Blowing in the Wind

We've had all weathers this week, from snowflakes to sunshine. The greenman has a smile on his face though a sure sign that spring is on the way. I also love the aging effect that the winter with all its wind and snow has had on the pig wind chimes.I took advantage of a couple of hours of blue skies and sunshine the other day to finish the dyeing that I started the other day.
It was great to see the fabrics on the line, dancing a merry dance in the breeze. As you can probably figure out I had a play with blues and pinks this time. Then to use up the last of the cotton I tried a piece in brown. This came out pretty dark in places, but some interesting colour variations I think. I also found a box of black dye in the cupboard that hadn't even been opened so for fun had a play with this too.

When it first came out of the microwave I didn't like it, but it's growing on me. I'm really surprised at the colour variations as I didn't mix anything up this is purely from the black dye powder, there are browns, greys, blues and blacks in here. I'm starting to see stormy skies in this piece.

We're just about half way through February and I'm also just about half way through my to do list. hopefully I can keep this up :)

Insomnia Rules

I'm kind of getting used to not sleeping anymore, and sometimes the extra hours in the day are nice! Last night I put them to good use.

I pulled out a bunch of CDs that I fancied listening to.... Went fishing under the sink and pulled out the long neglected dye boxes and put the microwave to good use.
It's a simple process, damp your cloth, stick it in a bowl and sprinkle over some dye. The above picture is before 'cooking. The one below is what the same piece looked like fresh out of the microwave. I gave some quilting cotton and some muslin the same treatment in the same dye bowl. Here they are hanging side by side.

As well as the greens I also mixed some some red and yellow for some orangey tones.
Got some fun results with this mix, but then again I love these colours so may be I'm a little biased.Of course as soon as the fabrics come out one or the other of the cats has to come an oversee what is happening. On this occasion Pip thought that the undyed fabrics on the table had been put there especially to make a bed for him.

Happy Valentines

Happy Valentines! Well DH and I don't really celebrate never have done but I was out and about in Bath this morning and couldn't resist getting him these delicious chocolates,

I think he might be shocked when he received his first valentine gift in 13 years! Mind you they are looking very tempting sat in the box looking at me so by the time I go get him from work tonight they might just read 'I love Yo'

Anyway enough of the silliness, How did I do with my to do list yesterday?

• Do some more tea dyeing - yes I got this done and after a murky start to the morning the sun came out long enough for me to dry my fabric on the line.
• Paint some TimTex - This is done too, if you take a look you can see it pegged on the line next to the tea dye.
  
• Make a start on BQL bag - I've progressed on this too, but another mini disaster has struck. After I started cutting the pieces I realised that I don't have enough of the main fabric for the handles. I tried to find a match at the LQS this morning but they don't have the fabric anymore, having already changed my mind on the fabric choice for this one once I really didn't want to start over for a third time. I purchased a close (ish) match of fabric so the handles will now be slightly different to the main.
  
• Make a start on Time postcards - These are done too. with the help of my tea dyed scrim, these rubber stamps from Paper Artsy and this wonderful thread gifted to me in a parcel of goodies I received from Kate on Tuesday.
  

Here is one of the finished cards.

All in all a pretty good days work.

I decided no to set myself a goal list last night as I knew that I wanted to head into Bath to shop for some fabric and visit this exhibition.

I really enjoyed the exhibition a wonderful mix of quilts, paintings, glasswork and mosaic. I'm not usually a big fan of Kaffe Fassett but he had a couple of really lovely quilts on display and the work of the other two artists was wonderful. I'm not one of these girls that goes crazy for shoes but recently I've seen a few shoe based artworks that I have loved and I really fell for the mosaic shoes in this exhibition.

As we are already half way through the day today I'm only going to set myself a couple of To Dos,

• Work on BQL bag
• Start Daisies postcards.

Blackberry Dyeing

Last night I got to squashing some blackberries into some fabric to see what dyed effect I could get. I only saved about 20 blackberries from the stash we collected the other day but the juice went far and I now have a 24" x 11" piece of blackberry dyed cotton.

Sorry the scanned image isn't the best but you get the idea. Now the fabric has dried the colour is a lot paler than I thought it might turn out, it was a lot of fun to do though so I might go get some more berries and try some different squashing techniques to see if I can come up with different effects.

Of course I can't end the post without another hat on location. This is one of my favourites, I think it looks great nestled in the tree.

Dyeing for some colour

After the bride postcards and the snow I thought it was time for a splash of colour on my blog. So here are some pieces of fabric I microwave dyed yesterday.
It started with me wanting some red for the backgrounds of some postcards that I want to make for an Artsnthemail swap. Of course once I started I found it difficult to stop. I haven't done any dyeing for a while and had forgotten how much fun it was to see how each piece of fabric would turn out.