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Before I get into the birthday gifts I have to tell you that last evening my quilt club met as a big group for the first time in MONTHS and IT WAS AWESOME! We had a real program and real show and tell and lots of catching up chatter. It was a much better time than the 2 days Chris and I have spent burying he phone line (about 300') because the phone company couldn't be bothered. If you don't have Centurylink for your phone service you are blessed. They must have the worst customer service of any company in the world in any category.  Now, on to Eli. Eli is brother to Ella (recipient of couture doll clothes). He's turning 4 this weekend and he's all boy. I decided to dye some shirts for and hopefully he'll like one or more of these. I'm especially thrilled with the spiral. The two in the back were dyed using Color Magnet and stencils.  I had leftover fabric from his pillowcase so I made a gift bag for the shirts. Cookie Monster is his favorite Muppet. The bag is lined in turquoise.  I was rummaging around the sewing room looking for something to use as the drawstring and I spied the clothesline that I usually wrap with fabric for coasters and bowls. I decided to see if it could be dyed. It turns out that it can! I put lots of Fray Check and glue in the knots so that they don't come apart in use.
Mom and I will go to his party Saturday afternoon. Not sure if I'll survive a party full of 4 year old's but I'll give it my best shot. Mom and I might need to stop at a bar on the way home to recover. 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.
I haven't tie dyed in ages but I had just the right motivation to get back to it last week. Jamie, the contractor who is working on our kitchen and a laundry list of other things, loves tie dye. I actually had to bribe him to do our job by promising him some new tie dyed shirts. While we wait on the countertops to be installed (on Valentine's Day), I got busy on his shirts.  Jamie is expecting 4 shirts but I dyed 6 to make up for any duds like this one. This was supposed to be 3 spirals but it didn't work out. The colors are still good though and this really is the worst one of the bunch so that's good.  He picked the designs and he wanted a spiral. he also lives lime green. The yellow and green spiral is one that he expects but I always love a patriotic spiral for holiday wear so I made both.  This was another design that he picked. I sure hope I got it bright enough!  Jamie love the beach and he loves fishing so I think he will be thrilled with this one. I've done this design several times but this is the best version that I've ever made. After making these I was stymied for what to do on the last shirt. I wanted to use the leftover dyes and needed a design that would be good for that.  Oh yeah, that's a darned good grand finale! Now the reason that he thinks he's getting 4 shirts is that the first pack of shirts that I bought had 4 shirts. But when I was tying them I saw that they were 40% polyester. I had to go back to the store and get 100% cotton. That package had 6 shirts. But I had to do something with the 4 poly/cotton blend shirts.  I dumped some leftover dyes on them and made him some new work tshirts.
I already apologized to his wife, my friend Kim, because I know she's going to get sick of seeing him wear tie dye every day. I can't wait to give him these next week. We have been Airbnb hosts since September 2011 and we have one family that has visited us every year in June. They were pregnant with their 5th child in the first year and now have 6. These kids are the best behaved kids I've ever been around. They are also outside kids. They don't play video games. They run around barefoot on the gravel driveway, play Frisbee, chase frogs and catch fireflies. I look forward to seeing them every year. It's a joy to watch kids really play. This year I offered to tie dye with them.  When they visit they are here for 3 nights and are gone all day until about 7 pm. To accommodate their schedule we tied Thursday night and dyed Friday night. They told me the colors they wanted Thursday so that I had everything ready to go when they got back Friday. I washed the shirts out Saturday morning so that I could soak them all day. A final wash about 6pm and I had the shirts ready when they came home Saturday evening. Dad declined a shirt but Mom participated. She and her only daughter went pink/purple with their shirts.  After they got home they donned their shirts to send me a family photo.  They are a very happy family! I'm already looking forward to their visit next year.
My family is having a beach vacation together this summer and I though it would be a great idea to make tie dye beach towels for everyone....all 16 of everyone! I started dyeing them last Fall and just finished last week. Here are the last 7.    I didn't really dye any of them with specific colors for specific people except for maybe the brown and green one. That one is a camouflage look and I'm thinking my middle brother might prefer it. But he doesn't have to take it because I made a few extra.  By the time I got to the last one I had run out of steam and I had a lot of partial bottles of dye that I needed to use. I realized that they were all reds and blues so I mixed them together, dumped them int he bin and just plopped the beach towel in to see what would happen. By the morning the whole towel looked purple in the bin so the dye soaked all the way through.  Doesn't it figure? It's the best of the bunch! At last it's the best according to Chris. He loves this one. I have one brother who hates tie dye of any kind so I bought him this one. He loves Guy Harvey clothing so I know he will be thrilled with this.  I'm ready for the beach!
Next year I'm going to make something smaller.   Last week's dyeing was mostly about tie dyeing. A friend wanted some new shirts so I dyed these for her. She wanted 3 but I dyed one extra so she would have a little bit of a choice. If anyone wants the red/purple heart one it's a size small and is $20. Just leave a note on the comments.  I dyed 2 sets of these cute onesies for babies that are coming soon. Both are girls and due within a month of each other, one on the East Coast and one on the West. I think they will look really cute in these.
This weekend I taught the new owners at The Longarm Network. That's always a fun day and it was a great class. Yesterday I finally got our tax info together to deliver Tuesday and I started quilting a sample for a new class on fills that I'll be teaching at The Longarm Network in the next couple of months. I'll post links once the classes are up. I didn't get anything productive done yesterday because I finally had lunch with my cousin (after postponing 3 times) and last night I taught my online selling class at Visual Arts. I don't mind not accomplishing much because it was fabulous to get out! Class was fun once I rode around the block 3 times to find parking. But this morning I found more photos that I had not edited yet. I think all of these are from December and they are all shirts.  Let's start withe the most important and most boring. Gotta keep the husband happy and he specifically requested cammo. He picked the 3 colors and is thrilled with his new shirts. Nothing's easier than these!  I showed this spiral yesterday but the right side was covered. This was another shirt that I wanted to do leaving some of the shirt white. I'm sure I'm going to play with this concept more.  This one doesn't speak to everyone but I love it! It was folded the way that I fold the mandalas and it was part of the December snow dyeing session. I think it's really cool.  I also bought some hemostats to use instead of tying. The two pieces on the left are my first attempts at using hemostats. The shirt on the right is the blue and white one in the second photo. When I want to make sure that color doesn't get where I don't want it I wrap it in plastic.  Baby onesies are so cute to dye. One of my friends is a first time grandmother and I sent these to her. The heart is tied and the mandala is the clamped on on the left in the photo above. Not the most successful clamping but I learned something and this will be fine once the baby pukes on it.  This is my shirt and it's the middle one in the photo above. I'm quite pleased with this one!
Today I'm prepping my dyeing and will do my dyeing tomorrow. Maybe, just maybe, I can do something fun tonight. Now that I've returned to mostly normal I've started to dig out of my backlog of stuff. I have yards and yards of fabric to iron and post and, it turns out, lots of photos to edit and post from past dyeing sessions. Here are the first of the dyeing photos.  I'm making a lot of tie dye beach towels for my family's beach trip in May. I thought this was going to be a surprise for them but realized last week that my brother reads my blog so it won't be a surprise for everyone. I'm dyeing them all in spiral motifs. I have the most recent 3 to share today and even remembered to take a photo of the dye application so you can see how I made them. I think I still have about 8 beach towels left to dye before May. Most of the spirals that I dye are done with full color saturation like this one.  I'm starting to play around with keeping some white areas and that's what I did with this one. The white doesn't show as much as you would expect.  This one turned out even better than I expected. I love the bits of red outlining the black spirals. I do need to get better at taking the time to make sure my twisted fabric stays round after I soda soak it. Flat spirals aren't ideal and I think that's happening from the way I handle it after I soda soak it and before I dye it.  I saw some shirts on the Facebook Tie-Dyeing group where the spiral didn't go all the way to the edge of the shirt. I liked the effect and decided to try it on a shirt for Chris in UVA colors. Pretty cool.
Tomorrow I may have some more dyeing results or even a couple of new things in the shop. It all depends on what I get done this afternoon before I head off to teach as Visual Arts tonight.  I decided that the dyeing that I do this week will be for myself and that means tie dyeing! Yesterday I tied and soda soaked all of these and will dye them today.
I've got 3 beach towels, sone baby clothes and a few t-shirts to try out some new techniques and my new set of hemostats. I'll be back next week with the results. I"m going to take off the rest of this week and probably early next week for my holiday break. Whatever you celebrate, I hope it's fabulous! On Monday I shared the shirts that I dyed for my brother and my friend's husband. Today's things are mostly all things I dyed for myself.  I don't even remember buying these shirts at Target so who knows how long they've been waiting for some color. I found them last week and added them to the pile. Both are ice dyed and I'm really pleased with both. By Spring I probably won't remember them again!  This is just a really old shirt that I stopped wearing. I pleated it and put it in the bottom of the bin. As the dye dripped through the items on the screen the leftover dye drips into the bottom of the bin and settled on this shirt. I think this one needs a little screen printing or something else added to it.  This is a tunic that I bought from Dharma Trading. I originally dyed it the green, purple and red and hated it. I decided to pleat it and overdye it black. I like the added black streaks much better. Trust me, it looks better on and should work well with black leggings.
It turns out that leggings are a lot of fun to dye and the leggings from Dharma are really well made. They are beefy and last a long time. The ones on the left are capri length. The one on the right is full length (I'm showing front and back). It only matters what the legs look like, I always make sure my widest part is covered. No one needs to see that.
I also had a stack of Dharma's feed sack towels and folded a few to fill out some empty space in my ice dyeing bins. I love how these turned out and gave the pink and purple one away as a door prize at our quilt club meeting last night. I want to give these as gifts but I'm finding that I'm a little attached to them!
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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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