Thursday, March 25, 2010

Blocks are done!

I pushed on through and the blocks are now all done for the magic castle quilt. now to put them on the design wall and figure out how to get them all together. in the book, they have a sampler quilt but not all the blocks are in it....so i am on my own. we'll see how this goes. i might need help...so stay tuned. LOL

Here is the hippogriff. those tiny little claws were tough.


And here is the second bat. how can these tiny little blocks be so hard. it only has 4 pieces for pete's sake. i had to take it apart and redo it. the first bat gave me fits, too. must be a mental thing.



On another subject entirely, it was a rainy day today...still raining. coming down good but not raining heavy. on Vicki Welsh's site she gave permission to start a new project today. LOL  so i took her up on it and decided to do some fabric dyeing. i have been wanting to dye on a rainy day to see if i could rinse less and just hang them in the rain to take care of the rest of the rinsing. Vicki says she does that....and if she does it....the Queen of Fabric Dyeing...then it is good enough for me.

So i threw some fabric in the washer and got ready. i had 4 yards still of a cotton/silk mix...i love that stuff. each side comes out looking differently. and i washed 5 yards of PFD muslin. so i had 9 pieces. i did a couple blacks, a couple yellows, and some blues and a green. then as i was hanging them up i decided to wash some more 1/2 yard pieces and put it in the remainder of the dyes. so i washed 10 more pieces and put 1 in each leftover dye pot. then took the last piece, put it in a bucket, and as i was rinsing out the 1/2 yards to hang outside, i poured some of the leftover dye onto that piece. before pouring a second bit in there, i poured out the liquid from the first bit. so it sat in the dyes from 5 minutes to about 30 minutes by the time i was all done rinsing and hanging. then i just took it out and hung it outside, too. it is a pretty green, blue mix with some blackish spots. interesting. it may wash all out in the rain....who knows. but i will just let it all hang out there till it all dries. maybe tomorrow.  then see what surprises i get.

The other thing i did differently was to put the soda ash into the soaking buckets. usually i mix it along with the salt into the dye. but i wanted to try it this way....it was easier by far...one less thing to measure and mix. i shall see if it makes a big difference.   the best thing is....even if it ALL comes out wonky.... i can just re-dye the whole lot. dyeing is FUN!!

You don't want to see my hand and arms. hahahahaha  the right glove sprung a leak, so my right hand is dark bluish/green on 2 fingers...kind of like a really ugly bruise. and the gloves never stay up my arms...they always roll down..guess my arms are too fat...so both arms are greenish-yellowish-blue.  guess i better not go to town for a few days...it looks like someone beat on me.

Gotta go to Dharma Trading to buy more soda ash and see what other goodies they have that are crying to come home with me.





 

1 comment:

Vicki W said...

I can't wait to see what you do! I always dye on Saturday because one of gloves usually springs a leak at some point and that gives me Sunday to try to get the dye off before I go to work!

These blocks you have been working on are amazing. I can't wait to see ti all together!

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