Monday, July 13, 2009

Dyeing solids

Got some work done a couple weeks ago with a friend, helping her dye some yardage for an upcoming class with Nancy Crow. Am I being too obsessive? The solid shade dyeing seems a bit uneven, but it also doesn't look like commercial fabric. The rosey piece is the worst one of the bunch - click on it to see a larger view. Those of you who have taken strip piecing with Nancy Crow, please let me know what you think.

Now to follow up on my last post, I have washed out and ironed the flat-dyed fabrics I was sampling. This picture shows several of them overlapping. The top one has the most varied areas; they're all textured more or less, but none have the usual crystalline LWI effect. What about these for the strip piecing classes?

Thanks very much!

2 comments:

Colleen Kole said...

Hi there- Ihave attended two of the crow workshops. For the first workshop, I purchased Kona cotton solids from Hancocks-paducah. For the second one, I started to dye my own fabrics and used either Lisa Call's method found under quilting process on her blog or Robin's process that you talk about in your previous posts-very time consuming though to wash out the layers of plastic....! but it works well.

Definitely bring all of the black, white and grey she asks for . you will use it. The more solid the piece is ,the better. ( The pieces you may have difficulty with are the pieces that have another color showing through. You may use them later in the week though.) If you are getting tired or running out of funds, go for gradations of colors-7 is the magic number. Overdye if you are too mottled.

The crow workshops are amazing-its a magical place to learn lots. You will sew more in that week than you probably do in a month.Its a privilege to learn from Nancy. But you will want to go back. Have fun!

Colleen Kole

Unknown said...

Hi Lisa, your fabrics look wonderful! I'm a big fan of even color, but that's only my opinion. I do have a word of advice for you: At the start of a few of the classes I took with Nancy, she had us arrange our fabric according to value, the lightest at one end and the darkest at the other. What you have here are all light to mid-value fabrics. Overdye these or dye more fabric to get darker shades. Be sure to cover the spectrum of value, you will be happy you did. Anyway, when is your class? Robin