Hand Dyed Charm Packs and Jelly Rolls

After weeks of dyeing fabric, and more planned.  I’ve finally started cutting!

Hand Dyed Jelly Rolls (2.5″ x WOF) and Charm Packs (5″ squares) will be up in my new Etsy Shop soon!  These are all die cut, with my wonderful Accuquilt Studio, so you can be assured accuracy on every cut.  Great product and wonderful customer service.  I stopped by their booth at Quilt Festival in Rosemont last month and looked at what all the fuss was about.  Took some literature home with me…surfed their website…and went back the next day to by my new Studio and as many dies as I could possibly afford.

This is just the very beginning of my little foray into the wide-world of Etsy and selling my little beauties! The name of my shop is “Blue Frog Fabrics.”  So keep an eye out for this little guy:

Hand Dyed Fabrics for Quilters & Crafters

Stay tuned…pics and more info will be coming soon.  I’ll have a lot of rainbows of color…warm and cool, light and dark, as well as a few very interesting gradations.  All of the fabric is high quality cotton, with a wonderful hand (not too heavy for those that like to applique). I’ve used Procion MX dyes, and each piece has been washed at least 2x with Synthropol, to help ensure the colors won’t bleed.

This fabric will be great for quilters, fabric artists, crafters…anyone who wants to work with beautiful, richly colored fabric!!

Peace

New fabric + New dyes + New Recipes = HAPPY!!

New fabric + New dyes + New Recipes = HAPPY!!

Frieda Anderson’s newest book, “Fabric To Dye For,” is out – and it’s a winner!

I’ve created just about all of the colorways in her book and am LOVIN’ IT!  There are no fancy recipes, just simple instructions…and great results.  Here’s a sneak peak:

More photos and info to come!

Peace

PS – I’ve got 100 yards of new fabric coming in.  Keep a look out for charm packs and jelly rolls in my hand-dyed colorways!

Painting on Silk and Doodling

My first painted silk

Finally tried my hand at painting on silk with a resist.  Since my Gutta resist hasn’t arrived yet from Dharma Trading (my fault, not their’s) and I have so many things I want to do and try, I decided to use what I had on hand — Elmer’s School Glue.  Now I have never tried this technique before, but I think the glue acted as a pretty good resist overall.

I stretched a 1/4 yd of silk on my frames and I laid a copy of the fish graphic under the silk.  Then I traced the graphic with the glue, added some swirls and dots, signed in (in glue) and let it dry for a day.  Then I mixed up my Procion dyes with a 1/2 cup of chemical water, and started painting.  I tried to blend some of the colors on the fabric, rather than relying solely on the colors I mixed.  I let the fabric sit (covered in plastic wrap) for about 2 hours and rinsed, trying to make sure I got all of the glue off.

All-in-all…I’m pretty happy with my little fish design.  Think I’ll quilt it into a little wall-hanging.

My other current project has been doodling.  Now most people see this just as the ultimate time-waster.  But this couldn’t be any further from the truth.  While surfing the net…I ran across a very interesting website:  www.zentangle.com.  There I found some of the coolest artwork I had seen.  Artwork that anyone could create.  So off I went, doodling my little heart out.  What I noticed, while looking at various doodles, was that, in addition to being a great right-brain exercise, many of the fills were very similar to free-motion fills in quilting.  AHA!  I’m currently teaching a series of free-motion quilting at Susan Marie’s (a Bernina dealer in Palos Heights, IL).  Learning to free-motion quilt really just takes practice, and a few pointers.  But one big practice technique I have been stressing is for the students to practice drawing their designs on paper before even trying it on the machine.  I could see where this

Can you see familiar quilt fills?

doodling can tie in very nicely – not only does it give you a chance to try out some new design fills, it gets your creativity flowing and you are producing some pretty cool pics in the meantime!  Another WIN-WIN.  Here’s some of the doodles I recently drew, notice patterns that are similar to quilt fills?

Get some white paper and some extra-fine tip Sharpies, and create!

Peace