Nearly Finished

 

At the expense of you getting bored with photos of this quilt- I wanted to show how the stitching enriches the whole texture of the quilt- on the bottom left hand corner of the quilt is an unstitched part- compare that to the pebbles quilted to the right of that. I had intended to enter this quilt in the Garden Theme for Carrefour Europeen du Patchwork- but arggh it's too big. I usually make the forest quilts about 1 metre square but because I dyed an old damask table cloth for this one, it is about 120 cm square- and after all that stitching I am not chopping anything off!

It was freezing today and wet- we need the rain badly- but I had to dye some fabric as well- I managed to find an hour and a half when it wasn't raining. I dye outside- my hands were freezing. There was some discussion on one of the lists I belong to about mixing colours and what colours people bought. Here is what I use- and I dye everything you have ever seen on my blog from these colours ( and I prefer using the formulaic names because then I can work out whether the mix I make is going to tend to brown sludge)- colour descriptions are so subjective to each person that they are next to useless:


Yellow MX3RA ( golden/affron yellow- used three times as much as any other
dye at my house)
Yellow MX8G ( lemon yellow- great for birght greens)
Red Mx8 B ( poke in the eye fuschia- great for getting good bright purples
and good brilliant oranges and fire colours- you need to be a bit careful
using this one- it is so reactive that it always tends to grab the fabric
first)
Red MX5B ( still bright but better for getting nicer pinks, maroons, wine
red colours and soft peachey colours and duller purples)
Turquiose MX
Blue MXG- mid blue (- great for bright purples- mid greens)
Blue MX4GD ( an almost indigo blue with greenish tinge- I use this one
because I dye to sell and I use it as the overdye in some of my greens-
really gives nice deep hues to greens - is very nice over terracotta
coloured browns)
Brown Mx3RA- brown is the hardest colur to mix- so I buy the mix ready made-
on its own this is a bit of a nothing brown- so I always jazz it up with
Yellow MX3RA and red MX8B- the amounts depending if I want a yellowish brown
or a reddish brown- I then use black to overdye to get really dark browns
Black MXG ( It is also possible to get a black MX2R- which is a reddish
black and on its own gives a deep sort of aubergine colour)- the MXG has a
greenish tinge on its own- but gives a more blackish black over the browns-
if you get my drift.

These are the only colours I use to mix all the colours I make. I have
tried a few of the so-called other mixed colours- but find my own mixes are more
reliable and often more vibrant- unfortunately I haven't written down most of my recipes and judge by eye.I am afraid I subscribe to the serendipity method of dyeing .I have colour mood days as well- but orange always brightens me up, and a lot of orange gets dyed at this house ! You can see some of my recent dyeing on Annabel Rainbow's blog.



I always use salt- quite hot water and electric soda- I dye in cold weather
outside where in winter the ambient temperature is quite cold- and it still
works- though I do make sure I rinse my cloth in quite hot water before
dyeing- so that everything is at a similar temperature. I have found
turquoise to be a little unstable in cold weather- you can tell when its
going to misbehave because the dye in solution goes all kind of strange and
when it first hits the fabric it's very pale and slowly darkens up after
that. I don't batch for 24 hours- one hour is enough for the dye to take- I
am too impatient for batching.