Dyeing Fabric and a Quick Finish

It’s been a busy few months, but I’m happy to say I have found time for quilting and dyeing fabric!

First off – the quilt! This is Night Scape:

This is a 24″ x 36″ wall hanging created for the Studio E Fabric challenge. It was a challenge to create a wall hanging entirely out of the fabrics they sent me from two different tone-on-tone lines.

While I really liked the fabric, figuring out what to do with it was a challenge! I finally settled on using the blue, purple, black, and green fabrics together to make a dark landscape that I could then quilt over with a variety of filler designs.

Since I figured the company wanted people to actually be able to SEE the fabric in these quilts, I quilted the sky with Flowing Lines, which leaves nice gaps between curvy lines of quilting:

Working on this piece, I’m really starting to see that I need to stop making quilts for awhile and instead focus on experimenting with fillers. While I think it looks excellent, I’m getting a bit bored with my current application (i.e: fill every open space with one design).

It’s easy to get into a rut with any hobby or craft because once you get good at doing something one way, why change?

The challenge really is to keep changing, keep trying new things, and keep an open mind to everything you see.

Case in point is dyeing fabric!

I’ll be perfectly honest: until around 4 months ago, I had absolutely no desire to dye my own fabric. Living so close to Mary Jo’s Cloth Store (literally packed with every color of solid or batik you could ever dream of) means I don’t have to struggle to find the right color or style of fabric.

But then I attended a lecture with Patsy Thompson and…well…just go look at her quilts! Gorgeous, rich, luscious color! I didn’t know fabric could look that way, but once I saw it, I knew I would have to try dyeing fabric.

I emailed Patsy and she hooked me up with a list of links to check out:

• Patsy’s dyeing tutorial – This is excellent because Patsy explains exactly how she gets those gorgeous colors all blended together. It’s also a simple, no-nonsense approach that doesn’t require a lot of tedious steps or a million chemicals.
• The Lazy Dyer – This site rocks! Tons of information provided with excellent photos and I loved the experiments at the end where she showcases how color changes a bit depending on the fabric you use (who knew?!)
• All About Hand Dyeing – Patsy just sent me the link to this site yesterday and I’m already addicted to reading every page. There’s a lot more specific information. I especially enjoy her very clear photos with exact steps to recreate exactly that color or look. This is super important if you dye 2 yards, but then find you need 2 more of the same color!

So armed with information from Patsy Thompson and the Lazy Dyer, I’ve jumped into dyeing fabric with both feet! Here’s a few of my very first pieces:

Deep Orange and Deep Yellow

Royal Blue and Grape

In think with dyeing fabric it’s important to have a main goal with what you want to make. Randomly dye just to get random colors is nice, but I doubt I would end up using any of it. Instead I’ve set myself the following goals:

1. Dye fabric that is dark enough to quilt over on video – I need DARK fabrics. Seriously dark. Navy blue, black, midnight purple, maroon – deep, rich colors.

2. Achieve predictable graduations – I want to know how to make fabrics blend and bleed together so they go from medium shades to dark shades.

3. Duplicate results – If I dye something once and follow the same steps, the same colors should result. If I get that perfect dark red color I love, I want to know I can find it again using the same formula and set of steps.

So bearing these goals in mind, here’s a few of my experiments:

First I tried making fabric that blended green, blue, and purple together. I also wanted to see the effect when the fabric was wrinkled intentionally like this:

– Before –
– After –

So you can see the wrinkles create lines of lighter colors. Interesting…

Now for something really weird! Not all the fabric I dye needs to be used for quilting. I’m also getting back into making clothes, and would love to use fabrics I’ve hand dyed.

Most of what I’ve read says to use only fabric that is Prepared for Dyeing that is usually marked PFD.

But what if you had a ton of white fabric that wasn’t PFD? What if you had white fabric that wasn’t just plain white fabric? What would happen when you dyed something like this:

This is Vice Versa by Alice Kennedy for Timeless Treasures. It’s super interesting already, but when you add Deep Orange, Deep Yellow, and Fire Red to it you get this:

I literally squealed with glee when I pulled this out of the dryer – it’s PERFECT! All the colors swirl together so nicely and I think it will make the perfect fabric for a nice skirt for this winter.

Here’s a few more experiments with printed fabric:

This is Flor D’ Luna by Gail Foundation and May Wood Studios. A lot more of the white showed with this print, so I dyed it with a combination of deep yellow and deep orange to get this:

Quite fiery! That might make a nice top to brighten up the rainy winter days to come!

Finally here’s the last black on white print:
This is Michael Miller’s Dandy Damask, which actually comes in a lot of different colors, but probably not quite like this:
The blue and purple dyed on this print actually looks a lot darker and richer in person. This will definitely be turned into a skirt or lounge pants very soon.

So that’s it for today! I’m going to get Night Scape packed up and sent off to Studio E, and then get back into the studio to work on Emergence. I’ve been feeling so bored with quilting fillers over her that I think SOMETHING has to change. Might be weird, but it’ll probably end up being a lot more interesting.

Let’s go quilt!

Leah Day