Archive | November, 2022

Dyeing Successes

By Ellen Lindner on November 27, 2022 in Uncategorized

In my last post I showed you several fabrics that changed dramatically when washed and dried. Thankfully, that’s not the norm. I thought you’d like some assurance that things DO usually turn out as I want them. A few examples:

Fat black and brown lines on white (which stayed white, I’m happy to say.) I like this pattern and think I’ll do more similar pieces.

This piece had a rather anemic, mostly-white background, which I didn’t like. However, there were some small teal patterns in the background and I decided I wanted the bulk of the background to be a solid version of that. Hooray for color matching!

This nearly solid red-orange requires a lot of restraint! With all the colors and tools at my disposal, it’s REALLY tempting to add more pattern and color! But, I occasionally manage to create such fabrics. Thank goodness, because they’re very much needed.

What kind of dyeing successes (or challenges) have you encountered?

Ellen Lindner

Maybe I Need a Crystal Ball

By Ellen Lindner on November 24, 2022 in Uncategorized

For me, the hardest thing about dyeing fabric is predicting the final color. I think maybe I need a crystal ball!

Case in point: I spent a lot of time getting this fabric just the way I wanted it. This is what it looked like wet. I was concerned that the delicate tone-on-tone area in the lower right might not show up, but was otherwise confident about the outcome.

However, this is what I ended up, once washed and dried.

As expected, I lost the detail of that one corner, but where did the MINT green come from? Not satisfied with this result, I retreated the fabric and tried again. Here’s the reworked version, wet. As you can see, I kicked up the background colors quite a bit.

And this is the final version. Which I like a lot.

I’ve gone to the trouble to make a TON of swatches, just so I could avoid this problem. However, I’m not measuring and weighing dyes, just trying to match proportions. It looks like I might need to be more exacting.

And here’s another one that gave me trouble. Wet:

Washed and dried:

Ugh! What ugly colors! So, I tried again. Reworked and wet:

That looked pretty colorful, but it ended up just the way I wanted.

I guess my “take home” points are:
1 – Trust my swatches and try to “measure” more accurately.
2 – Don’t stress when it doesn’t come out to my liking, because…
3 – I’ve gotten pretty good at reworking the colors. (Yay for me! That’s a silver lining.)

Of course, not all the dyeing ends up off-color. I’ll show you some first-try successes in the next post.

Ellen Lindner

Reworking Those Twigs

By Ellen Lindner on November 17, 2022 in Uncategorized

After considering radical changes to my quilt in-progress, I was excited to implement new ideas!

This was my initial trial and error placement. The twigs were part of the original version, along with the rust fabrics, but all the blue and black was new. I liked the arrangement and it changed very little.

But, it needed some high contrast, right? Maybe against that dark blue. Light twigs, maybe? I auditioned the idea by placing some little snips of fabric.

Yep, I liked it, so I PAINTED on two twigs. (Kinda scary, but I had tested my idea, so I felt pretty confident.) That really drew the eyed and I was very happy with it.

(I intended to use fabric paint, but it was all dried up. Therefore, I used regular craft acrylic paint. We’ll see how it holds up.)

I wanted the light areas to sort of creep across the piece, in a loose diagonal. Maybe I needed more light twigs to accomplish that? Again, I auditioned the idea with some little scraps. And maybe it was time to thoroughly examine proportions too. Should the black on the left be smaller?

Yes! Changes in both areas and I think they helped quite considerably. At this point I had also done most of the piecing.

Piecing complete, below. Considering the addition of some teal circles. I like repeating both the color and the shape.

I’m starting to get really happy with this piece. I’m SO glad I reworked it!

Any ideas for a name?

Ellen Lindner

Drastic Reconfiguration

By Ellen Lindner on November 10, 2022 in Uncategorized

I “blame” Pat Pauly. I was watching a video in which she was teaching about color. In it, she was switching fabrics on and off of her design wall, showing how different combinations might work. Or not. It was mesmerizing!

I looked across the top of my laptop toward my design wall and KNEW that my current quilt needed a big dose of what she was describing. At the end of the video, I jumped up, with Adrenalin surging, and started throwing fabrics onto my quilt in-progress.

Bam! The very first fabric added energy and excitement. Yes! This was the kind of thing that was needed!

Ooh, this next one had possibilities.

Hmm. Interesting (above.)

Of course, I knew the large circles would work, since I had just used them in the previous quilt. But, I didn’t want to mimic the first quilt, so I’d have to be careful if using this fabric. It does look good, though, doesn’t it?

More large circles, some navy, and white. Yes, possibilities.

Two blues?

Of course, I could add more than one fabric and that’s what I decided to do. To improve the quilt I knew I’d have to take apart some of the twiggy bits, but I was willing to do that.

Cuz it already looks more interesting, right?

Thanks, Pat!

Ellen Lindner
P.S. I’ve taken several classes with Pat and I’ve always gotten a lot out of them. I recommend her as a teacher and her hand dyed fabrics (which are for sale) are to “dye” for!

The Start of Something Twiggy

By Ellen Lindner on November 6, 2022 in Uncategorized

I enjoyed my last quilt so much that I decided to use the scraps from that one to start the next. With a little editing, I selected these fabrics as my starting point.

Of course, I didn’t want this new quilt to look like the previous one, so I sorta shied away from the large circles, much as I loved them. I had a twiggy fabric I thought might be interesting enough to be the focus point.

I didn’t like the dull gray brown parts, though, so I carefully cut the bulk of them away. The newly cut pieces are shown below. I really liked them and thought the high value contrast would be eye catching.

So, I started to arrange things on the design wall. I clustered the twiggy parts together and planned to insert very narrow, dark lines between them. I thought this would play up the dark line contrast of the twigs. So far, so good.

Hmm, I’m not sure I properly considered the scale of the twiggy parts. Could they carry all these other fabrics in a piece this size? Were they beginning to look skimpy? I could see that I needed something besides just squares of fabric for the perimeter pieces. What about curving skinny pieces? Could they play up the twigs idea? I auditioned the idea, below, and liked it.

Yes, the curvy lines helped. And I added some little bits of blue. Also, because the twigs were looking a little lost, I reduced the size of the whole thing.