Adventure Quilter

In addition to the gorgeous indigo, my fabrics dyed with Procion mx dyes also turned out well. I didn’t have time to thoroughly wash them at first, so I draped them around my back porch for drying.  So pretty!

Believe it or not, these fabrics were made by simply wadding and scrunching up a piece of fabric and loosely securing it with rubbed bands.  Doesn’t it give a great mottled effect?

The indigo piece above is the one seen hanging at the bottom of this post. How simple is that?

Rocks were wrapped in fabric and secured with rubbed bands for these next two.  Pretty cool, right?

Stitching created the resist in the next pieces. The red piece, top left was stitched by machine. The magenta one, bottom left was stitched by hand.  Each row was tucked, resulting in a double resist line.  The indigo piece was stitched by hand, both with and without tucks.  The top portion was tucked and the bottom section was just stitched through a single layer.  All were pulled up tightly and secured.

What I learned about stitching: Do it on the machine! Rely on the stitched line for the pattern, not the shirring caused by pulling the strings tight.  And, for me, I like the tucked stitching best.

This is where I REALLY got my preference for machine stitching.  Because I HAND stitched these – hours and hours worth. Wish I’d dyed that left one with something darker so it would show up more.  Of course, I still like them, though!

This honeycomb pattern was achieved with what I dubbed “the scrunchy technique.”  Because it looked like a hair scrunchy, once prepped.  The fabric was wrapped around a fat cord, then the cord was tied together tightly, which required a lot of scrunching together of the fabric.  (A fatter cord would have given me a larger pattern.)

Finally, this gold piece was folded like a flag and held together with two rubber bands.  I like the design a lot.

This was so much fun and I’m loving my results.  The next challenge: cutting them up.  (I’m pretty practiced at that, though, so it shouldn’t be too rough.)

Do you have a favorite?

Ellen Lindner

I’m getting ready for a shibori dying day with my art quilt buddies.  (Shibori is a type of dying which uses manipulation of the fabric to resist the dye in certain areas.  Tie dye is an example.)  There are a TON of ways to fold, roll, scrunch, and stitch fabric prior to dying to get a variety of patterns.  This time I decided to do something new for me: hand stitching.

Here I’ve stitched parallel rows.  When the threads are pulled tight, they create a sort of messy smocked effect.  The folds will make it difficult for the dye to get into the crevices, creating a pattern.

I also stitched little rows of tucks. This photos shows them before being drawn up.

Then I got very industrious.  Here, I stitched tucks in small circles and pulled them tight.

With my fabric folded in half I drew concentric semi-circles for stitching.  These will yield full circles when dyed.

Allow me to say that this stitching and pulling and knotting took A LOT of time!

Next, I used a long basting stitch on my machine and did some more parallel rows and rows of tucks.  MUCH faster!  The only trick is to pull up only the bobbin thread.

Finally, I switched to faster non-stitching methods. I used rubber bands to hold scrunched fabric in place.

Check this out: rocks caught up in the fabric and secured with rubber bands.  I used a ton!

I can’t wait to dye this stuff!

Update: Our dying day has been postponed due to COLD here in Florida!  How weird is that? Our plan was to do it outside with temperatures in the 60s.  That would have been fine for us, but not for the dye.  The water needs to be fairly warm.  I guess I get more time to prep.

Ellen Lindner
P.S.  I know my “cold” story isn’t getting any sympathy from your northerners and you’re right!  I can’t believe the frigid temperatures I’ve seen reported!  Stay warm folks.