Candiotic table

I've been taking an on-line class called Dyeing 101: Controlling Color, and one of the assignments is to create a Candiotic Table using two sets of primary dyes and creating 66 colors for each set. (That's 132 colors) Then these 4" swatches are fused and mounted on a background fabric and labeled so that the colors can be recreated easily in the future.

I had all of mine dyed and mounted (finally!) when I noticed this the other night. That bubble gum pink piece looks a little out of place.

I'm not sure what happened, maybe I didn't follow the formula correctly, maybe I was off counting my millileters. But I really should have noticed it before fusing it on the background.

I've redyed another swatch, and need to fuse it on tonight after work. Final step is to print out a page of labels on a piece of fabric and fuse them to the corners. Then I'm done with this assignment, and on to the next.

Aren't these colors just beautiful?

For anyone who wants to learn more about precise dyeing, this class is wonderful! Check out Candied Fabrics.

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!)

March Free Motion Challenge

Last summer I painted a piece of white fabric with some Setacolor paints, in some pretty (and very pink) flower designs.

So, I never did anything with it, it was just sitting in a pile of UFOs.

This month's challenge on SewCalGirl's blog was presented by Ann Fahl, and she presented a tutorial about free-motioning flowers and leaf shapes. So I got out some black thread, made a quilt sandwich with this piece of fabric, and started sewing.

I outlined the flower petals, then did some pebbling in the centers. I used some YLI Soft Touch thread in black (the only black thread I had).

And here are some of the smaller flowers--

I think the large flowers look like peonies. Lots of thread tails to be buried still!

The finished piece is about 18" wide by 30" long. Now what should I do with it??

Watch the Quilt Show(s) Free

Next weekend, in honor of International Quilting Day, Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims are offering free viewing of almost 100 of their shows. I've heard good things about these shows, so I know I'm going to be watching.

http://www.thequiltshow.com/

Quilt Show in New Jersey

Over this past weekend, I was lucky to be able to travel to New York for my granddaughter's baptism. While there, my daughter was nice enough to take me to the Mancuso Quilt Show in Somerset, New Jersey.

Here are some pictures from that show:

Sorry, I didn't photograph the names of the quilt makers, we traveled through it pretty quickly.

The detailed work in this underwater scene was amazing:

Of course, a NY Beauty, one of my favorite patterns:

This quilt was large, probably queen size, and had three large fish on it. Very simple, but beautiful.

The stitching on this was gorgeous--it's hard to tell the scale from this picture, but the snowflake was about 3 feet tall.

And the best part it was that Madelyn got to attend her very first quilt show-with Grandma.