a tie dye spiral will be perfect.

There still isn't a lot going on around here but I got my sashing fabrics dyed last week and started cutting them last night. The smaller quilt will have this deep green (Jungle).

The big quilt will have this blue. I'll use bright cornerstones on both quilts. These should go together pretty quickly so I will try to get a back dyed fror the green one this week. I already have the back for the blue one.

The ice dyed fabrics turned out great. I'm going to show you the backing fabrics first. This one I Anne's from the red/blue/purple bin. When I load the backing fabric in the bin I always leave it folded in half so that I will get a mirror image  effect. I think it's a little better than just all over mottled.

I put my fabric in the "rainbow " box and I expected a lot of brown but was really lucky to get this.

I had a couple of questions on Friday's post about the process and I thought I'd answer here for everyone.
We soda soaked the fabric before we folded it. For the backing fabrics I arrange them in the bins and then pour over enough soda ash mixture to dampen the fabric. I generally leave my folded, wet fabric overnight to dry out a bit before dyeing so we did all the folding Wednesday and the dyeing Thursday.
For dyeing I layer some ice, then sprinkle lots of dye (you have to wear a mask for this) and then add more ice. Then for a boost I sprinkle soda ash powder on top. I don't know if that actually does anything but I do it anyway.

There are a total of 106 of these squares! I don't think we will have any problem picking winners for our quilts. I expect there will even be some left over for a baby quilt or two.
Now I have to decide on a sashing color. I originally thought black but now I'm thinking gray or a grayish blue might be better.

Of course there were some losers and that's OK. It's just more hand dyed fabric scraps for another project.

Meanwhile, in the sewing room, my batting trimmings bin is overflowing so during the night game last night I started cutting out some fabric for dog beds. I like it when I can divert something from going straight to the landfill. 

I was just relaxing and scrolling through Instagram when I saw a simple, but very cool, quilt made with ice dyed mandala blocks. It was really simple like this layout. The mandala pieces seemed to be about 12" square and it was sashed and bordered wiht solid fabric.

I send the link to my friend, Anne, with a "we should make this"
She replies "yes, I'm available this week" and here we are ice dyeing on the last hot day of the year (hopefully). 

Of course if I'm going to make a quilt like this it's going to be for my bed so it has to be a queen size. If the blocks are 12" I need 36. But what if I have to cut them down as small as 10"? Better make 49 just in case. But what if some are duds? Better make 60. That should do it.
Anne wants a lap size quilt so she settled on 45.

So we spent a few hours Wednesday folding lots of little fabric bits. She also had some bandannas and added in a few of those. We ended up with well over 100 items to dye.

By Wednesday evening we had 4 bins ready to go. There fabric in the bottom of the bins too. Two of them are quilt backs that we hope will be the backing for our quilts.

Here's one of the bins right after we set it up. The layers are ice, dye powder, more ice and finally a sprinkling of extra soda ash.

By 4 in the afternoon they were about half melted. One bin is blue/red/purple, one is red/orange/yellow, one is blues/yellows and the last is a rainbow. The rainbow one has my quilt back so it might be brown but I'm hoping to see some of the individual colors in the backing. We'll see. It will be good either way.

Today we are taking down the CSQ quilt show and then going with Mom to see the Downton movie. After that I'll come home and wash all these gems out. We'll see the results next week.

Today is "dyeing day" and that reminded me to share a new top that I dyed for myself last week.  

This is a top that I dyed a couple of years ago. It's the Flower Power Top from Dharma Trading. It's got several things going for it that I love. It's soft cotton knit, it's very comfortable, it's manchine washable and it's long enough to completely cover my hiney. I love wearing it with cropped leggings. The only thing I don't love about it is the sleeve but that's a minor complaint. This year I ordered a couple more with great plans to get them dyed and they have been sitting on the shelf for over a month. I finally got motivated last week.

Last Tuesday I was invited on a road trip to the Virginia Quilt Museum and I didn't have to drive. I took along one of the tops, a bag of glass florist marbles and my waxed sinew. In the car I wrapped marbles in the lower half of the top.

I did not tie each individual marble. I just wrap each one a few times and pull tight. That hold the marble in well enough.

I usually do low water immersion but I wanted the color in this top to be smooth solid so I did a full immersion dye and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. What I love about Dharma clothing is that the thread used for construction is cotton so it dyes too.

It took a lot less time that I expected to tie this dress and I'm glad I remembered that I had it to work on during the car ride. Now I need a design idea for the second one that I bought.

There's a little shop across from the Viginia Quilt Museum that sells kind of Bohemian clothing. I usually find something that I "need" in there. One of the things I needed this time was this tshirt that seemed to have been made for me! If you need one you can get it from Tie Dye Dan, a business in Harrisonburg.

Gene commented on the Tuesday post about doing a Color Magnet tutorial. No need! There are several really good tutorials around the web on using this product. Before I share the list I will share some personal tips/observations.

1. I like this product best for screen printing. You get really sharp and crisp images. I think it was developed primarily for screen printing. It will work with stamping and stenciling but it will require a little more practice.
2. The magnet properties are really strong and it keeps working during the first rinse and even sometimes through the first wash. I generally washout my dyed fabrics with all colors together but when I use Color Magnet I do the first wash with like colors only. The magnet will continue to pick up loose dyes from the water so you have to be careful.

Here are some tutorials to get you started.
Videos from Jacquard, the makers of the product:
Immersion Dyeing with CM

Using the Color Magnet Pen with a stencil

Color Magnet with Discharge Chemicals

Other tutorials:

Screen Printing Tutorial from Artistic Artifacts

Stenciling Color Magnet from Dharma Trading

Stamping Color Magic with Tjaps from Dharma Trading

I hope you will give it a try. I love this product. It's so easy to use and I love the effects.

Before the bowl hot pads became my 2018 gift idea, I had planned to dye kitchen towels for everyone. Someone in one of my dye groups imported a bunch of them and offered them for sale.
I decided to order a dozen but by the time I talked to myself about it and wanted to have "enough just in case", I bought 3 dozen! So it could be that I have a head start on my 2019 gifts.

​I dyed 2 past week just to see how they take they dye and then are wonderful. They are made well and even the thread in the hems dyes.  I used Jacquard Color Magnet to screen the images. The Color Magnet causes the fabric to absorb more dye where it is printed. I could simply screen print the images after I dye the fabric and I will do that when i want the image in a different color.

I've used Color Magnet before. You might remember this tablecloth that I printed with Color Magnet and the dyed . It took a lot of time to print that cloth but the effect was worth it.

Through the next year I'll use the new hand towels to play with different techniques and I should end up with a great stash of gifts.

I keep talking about all of the dyeing that I'm doing to get ready for the AQS Virginia Beach show. I thought I'd give you a brief tour today. 
Now, keep in mind that my business is a little business and my inventory is basically stored in one closet and on one shelf in the office. I estimated that I needed double that amount of fabric for the show and consequently the whole house has turned into a warehouse! Chris is exceedingly patient about it.

I lucked out that when Mom moved and unpacked she had several large plastic bins that she no longer needed. I brought them all home with me. I'm filling this one with Black Shades Packs and single color Color Wheel Shades Packs. It will be stuffed once I get all of the 10 Color Wheel colors done.

​There will be one more bin filled with the Color Wheel Shades and Stash Packs eventually.

This bin is getting filled with all of the other colors of Shades Packs.

This is one of those bins designed for wrapping paper but I'm filling it with Stash Packs. I'll have to find another bin for overflow.

The guest room closet is filling up with Gradients. A month ago I was nearly panicked about how much I needed to do to get ready. Now that my bins, closets, living room sofa and other surfaces are filling I'm feeling better about it. I'm a little more than half way to my inventory goals.
But, I think now you can see why in the evenings all I can do is sit and hand stitch a bit.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays are dyeing days so the amount of sewing (or anything else) happening on those days is about zero. But Chris is away for a couple of days on a fishing trip so I had 2 nights free to myself and set a goal of clearing away the moon mess. Last night about 11:00 I got the last one made.

I don't have a specific number of moons that I wanted to make. I just made one from every piece of shibori that I had. These photos are some of my favorites.

Every time I dye shibori for the shop I add a fat eighth to each pole for my own stash. I definitely dye mostly blue because that's what people want to buy. But I've gotten lots of other color combinations too.

I double dye all of my shibori fabric. I dye once in the darkest color and then spread the fabric out on the pole a bit and dye in the second color. I get a bonus third color where those two blend. I think double dyeing makes it even more interesting.

That orange and black one in the middle is my favorite of all of them. I did fussy cut several of them to get the colors where I wanted them. The one in the upper left corner is a prime example of that. It did waste a bit of fabric but it's not like I was actually using this fabric before I cut these out.

Here's the final stack. I think I have about 60 of them. I don't know if that too many or not enough because I haven't decided on a final quilt size. I'll just make blocks until I get tired of them. I'll be dyeing lots more shibori so I can always get more moons whenever I need them. Now I just need to settle on the block size and cut the backgrounds. 

It's been a busy week around here! In the last 2 days I dyed about 110 yards of fabric and now I start the washout, soaking and ironing for the rest of the week. That's why I didn't post yesterday. But I did share this photo on Facebook yesterday. It's a sneak peek at a new gradient that will run from black to light brown. I've gotten some great suggestions for names and you are welcome to add your ideas in the comments. naming the gradients is one of the hardest part of my job!

I actually have plenty of things to share on the blog but simply haven't had time (or energy) to edit the photos until today. These are things that I added to the ice dye bins last week. These for folded fabrics are napkins. They are going to be the inspiration for my next set of placemats.

In the same bin as the fabric was this shirt. I love how the pattern turned out but it's got way too much yellow for me to wear. This one might get overdyed with a blue to turn it purple and green. That would be more in my color palette. I think to make it look right I would do a full immersion dye. That way the added blue would be even and the ice dyeing pattern would still be the dominant image.

This one was in another bin and was supposed to be red and blue, not pink and blue. But I like it well enough and may leave it alone.

My favorite item from that session is this tunic/dress. I got it from Dharma Trading a couple of years ago and I don't think they carry it anymore. It's rayon and has a tie in the back. I'm going to shorten it about 4 inches and it will be perfect to wear with white or pale blue leggings.