Knitting and Dyeing and a Factory, Oh My!

The ladies in the Shoo Fly Quilters of Boyertown know that I have a soft spot in my heart for old machinery. Hubby and I used to own Bahr's Mill - an historic woodworking mill just outside of town. And when we travel, we try to find factory tours where ever we can. (Tip - Lowell, Massachusetts, north of Boston, is home to Lowell National Historical Park. Go there!)
Last week I was able to get my factory fix at Kraemer Yarn in Nazareth, PA. (Yep, Nazareth, and that's close to Emmaus and Bethlehem for those of you who aren't from around here.) And it turns out that they sell skeins of yarn - thirty-six different varieties - for dyeing! I have eleven here now and need to narrow that down to about three or four to add to my collection, er, inventory. I'm definitely keeping the super-chunky thick and thin variety. It's at the top of this picture. I also got some already-dyed yarn, but can't share the details until after December 25th. Another plus is that not only is it spun right here in Pennsylvania, it's made from US wool!
Now around here I'll dye anything that can't run away. Can you help me by answering some questions? There's a survey here. And if you're not on the DippyDyes mailing list, you can sign up at the bottom. Thanks!

1000 Yards of Fabric Looks Like This:

The FedEx Ground guy stopped by the house today and delivered my winter's work. It's 500 yards each of Pimatex and Kona in PFD bleach white. For comparison, if this was on 15-yard bolts, there'd be 67 of them.
The next step - moving them to the storeroom on the third floor. And if you wonder - the three boxes these came in weighed 341 pounds all together. Who needs a gym membership?!
PS - praying for snow next!

What I did on my . . . sabbatical(?)

Is it a sabbatical if you don't work in academia? Well, I spent three weeks away from home focusing on surface design, and I got to sell some fabric too. That seems to parallel the idea of a break from the normal routine to take time to study. I've taken single week classes before, but never longer. I wish I could say it was an instant-gratification, earth-shattering, life-changing experience, but life doesn't work that way. This was certainly gratifying, but any change will have to come from within, which, like thinking, is hard. Whaaaa. :-)
Using this sticky keyboard is a pain, too, so let me see what pictures I can find.

Twenty-four monoprints in one day!!

Critique of 'Impaired'

Lovely fungus - need to make printed fabric in these colors

First stage of a monoprint, worth repeating

View from the B&B where we spent three nights. At dawn. I don't do dawn.

This is where we spent the remaining eighteen nights. Much more affordable. Plus we visited my sister on the way out and back. Great way to break up the trip - thanks!

Very grateful to have the opportunity to attend, to be able to sell fabric and dye tools & toys to be able to afford to attend, and support from family to encourage me to attend!

Two minute intro to deconstructed screen printing

Friday, August 12 is the deadline - if there aren't enough sign-ups for my DYE Classes at Oaks - the Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza - they will be cancelled. To pique your interest, watch this:

Thanks, and here's a link to the class descriptions! Classes are September 16 & 17.
Next up, an introduction to the other class - a vest that is machine stitched, then dyed. Time to take more pictures!

Back from the Barn!

Last week I was privileged to attend Carol Soderlund's  Neutral Territory class at Nancy Crow's Art Barn retreats. With the work of our fabulous group of 15 artists choreographed by Carol, we came home with hundreds of samples of ways to mix three (or four) colors together. The results include a great palette of blacks, browns, greens, blues, greys, purples, umbers, ochers and reds. And we did one bright and sassy 12-step color wheel and shaded it with black. Altogether over 600 new samples - with no duplicates! In addition, Carol taught us a new sampling technique and provided great tools for doing the sampling.
Now I'm home and I'm still trying to get the right colors for a client. Great time to use what I've learned! Above is a picture of the washout step of a yellow shaded with two different amounts of black, and each color is done in six values. Two down - 94 cups to go! And as much fun as I find that, there's still business chores and household chores to be done. Rather than whine about that, I will sign off and go 'Git'r'Done.'

Samples are slowing progress

My plan was to start digging into the 400 yards today. If I do 20 yards per day for four days, take a day off, then repeat five times, I'll hit 400 by May 25. I do have 20 yards done, but they are 'extra' yards. Not counting them yet! Anyhow, the picture at left shows two tests on the left next to two supplied swatches on the right. Tonight I did two more to try to match the bottom blue. I got the value better, but still not there with the color. It's also one of those blues that shifts according to the light. Using the Verilux lamp makes it look closer to violet.
I'll keep you posted on my progress - good and mediocre!

400 yards in 30 Days - ????

Monday I did something I have never done before - I ordered ten pounds of dye powders from Pro Chemical. Only eleven different colors - I got two pounds of two of the colors, and eight ounces or one pound of the rest. I'm about to embark on a solid adventure - dyeing 400 yards of fabric in about a month.
Now, lest you think I'm completely out of my mind, I'm not talking about dyeing 400 different colors. To give you a little perspective, I'm starting with just twenty colors - ten yards of each. For inspiration, and to help me narrow down my choices, I went to the Robert Kaufman Kona (R) color story page, and picked summer, 'cause it's on its way. That group is shown at right. Then I thinned that down to just the twenty colors that I'll be dyeing. That's my first, firm goal - 200 yards. And, as projects involving color often do, the concept has grown. Since I'm going to mix up those 20 colors, if I mix up just a little more than what I need for ten really saturated yards, I'll be able to dye the same colors in a lighter value. So the next couple days will be spent preparing and documenting my progress - and getting some orders filled as well.
Sue Reno's project "52 Ways to Look at the River" has inspired me to track and share what I'm doing, plus it adds a degree of accountability. If I know people are watching, I'm going to have to keep at it! I hope you'll follow along - and comment on the blog. I'm going to give something away -- but I'm keeping that under my hat. #400yds30days

Countdown to spring shows

Today is seven days before we hit the road for the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in Hampton, VA. (We're leaving a day early to take a day's vacation in the Williamsburg / Hampton area.) I've posted pictures over on Instagram of a couple fabrics I ironed yesterday. I thought I had everything ironed - 43 pieces ranging from 1 yard to maybe 6 yards - most are 4 yards. Then I remembered I had 5 pieces of vat-dyed Radiance

Vat-dyed Radiance before soaping off

that had to be processed. I ran one through the pressure cooker to activate the dye, then all of them got 'soaped off.' That's when they go into a very large cookpot with 180 degree F water and Ivory bar soap, plus, around here, water softener. They're soaking in some vinegar & water right now to neutralize any remaining alkali.
I have a few quarts of dye that I haven't used, so maybe I will be dyeing and washing out more fabric. I will be vending at the SAQA conference in Philadelphia on March 31, so if I can't get the dye used now, I can do it when I get home later.

Who needs the gym?! Snowzilla day +4

The third and probably final round of snow-dyes went into the washing machine this morning. This group was all double snow-dyed, and only 9 pieces, 6-7 of which were 4 yards long. Then it was time to clean the floor. I use an old garden sprinkler can that holds three gallons or so. The screens get rinsed along with the floor under them, then it's squeegee time. More sprinkling, more squeegee, then the mop. That big string mop is a seriously good core muscle workout, with shoulders and triceps thrown in for good measure. Moving the sprinkle can and the occasional 5-gallon bucket of water helps keep up my strength too!
On my last post I mentioned that I turn the water heater up to get 140 degree washout temperatures. Well, the furnace guy is coming tomorrow to put in a new aquastat. The current one can't answer "how high is up?" Right now it's set at 90 and the pure hot tap water measures 124. When it gets too hot the pressure relief valve does its job - maybe a little too well! The picture below shows the cloud of steam in the cellar when that happens. So I didn't need the sprinkler can after all. The floor got a good, really hot wash.
Now, for your free moment of dye education: to wash out Procion MX type dyes, you really need water at 140 F / 60 C plus detergent. The very hot water breaks any partially bonded dye; the MX dyes are called fiber reactive because the dye molecules bond to the cellulose molecules.
That brings me to the free gift for signing up for my newsletter: instructions on washing out fabric dyed with MX. You can click the link in the upper right corner of this blog, or click here to sign up. I'll send you that PDF - and right now a real human still sends it, not a machine. Thanks!

P.S. I hope to post photos of some of the snow-dyes, but they must be washed and ironed first.

Plan for Snowzilla +1 day

In no particular order:

• Turn up the water heater to 140 for the final washout of yesterday's snow-dyes and the upcoming ones.
• First cool washes of snow dyes - yesterday was about 60 yards
• Squeegee the floor of water & dye runoff
• Bring in more snow to dye the next 40 yards
• rinse yesterday's dye off screens
• dig my way to the basement door again so I can bring snow inside (see picture below)
• soda-soak more fabric to dye tomorrow

Take a breath

• Get to the detached garage, ideally without leaving any footprints in the snow
• Fire up the snowblower
• Get enough of the paved surfaces cleaned off to function fairly normally
• sweep off the front porch
• sweep off the second-floor porch, or else expect drips in the temporary (i.e. white trash) kitchen on the first floor porch
• teach hubby how the broiler works because he's cooking dinner!
  

Just browsing through my drafts, and found that I wrote this and never posted it in October of 2011. It's still not quilted - maybe it will take less than four-and-a-half years to achieve that!
First, here's the photo that inspired me. I'm not sure it's the best example of negative space, but I was inspired. The source is: http://narrativetangotoursblog.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/foto-rutas-top-5-tips-for-taking-great-tango-photography/#comment-12 or http://tinyurl.com/mjj6d27 . I left a request for permission, but didn't hear anything either way . . . thanks to them for not quashing my creativity. I found too late that I needed to lighten up the picture very much to get the detail I wanted. But I'm still happy with the result.

 And here's my interpretation of the photo. I think I will change his foot, again; then I have to decide how to quilt it. There won't be a border, and her skirt will go off the edge. And looking at the picture, I expect I'll cut the other three sides close. It's hand appliqued, though not super-fine. The hat is wool with ink, sleeves are black Radiance, his leg is discharged (unsuccessfully) cotton sateen, her arms are hand-dyed and inked, and her skirt is velvet/een. Oh, her hair is a cotton quilt fabric that I was thrilled to find in my stash.

Thanks for looking, and comments are most welcome! - Lisa

Working and loving it!

Yesterday I spent a lot of time in the studio. I'm dyeing the fabric for a whole-cloth quilt that will go into the teacher's row at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival next month. It's inspired by the work of Alma Thomas, and you can see a study for it in the Painterly Class sample picture below.
I finally got it rolled up in plastic to batch at about 6 PM yesterday, and now I'm doing everything I can to force myself to wait until 24 hours have elapsed before I start washing it out.
I also did some deconstructed screen printing - not a technique I've used a lot, but I loaded the screens with dye after the Oaks class in September. I finally released the dye; they are waiting to be washed as well. And since there's no way I'm waiting until 10 PM tonight to start the washing out, they're going to be stuck with only 20 hours of batching.
At right you can see two of the screens that are not yet fully released. Now I need more soda-soaked fabric!
Another way to fill my time will be dye a batch of solids - some fat quarters and a tee-shirt or two. They have homes already - more on that later! Thanks for looking!

3-2-1 Blastoff newsletter readers

[Skip to the last paragraph to read the most important bits.]
Yesterday, in addition to my last post here on the blog, I also got a newsletter out. This morning I checked the report from MailChimp on my phone. I'm incredibly bad about checking the "metrics" and today I just happened to click on the 'opened' link and scrolled through the 165 people who had opened it as of 8:30 AM. (Now 11 hours later and it's up to 198, or 41%, with 23 clicks.)
There was one unsubscribe, and that's OK. The reason was a sad one - that person, who has opened every single newsletter I've ever sent - now has an illness that prevents her from using a computer. My heart goes out to her and the caregiver who wrote an explanation when she unsubscribed.
The rest of the list of names was a real trip down memory lane. Some people were family - I'm grateful they look even though dyeing and quilting isn't their thing. I saw names of a couple of my dye teachers and many fellow students, my students, customers and custom-work clients. There were people I met when I worked in the local quilt shop, and many people I've met at shows over the years. And below is the current geographic data of where people were when they opened the newsletter. Anyway, I expect this is really kind of dull to most readers. But . . .
The Last Paragraph - what I'm trying to get at with this post is how truly grateful I am to everyone who takes the time to read the newsletter, and who has touched my life and has let me into theirs as well. Thank you, so very much.

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