Sunday, September 22, 2013

TIME—Another 15 by 15 Challenge Done

In my other life as an astronomy professor TIME means a lot of different things to me. I think about how long light takes to travel from objects in the universe and how we are looking into the past as we look at those celestial objects. I also think about the curvature of space-time which can explain objects like black holes. To bring it more down to Earth I also think about the passage of time on our own planet and the seasons.  We mark the passage of the seasons to show the progression of time during the year, but we also use them metaphorically to represent the passage of time in our own lives. For example, "He was in the winter of his life."

I am generally a summertime person since I like the warm weather, but I I am fascinated by the scenery of wintertime. I love the bare trees and the gloomy skies. I do not like snow, but I love the way it looks. I have made several winter landscape quilts over the years so I decided that this was where I wanted to go, but wanted to do something different than what I had done before.

A few years ago I took a class using wax resist on fabric with Jeanne Palmer Moore, We used various kitchen tools to put wax onto fabric. Once the wax dried the fabric was painted using setacolor paints.  After the paint dried we ironed the fabric to get the wax out and then washed in detergent. One of the fabrics I created was pretty ugly. Not sure what I will use the fabric for  or what I was thinking when I created it.

So I took a photo of the fabric and edited it in Photoshop and changed the color to blue, which is my favorite color. Then I superimposed a photo of a wintertime tree that my daughter took on top of the fabric image making the tree photo semitransparent. This is her wonderful photo.

Kelsey tree

Once I had the image I wanted I had Spoonflower print the fabric for me. I am very pleased with the fabrics I had them print for me. I am not really able to print large digital images on my home printer.  So here is the finished quilt that I call "Wintertime Blues."

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Friday, September 13, 2013

More dyeing and thinking

I am taking Quilter’s Palette and did some dyeing of cottons today. Seems that every teacher has a different way of doing it.  I guess I have to find what works best for me.
I did have some issues with red specks on the fabric. The red dye was not dissolved like it needed to be. I still like the fabrics and they will be great in my quilts, but they did not come out like they should have. I was thinking of adding a little urea to the water to soften it a bit to see if that helps. Urea was added in a different class I took. If this does not help I guess I will have to strain it though some panty hose as suggested in this class. Will have to buy that when I shop this week.
Tomorrow I have to dye some more, go to the quilt store for some fusible web, and work on my challenge quilt. Lots to do!
Thanks for reading.
Chris

Friday, September 6, 2013

More silk dyeing

Last weekend for Lesson 3 of the dyeing we did folding techniques. We were supposed to let the folded silk sit until it dried, but given the high humidity in NJ it was not drying at all. So finally I just washed it out after 2 1/2 days.

These were done using raw silk. The two on the left were folded and the two on the right were squished up in a small tight ball. I like the balled ones more than the folded ones, but I think I would make a looser ball in the future. That way I think you would get less white fabric. I am not sure if I like raw silk. It is not what I imagine when I think of silk. It is thicker and very rough. It reminds me more of linen than silk.  I am sure that I will figure out what to use these in someday.  Just not sure right now….

I did not think anyone commented about my last several blogs until I realized that I had changed some settings and I had to approve the comments.  Oops…so now the comments are posted!

Thanks for all the comments. We came home from Paris 4 weeks ago today and I am still thinking about it. I have never thought about a vacation that long. I guess this was a really great one.

Thanks for reading….onto more dyeing.

Chris