Obsessive About Dyeing

Obsessive About Dyeing

Dyeing fabrics is an obsession.  I began with cottons as directed in the Elizabeth Barton class, Dyeing to Design, that I took over at Academy of Quilting.  I had little interest in dyeing or so I thought, and only took the class because Elizabeth was teaching it and I wanted to take a class with her and it was the first class closest to the date when I started researching her classes.  I had no idea I’d fall so completely in love with dyeing.  But I did.  After her class ended, I took her other dyeing Class – Basic Dyeing for Quiltmakers where we learned to over dye and dye just about any color we wanted.  It was thrilling to see a color, figure out what primary colors went into it and then create it!  But as is my way, I wasn’t content to dye just cottons.

I decided I had to learn how to dye wool, which is a different process entirely, so I could finish my block of the month designs (more on that in another post). So I went over to Dharma Trading, a great company that sells dyes and everything related to dyeing.  I sourced wool fabric, also not as easy as one might think, and then purchased a small amount of wools, silks, raw silks and silk/wools from a couple of different places.  I even found some lovely silk velvet at Dharma, perfect to use on my wool appliqué pieces that I began designing a few months ago.  And I began dyeing.

Fabrics

Aren’t they beautiful?

Here are all the cotton fabrics I dyed in Elizabeth’s class, including some of my silk screens and shibori dyed cottons…hand-dyed fabrics

Now I’m back to designing so I can use all of these lovely fabrics.  This is the beginning of Mr. Pig.  He still needs to be embellished and is one of twelve blocks for my Block Of the Month project featuring cookie jars that I’m in the midst of creating patterns and, hopefully, kits for, that will come with many of my hand-dyed fabrics as well as everything you’ll need to make each block.

Notice the cotton fabric to the far left?  That is one of my shibori dyed cottons and the green wools and pink wool and velvet are all my hand-dyed fabrics too!  Mr. Pig

PigSketch

Obsessive About Dyeing

Quilts!

Remember those “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” books?

This is my version of that…

If you show a girl a quilt, she’s going to wonder how it’s made.  When she wonders how it’s made, she’s going to take a Block of the Month class to see how  it’s done.  Once she’s signed up for the class, she’s going to begin making a quilt herself.

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Center Block from the Flower Pots Quilt Designed By Kim McLean

When she starts to make a quilt herself, she’s going to think about how she can make it uniquely hers.

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Detail of one of the Center Blocks

When she begins to make it uniquely hers, she’s going to incorporate all the stitches she learned in the Craftsy class given by Sue Spargo that she wrote about a few weeks ago on the post, Change.

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Detail from Flower Pots side panel

Once she begins adding all those stitches she learned…

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Almost finished Flower Pots Quilt!

she’s going to want to start designing her own blocks…

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Rhino Block designed and stitched by Ariane Zurcher

…which will lead her to a two-week Artist’s workshop retreat.

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The artist’s retreat will be life transforming and will give her all kinds of ideas for new pieces that she wants to design and create…

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Manhole Cover at Onondaga Community College

While she marvels at all the things she’s seeing and learning she will be reminded of other things she’s already working on…

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Detail from Flower Pot Quilt Border

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One of those things will be manhole covers!  Who doesn’t love manhole covers and if you love manhole covers, wouldn’t a quilt inspired by them be even more fabulous?!

So it’s probably best to give a girl her first quilt while she’s still very young so she has plenty of time to learn and do all of this!

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Merlin overseeing the work.

Coming next week: pots!   Not flower pots as in the quilt, but real pots, thrown pots, hand painted pots… gotta love pots!