Mad March and Space Dyeing

This dyeing of fabric and threads has been quite a mission this mad month of March. Lots of preparation, thinking and waiting is required to complete this technique. Now I have a recipe that works for me, I really enjoy doing it and the results are worthwhile.

Here is the batch I have managed to get going for this afternoon.... some shibori too. I have not used that technique for a long time, wonder if they will be OK?

You may remember me doing a lot of my dyeing in previous blog posts ( click here) I still use the same recipe. I find it works well for me.

Here are the all over colours, so useful to have.

Here are also some space dyed I dyed last week. Just love the way the colours run and fuse in together.

Now just have to sit and wait overnight for the latest dyes to batch. Then wash them tomorrow..... a bit of patience is required for that as well!

Quilting

I have been using my dyed fabrics, and practising my free machine quilting, as well as rotary cutting. All my own design..... but obviously you will recognise that it is just an arrangement of squares and rectangles. I have learnt a lot by doing this piece... patching or is it called piecing(?) and quilting too.

Stitch and Craft show Olympia

Went along to this show with my daughter. I used to go last century, but have not been for a long time. Was not sure if I would enjoy it or not, but viewed it as a day out. But enjoy it I did. There was lots to see and do and we finished the day sitting at this table making small cross stitch buttons to wear... you can download the charts for the buttons from the Cross Stitcher site here. They are simple designs, but fun to do. As we went on the Sunday it was not overbearingly crowded... so very pleasant to walk around.

Drawing with the sewing machine

These pieces of work were created over 2 days.... 2 days of really good stitching fun. All the drawing was done with free machine stitching. A refreshing change from using a pencil.

This piece above was my practice piece... almost a doodle piece. Testing the stitching, testing the marks the machine made. Really important to try things out.

This was the large table in the middle of the room with lots of items to draw. Isn't the table cloth a wonderful red?

This is completely stitched by machine. Ignore the flower pin at top right..... took the photo before I realised it was there... duh! Tried to give myself an exercise of white on white.....that was hard !

Bath Stitchers- Workshop

It was lovely to be invited by the Bath Branch of the Embroiderers Guild to give them a workshop. I always enjoy working all day with a group, not only were this group great fun and so adventurous, they also succeeded in creating lots of work of a high quality. The workshop they chose to take was all about abusing stitches. Great fun.

Impressed with the work? I was.