Why my house will never be clean...

The past two weekends (Columbus Day and October 19-20) were spent on the road--traveling to NY over Columbus Day, then to Pittsburgh for a wedding on October 19th.  So I had very little time to do anything fabric/fiber related lately, especially since I don't get home from work til 5:30 every night and have a hard time getting motivated in the evenings.

I tried to make up for it this past weekend, first getting up early Saturday (as always) and soaking some fabric in soda ash solution to get ready for ice dyeing.  I first saw this method on this blog  and thought I'd give it a try.  Instead of using the dye powder, she made a strong dye/water solution.  (I have lots of jars of dye solutions already made up, since I don't always use 100% of what I mix, so it was a good reason to use it up!)  Thanks, Dolly!

Here are some of my results--which I think turned out beautifully! Colors used were Fuschia, Straw, Tangerine, and Sky Blue.

The one surprise to me is that the blue pretty much disappeared, turning into lots of purple, but not much green.

It was so cold over the weekend (for here) that the ice didn't even melt all the way after 24 hours.

I liked these so much that I started another bunch of ice dyes on Sunday morning using mostly blues & purples (Blue violet, Sapphire blue and Grape)

And then I did some screen printing on some fabric that I had dyed and painted previously, using some thickened dye solution.  This hasn't been washed out yet, I think I have to let it set for about 24 hours before washing.

And I tried stamping with a hand carved stamp I had made a while ago -- but my Setacolor paint was more like a gel (think it's getting too old) so it didn't turn out exactly like I had planned...

No time for house cleaning!  Oh, and the wedding I attended in Pittsburgh last weekend was for my niece, Karin, who lives in Florida.  I gave them a quilt for a wedding picture, and she was nice enough to send me a picture of it in their house--but I can't get the picture to show up here correctly.

And here's my former wild cat, Ferrell.  He has been hanging around since last spring, and he even lets me pet him once in a while now.  He has a warm bed to sleep in, lots of food & water, and has pretty much made himself at home.

 This is one reason why a cat is a valuable thing to have around--a baby snake.

This is Ferrell taking care of that snake--he played with it for a while then killed it.  I've seen quite a few snakes around my yard that are 6' long or more, which is kind of creepy but they do have their place in the ecosystem, I guess.

And a picture of my beautiful lab, Leo, who has been with me for about 1.5 years now and is a wonderful dog.  Thanks again to Lab Rescue of NC.

October FM Challenge Done

I enjoyed this month's challenge from SewCalGal--it was presented by Teri Lucas, and was a lot of fun to stitch. 

I used a satiny piece of fabric that I've had for years, and some YLI Silk thread.  Turns out they were both the same color, but since it was the only silk thread I had, I decided to use it.  It was a little difficult to see the stitching once in a while, but it was a bright & sunny day yesterday when I worked on it which made it a little easier. 

The shiny fabric really looks great when stitched up. 

I added my name like we were supposed to do, but as a little feature on the side, not as a main feature.

I think this is the back.

Joan at Leschenault was nice enough to create a video to show me how she made her nautilus shells.  (Her stitching is already good enough that she should be teaching one of these monthly challenges, in my opinion).  My shells didn't turn out great, but they're ok for a first attempt, and I definitely liked doing them, so I'll be doing more in the future, that's for sure.  Thanks, Joan!

I also finally sewed these blocks together from my Judy Niemeyer pattern, Raindrops.  Now to get it ready for quilting, what a job that's going to be!

It's so big that it dragged on the ground when I hung it on the clothesline to photograph. 

And I also started (and finished) this quilt top over the weekend.  It was a pattern I found in American Quilter's magazine, by Marcia DeCamp.  It's really easy, and has enough of a structured look but still looks contemporary.  I used up a bunch of my hand-dyed and batiked pieces that I've made over the last year or so. 

I think I'm going to make another one of these, still have lots of hand dyes and batiked fabrics to use up.  All in all, it was a very productive weekend.

Raindrops Quilt

The only thing I've been working on this week is this Judy Niemeyer pattern, Raindrops, and I'm determined that I'm sewing all the blocks together this weekend and getting it ready for quilting!  The evenings after work seem to be getting shorter and shorter now, making me feel a lot less productive.

This is a great pattern, her paper piecing techniques make it really easy.  I finished up all the NY beauty blocks quite a few months ago, then put it aside.  Not sure why, maybe I was just tired of it at that point.  It was A LOT of sewing, flipping and cutting to get through.  

Now I finally have the blocks connected vertically, and am working on sewing the rows together into one big quilt top.  This will be fun to quilt, but sure do wish I had a long arm machine! 

I'm linking up to Off the Wall Fridays, check out Nina Marie's blog!

Partial Eclipse quilt

This quilt is one I started way back in March of LAST YEAR! I went to a class at Sew Original in Winston-Salem to learn how to do the Judy Niemeyer technique for this pattern Total Eclipse. It took me about 3 weeks to piece the quilt, but then it sat in a pile of UFOs.

I thought it would be too hard to quilt on my little sewing machine.

So I basted the whole thing, instead of pinning it with safety pins.

And, I learned it was really easy to quilt this way. I could just slide it around, instead of rolling the whole thing up like I normally do, and have to deal with that big bulky roll.

I think it's done now, except for the binding (and burying those thread tails, yuck!)

Raindrops quilt -- still in progress

This quilt is a LOT of work--but I've been plugging away at it. Here are a bunch of pieces taped up to my front door and wall, as my design wall wasn't big enough for it. I started sewing the blocks together last night after work, but only got 3 finished.
It's going to be pretty large when done--and I'm determined that it will be completed, that it won't be a UFO.