A Renewed Interest

I'm dyeing again!  From the first time I dyed with Mark Sherman, I knew I wanted

to LOTS more dyeing.  But then life got in the way and I forgot about dyeing. 

I had the supplies but not the inclination.

But few weeks back I saw a blog post by Tim Latimer, hand quilter extraordinaire, 

that got me charged and wanting to dye again. 

I had the opportunity to take a two-day one on one class with

Debra Linker.  She is an awesome artist and dyer here in north Texas.

We started the day by folding some fabric and ice dyeing it...one with the dye underneath

the ice and one with the dye on top of the ice.  I had never ice dyed before so

I was super excited to learn this technique and see the results.

Once the ice dyes were started, we set them aside and started working with mixed dyes. 

I was very determined to learn a mandala.  Man was it hard to tie!  I struggled with

the artificial sinew a lot.  There is definitely a sharp learning curve to it but I powered

through it.  I wanted to learn and that was what I was doing...good, bad, or

indifferent.  Below is the resulting mandala using gradated dyes. 

If I could do it again I would not use the chartreuse green and the brown. 

I would have chosen Raspberry and Deep Purple. But all is not lost. 

This piece will be really good for practice quilting.

Next we dyed some white tone on tones I brought.  This was a lot of fun. Here they
are in their cups after applying just enough of the liquid dye to saturate the fabric.



And here are the results!



I will definitely be doing more dyeing with tone on tones at some point.

 Next, I asked Debra what would happen if I did "this", showing here the fold 

and she said "let's find out!"  Here is the results.

Personally, I love it!  While the colors didn't turn out as I had hoped, that wasn't the

point with this one.  It was the folds.  And I think the folds were a success. 

 Below is the only I really considered a failure...but not entirely. 

While its too blended and doesn't really look like anything I did learn a new fold. 

And since then, I have been able to do successfully at home.  So its still a winner

in my mind.  And this piece can either be cut up or used as a

background for something else.

 And last but not least, the results of the ice dye! 

Dye on fabric and then ice

Ice on fabric and then dye

These two are BY FAR my favorite pieces from the two days spent with Debra!
If you think they look vibrant on your monitor, you should see
them in person.  They're just awesome!


So that's all for now.  I have a ton more pictures of dyes
I've done the past few weeks but I'll save them for future posts.